1. Zedekiah was 21 years old when he became king of Judah, and he ruled in Jerusalem for eleven years. His mother's name was Hamutal, the daughter of the Jeremiah who lived in the city of Libnah.
2. King Zedekiah sinned against the Lord, just as King Jehoiakim had done.
3. The Lord became so angry with the people of Jerusalem and Judah that he banished them from his sight.Zedekiah rebelled against King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylonia,
4. and so Nebuchadnezzar came with all his army and attacked Jerusalem on the tenth day of the tenth month of the ninth year of Zedekiah's reign. They set up camp outside the city, built siege walls round it,
5. and kept it under siege until Zedekiah's eleventh year.
6. On the ninth day of the fourth month of that same year, when the famine was so bad that the people had nothing left to eat,
7. the city walls were broken through. Although the Babylonians were surrounding the city, all the soldiers escaped during the night. They left by way of the royal garden, went through the gateway connecting the two walls, and fled in the direction of the Jordan Valley.
8. But the Babylonian army pursued King Zedekiah, captured him in the plains near Jericho, and all his soldiers deserted him.
9. Zedekiah was taken to King Nebuchadnezzar, who was in the city of Riblah in the territory of Hamath, and there Nebuchadnezzar passed sentence on him.
10. At Riblah he put Zedekiah's sons to death while Zedekiah was looking on and he also had the officials of Judah executed.
11. After that, he had Zedekiah's eyes put out and had him placed in chains and taken to Babylon. Zedekiah remained in prison in Babylon until the day he died.
12. On the tenth day of the fifth month of the nineteenth year of King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylonia, Nebuzaradan, adviser to the king and commander of his army, entered Jerusalem.