1. Zedekiah was twenty-one years old when he became king, and he ruled in Jerusalem for eleven years. His mother’s name was Hamutal daughter of Jeremiah, from Libnah.
2. He did what displeased the Lord just as Jehoiakim had done.
3. What follows is a record of what happened to Jerusalem and Judah because of the Lord’s anger when he drove them out of his sight. Zedekiah rebelled against the king of Babylon.
4. King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon came against Jerusalem with his whole army and set up camp outside it. They built siege ramps all around it. He arrived on the tenth day of the tenth month in the ninth year that Zedekiah ruled over Judah.
5. The city remained under siege until Zedekiah’s eleventh year.
6. By the ninth day of the fourth month the famine in the city was so severe the residents had no food.