1. Zedekiah was 21 years old when he became king, and he ruled for eleven years in Jerusalem. His mother’s name was Hamutal; she was a daughter of Jeremiah from Libnah.
2. He did evil in the Lord’s eyes just as Jehoiachin had done.
3. It was because the Lord was angry against Jerusalem and Judah that he thrust them out of his presence. Zedekiah rebelled against the king of Babylon.
4. In the ninth year, the tenth month, and the tenth day of the month, Babylon’s King Nebuchadnezzar attacked Jerusalem with all of his army. He camped beside the city and built a siege wall around it.
5. The city was under siege until the eleventh year of King Zedekiah.
6. On the ninth day of the fourth month, the famine in the city reached a point that no food remained for the people.
7. The enemy entered the city, and all the soldiers fled by night along the gate between the two walls by the royal gardens. So the Babylonians surrounded the city while the soldiers fled toward the desert plain.
8. However, the Babylonian army chased down Zedekiah and caught him in the plains of Jericho. (His entire army had fled from him.)