2 Kings 25

25 ¹In Zedekiah's ninth year, the tenth day of the tenth month, Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon marched on Jerusalem with his whole army, camped outside, and built a siege wall around it. ²So the city remained under siege until the eleventh year of King Zedekiah. ³By the ninth day of the fourth month the city's famine was so severe the people of the land had no food. ⁴The city wall was broken through, and though the Babylonians surrounded it, all the soldiers fled by night through the gate between the two walls by the king's garden, toward the Arabah. ⁵Babylonian army chased the king, caught him on Jericho's plains, and all his troops scattered from him. ⁶They seized the king, brought him up to Babylon's king at Riblah, and sentenced him. ⁷They killed Zedekiah's sons before his eyes, blinded him, bound him in bronze shackles, and took him to Babylon.

⁸In the fifth month, on the seventh day—the nineteenth year of Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon—Nebuzaradan, commander of the guard, servant of the king of Babylon, came to Jerusalem. ⁹He burned the house of our Father, the king's palace, and all Jerusalem's houses; every great house he burned. ¹⁰And the whole Babylonian army under the commander of the guard broke down the walls surrounding Jerusalem. ¹¹Nebuzaradan, commander of the guard, exiled the rest of the people left in the city, the deserters who had gone over to Babylon's king, and the rest of the crowd. ¹²But the guard commander left some of the land's poorest to tend the vineyards and fields.

¹³The Babylonians broke to pieces the bronze pillars, the movable stands, and the bronze Sea of our Father's house that were there, and carried the bronze to Babylon. ¹⁴They also took the pots, shovels, wick trimmers, dishes, and all the bronze temple service articles. ¹⁵The guard commander took the firepans and the sprinkling bowls, all of pure gold and pure silver. ¹⁶The two pillars, the Sea, and the movable stands Solomon made for our Father's house—the bronze of all these was beyond weighing. ¹⁷Each pillar stood twenty-seven feet high, topped by a bronze capital four and a half feet high, ringed with a bronze network of pomegranates. The second pillar matched, with its network.

¹⁸The guard commander took Seraiah the chief priest, Zephaniah the second priest, and the three doorkeepers. ¹⁹From the city he took the officer over the fighting men, five royal advisers found there, the army commander's secretary who conscripted the land's people, and sixty commoners found in the city. ²⁰Nebuzaradan, commander of the guard, took them to the king of Babylon at Riblah. ²¹There at Riblah in Hamath, Babylon's king struck and killed them. So Judah was exiled from its land.

Gedaliah Set Over the Land

²²Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon made Gedaliah son of Ahikam, son of Shaphan, governor over the people left in Judah. ²³When all the army officers and their men heard Babylon's king had made Gedaliah governor, they came to him at Mizpah: Ishmael son of Nethaniah, Johanan son of Kareah, Seraiah son of Tanhumeth the Netophathite, and Jaazaniah the Maacathite's son, with their men. ²⁴Gedaliah swore to them and their men, "Don't fear the Babylonian officials. Live in the land, serve the king of Babylon, and it will go well for you."

²⁵In the seventh month Ishmael son of Nethaniah, son of Elishama, of royal descent, came with ten men and struck down Gedaliah, killing him along with the Judeans and Babylonians with him at Mizpah. ²⁶So all the people, small to great, and army officers fled to Egypt, fearing the Babylonians.

Hope for the Exiled King

²⁷In Jehoiachin of Judah's thirty-seventh year of exile, the year Evil-merodach became king of Babylon, he favored Jehoiachin and freed him from prison on the twelfth month's twenty-seventh day. ²⁸He spoke kindly to him and gave him a seat above the other kings with him in Babylon. ²⁹Jehoiachin took off his prison clothes and ate at the king's table regularly the rest of his life. ³⁰Day by day the king gave him a regular allowance for as long as he lived.