2 Kings 25:1-9 ▼

1 Now in the ninth year of Zedekiah’s reign, on the tenth day of the tenth month, Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon came, he with all his army, against Jerusalem, and camped against it and built siege works surrounding it.

2 The city came under siege [for nearly two years] until the eleventh year of King Zedekiah.

3 On the ninth day of the fourth month the famine [caused by the siege] was severe in the city; there was no food for the people of the land.

4 Then the city [wall] was broken into [and conquered]; all the men of war fled by night by way of the gate between the two walls by the king’s garden, though the Chaldeans (Babylonians) were all around the city. And they went by way of the Arabah (the plain of the Jordan).

5 The army of the Chaldeans pursued the king and overtook him in the plains of Jericho. Then his entire army was dispersed from him.

6 So they seized the king (Zedekiah) and brought him to the king of Babylon at Riblah [on the Orontes River], and sentence was passed on him.

7 They slaughtered the sons of Zedekiah before his eyes, then put out the eyes of Zedekiah and bound him [hand and foot] with bronze fetters and brought him to Babylon.

8 On the seventh day of the fifth month in the nineteenth year of King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon, Nebuzaradan, captain of the bodyguard, a servant of the king of Babylon, came to Jerusalem.

9 He burned the house (temple) of the LORD, the king’s house, and all the houses of Jerusalem; every great house he burned down.