1. In the ninth year of Zedekiah’s reign, on the tenth day of the tenth month, King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon advanced against Jerusalem with his entire army. They laid siege to the city and built a siege wall against it all around.
2. The city was under siege until King Zedekiah’s eleventh year.
3. By the ninth day of the fourth month the famine was so severe in the city that the people of the land had no food.
4. Then the city was broken into, and all the warriors fled by night by way of the gate between the two walls near the king’s garden, even though the Chaldeans surrounded the city. As the king made his way along the route to the Arabah,
5. the Chaldean army pursued him and overtook him in the plains of Jericho. Zedekiah’s entire army was scattered from him.
6. The Chaldeans seized the king and brought him up to the king of Babylon at Riblah, and they passed sentence on him.
7. They slaughtered Zedekiah’s sons before his eyes. Finally, the king of Babylon blinded Zedekiah, bound him in bronze chains, and took him to Babylon.
8. On the seventh day of the fifth month, which was the nineteenth year of Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon, Nebuzaradan, the commander of the guards, a servant of the king of Babylon, entered Jerusalem.
9. He burned the Lord’s temple, the king’s palace, and all the houses of Jerusalem; he burned down all the great houses.
10. The whole Chaldean army with the commander of the guards tore down the walls surrounding Jerusalem.
11. Nebuzaradan, the commander of the guards, deported the rest of the people who were left in the city, the deserters who had defected to the king of Babylon, and the rest of the population.
12. But the commander of the guards left some of the poorest of the land to be vinedressers and farmers.
13. Now the Chaldeans broke into pieces the bronze pillars of the Lord’s temple, the water carts, and the bronze reservoir, which were in the Lord’s temple, and carried the bronze to Babylon.
14. They also took the pots, the shovels, the wick trimmers, the dishes, and all the bronze articles used in temple service.
15. The commander of the guards took away the firepans and the sprinkling basins — whatever was gold or silver.
16. As for the two pillars, the one reservoir, and the water carts that Solomon had made for the Lord’s temple, the weight of the bronze of all these articles was beyond measure.
17. One pillar was 27 feet tall and had a bronze capital on top of it. The capital, encircled by a grating and pomegranates of bronze, stood five feet high. The second pillar was the same, with its own grating.
18. The commander of the guards also took away Seraiah the chief priest, Zephaniah the priest of the second rank, and the three doorkeepers.