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.)
9. They arrested the king and brought him before the king of Babylon at Riblah in the land of Hamath. And he pronounced sentence on him.
10. The king of Babylon slaughtered Zedekiah’s children before his very own eyes, and he slaughtered all Judah’s officers at Riblah.
11. Then he gouged out Zedekiah’s eyes and bound him in chains. The king of Babylon dragged him off to Babylon and put him in prison, where he remained until he died.
12. In the tenth day of the fifth month, which was the nineteenth year of Babylon’s King Nebuchadnezzar, Nebuzaradan commander of the guard came to Jerusalem on behalf of his king.
13. He burned down the Lord’s temple, the royal palace, all the houses of Jerusalem, and all the important buildings.
14. The entire Babylonian army and the commander of the guard destroyed the walls surrounding Jerusalem.
15. Nebuzaradan commander of the guard deported some of the poorest people, the rest of the people left in the city, a few skilled workers, and those who had joined the king of Babylon.