Jeremiah

Historical Epilogue

Zedekiah was twenty-one years old when he became king, and he reigned for eleven years in Jerusalem. His mother, Hamutal, was the daughter of Jeremiah from Libnah.

He did evil in the sight of the Lord, just as Jehoiakim had done.

All that happened in Jerusalem and Judah was because of the Lord’s anger until the day he drove them out of his sight. Zedekiah rebelled against the king of Babylon.

So, in the ninth year of Zedekiah’s reign, on the tenth day of the tenth month, Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, marched with his entire army and laid siege to Jerusalem. They camped outside the city and built siege works all around it.

The city was under siege until the eleventh year of Zedekiah.

On the ninth day of the fourth month, famine became a serious problem in the city, and there was no bread for the people throughout the land.

When a breach in the wall opened the city, the Judean army fled. They exited the city at night through the gate between the two walls near the king’s garden. While the Chaldeans still surrounded the city, they fled toward the Arabah.

The Chaldeans pursued King Zedekiah fiercely and caught up with him in the plains of Jericho. His entire army deserted him and scattered.

The Chaldeans captured the king and took him to Riblah in the territory of Hamath, where the king of Babylon condemned him. There, at Riblah, the king of Babylon killed Zedekiah’s sons in his presence, along with all the officials of Judah.

He then blinded Zedekiah, bound him with a double bronze chain, and took him to Babylon.

He was confined there in the house of the guards until the day he died.

On the tenth day of the fifth month in the nineteenth year of Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, Nebuzaradan, commander of the bodyguard and servant of the king, entered Jerusalem and set fire to the house of the Lord, the royal palace, and all the houses in the city.

He also burned down every important building.

The Chaldean army, under the command of the bodyguard, completely demolished all the walls around Jerusalem.

Nebuzaradan took some of the poorest people into exile—those remaining in the city, including those who had deserted to the king of Babylon, as well as the remaining artisans.

However, he left behind the very poor who could work in vineyards and tend the soil.

The Chaldeans broke into pieces the bronze pillars, stands, and the bronze Sea in the house of the Lord and carried all this bronze to Babylon.

They also took the pots, shovels, wick trimmers, spoons, and all the bronze articles used in the temple service.

The bodyguard commander took the basins, censers, sprinkling bowls, pots, lampstands, ladles, and bowls—all made of gold or silver.

The two pillars, the Sea and the twelve bronze bulls underneath it, the movable stands which King Solomon had made for the house of the Lord—all this bronze was of immeasurable weight.

The pillars were each eighteen cubits high with a circumference of twelve cubits. Each had a thickness of four fingers and was hollow.

On the top of each pillar was a bronze capital five cubits high, and above this, and around the capital, was filigree work with bronze pomegranates.

Ninety-six pomegranates hung down, and in all the filigree decoration, there were a total of a hundred pomegranates.

The commander of the bodyguard took captive Seraiah, the chief priest, and Zephaniah, the next priest in rank, along with three doorkeepers.

He also took from those in the city a eunuch in charge of the fighting men, seven personal advisers to the king, who were found in the city,

as well as the commander’s secretary responsible for military conscription, and sixty of his men. Nebuzaradan took all these to the king of Babylon at Riblah.

There, in the territory of Hamath, the king of Babylon had them executed. So Judah was captured and removed from its land.

This is the number of the population deported by Nebuchadnezzar: in the seventh year, three thousand twenty-three Judeans;

in the eighteenth year of Nebuchadnezzar, eight hundred thirty-two people from Jerusalem;

and in the twenty-third year, seven hundred forty-five Jews deported by Nebuzaradan, the commander of the bodyguard—totaling four thousand six hundred people.

On the twenty-fifth day of the twelfth month, in the thirty-seventh year of Jehoiachin’s exile, Evil-Merodach, king of Babylon, the year he ascended the throne, pardoned Jehoiachin, king of Judah, and released him from prison.

He spoke kindly to him and treated him more honorably than the other kings who were with him in Babylon.

Jehoiachin removed his prisoner’s garment and ate at the king’s table for the rest of his life.

Day by day, for as long as he lived, he was maintained by the king of Babylon.