Jeremiah 52

¹ Zedekiah was twenty-one years old when he came to the throne, and he reigned for eleven years in Jerusalem. His mother’s name was Hamital, daughter of Jeremiah, from Libnah.

² He did what is displeasing to Yahweh, just as Jehoiakim had done.

³ That this happened in Jerusalem and Judah was due to the anger of Yahweh, with the result that in the end he cast them away from him. Zedekiah rebelled against the king of Babylon.

⁴ In the ninth year of his reign, in the tenth month[*b], on the tenth day of the month, Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon came with his whole army to attack Jerusalem; he pitched camp in front of the city and threw up earthworks round it.

⁵ The city lay under siege till the eleventh year of King Zedekiah.

⁶ In the fourth month, on the ninth day of the month, when famine was raging in the city and there was no food for the populace,

⁷ a breach was made in the city wall. Seeing this, the king fled under cover of dark, with all the fighting men, leaving the city by way of the gate between the two walls, which is near the king’s garden – the Chaldaeans had surrounded the city – and making his way towards the Arabah.

⁸ The Chaldaean troops pursued the king and caught up with Zedekiah in the plains of Jericho, where all his troops deserted.

⁹ The Chaldaeans captured the king and took him to the king of Babylon at Riblah in the land of Hamath, who passed sentence on him.

¹⁰ He had the sons of Zedekiah slaughtered before his eyes; he also had all the leading men of Judah put to death at Riblah.

¹¹ He then put out Zedekiah’s eyes. Loading him with chains, the king of Babylon carried him off to Babylon where he kept him prisoner until his dying day.

¹² In the fifth month, on the tenth day of the month – it was in the nineteenth year of Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon – Nebuzaradan, commander of the guard, one of the king’s ministers, entered Jerusalem.

¹³ He burnt down the Temple of Yahweh, the royal palace and all the houses in Jerusalem.

¹⁴ The Chaldaean troops who accompanied the commander of the guard demolished all the walls surrounding Jerusalem.

¹⁵ Nebuzaradan, commander of the guard, deported the remainder of the population left behind in the city, the deserters who had gone over to the king of Babylon, and the remainder of the artisans.

¹⁶ Nebuzaradan, commander of the guard, left some of the humbler country people as vineyard workers and ploughmen.

¹⁷ The Chaldaeans broke up the bronze pillars from the Temple of Yahweh, the wheeled stands and the bronze Sea that were in the Temple of Yahweh, and took all the bronze away to Babylon.

¹⁸ They also took the ash containers, the scoops, the knives, the sprinkling bowls, the incense boats, and all the bronze furnishings used in worship.

¹⁹ The commander of the guard also took the bowls, the censers, the sprinkling bowls, the ash containers, the lamp-stands, the goblets and the saucers: everything that was made of gold and everything made of silver.

²⁰ As regards the two pillars, the one Sea and the twelve bronze oxen supporting the Sea, and the wheeled stands, which King Solomon had made for the Temple of Yahweh, there was no reckoning the weight of bronze in all these objects.

²¹ As regards the pillars, the height of one pillar was eighteen cubits, its circumference was twelve cubits, it was four fingers thick, and hollow inside;

²² on it stood a capital of bronze, the height of the capital being five cubits; round the capital were filigree and pomegranates, all in bronze. So also for the second pillar.

²³ There were ninety-six pomegranates which hung down, making a hundred pomegranates round the filigree in all.

²⁴ The commander of the guard took prisoner Seraiah the chief priest, Zephaniah the priest next in rank, and the three guardians of the threshold.

²⁵ In the city he took prisoner a eunuch who was in command of the fighting men, seven of the king’s personal friends who were discovered in the city, the secretary of the army commander, responsible for military conscription, and sixty men of distinction discovered in the city.

²⁶ Nebuzaradan, commander of the guard, took these men and brought them to the king of Babylon at Riblah,

²⁷ and at Riblah, in the land of Hamath, the king of Babylon had them put to death. Thus Judah was deported from its land.

²⁸ The number of people deported by Nebuchadnezzar was as follows. In the seventh year: three thousand and twenty-three Judaeans;

²⁹ in the eighteenth year of Nebuchadnezzar, eight hundred and thirty-two persons were deported from Jerusalem;

³⁰ in the twenty-third year[*c] of Nebuchadnezzar, Nebuzaradan, commander of the guard, deported seven hundred and forty-five Judaeans. In all: four thousand six hundred persons.

³¹ But in the thirty-seventh year of the exile of Jehoiachin king of Judah, in the twelfth month, on the twenty-fifth day of the month, Evil-merodach king of Babylon, in the year he came to the throne[*d], pardoned Jehoiachin king of Judah and released him from prison.

³² He treated him kindly and allotted him a seat above those of the other kings who were with him in Babylon.

³³ So Jehoiachin laid aside his prisoner’s garb, and for the rest of his life always ate at the king’s table.

³⁴ And his upkeep was permanently ensured by the king for the rest of his life day after day until his dying day.