1. Zedekiah was twenty-one years old when he was appointed king of Judah, and he ruled from Jerusalem for eleven years. His mother Hamutal was the daughter of Jeremiah from the town of Libnah.
2. Zedekiah disobeyed the Lord, just as Jehoiakim had done,
3. and it was Zedekiah who finally rebelled against Nebuchadnezzar.The people of Judah and Jerusalem had made the Lord so angry that he finally turned his back on them. That's why horrible things were happening.
4. In Zedekiah's ninth year as king, on the tenth day of the tenth month, King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylonia led his entire army to attack Jerusalem. The troops set up camp outside the city and built ramps up to the city walls.
5-6. After a year and a half, all the food in Jerusalem was gone. Then on the ninth day of the fourth month,
7. the Babylonian troops broke through the city wall. That same night, Zedekiah and his soldiers tried to escape through the gate near the royal garden, even though they knew the enemy had the city surrounded. They headed towards the Jordan valley,