Jeremiah 52

¹ Zedekiah was twenty-one years old when he became king, and he reigned eleven years in Jerusalem. His mother’s name was Hamutal, daughter of Jeremiah, from Libnah.

² He did what was evil in the eyes of the LORD, just as Jehoiakim had done.

³ Because of the LORD’s anger, this happened in Jerusalem and Judah, until he drove them from his presence. And Zedekiah rebelled against the king of Babylon.

⁴ In the ninth year of his reign, on the tenth day of the tenth month, Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, came against Jerusalem with his whole army. They camped against it and built a siege wall around it.

⁵ The city remained under siege until the eleventh year of King Zedekiah.

⁶ On the ninth day of the fourth month, the famine grew severe in the city, and there was no bread for the people of the land.

⁷ Then the city was breached, and all the men of war fled. They left the city at night through the gate between the two walls, near the king’s garden, while the Chaldeans surrounded the city, and they went by way of the Arabah.

⁸ But the Chaldean army pursued the king and caught up with Zedekiah in the plains of Jericho. His whole army scattered and deserted him.

⁹ They captured the king and brought him to the king of Babylon at Riblah, in the land of Hamath, and he passed sentence on Zedekiah.

¹⁰ The king of Babylon slaughtered Zedekiah’s sons before his eyes, and he also slaughtered all the leaders of Judah at Riblah.

¹¹ Then he put out Zedekiah’s eyes and bound him with bronze chains. The king of Babylon took him to Babylon and kept him in prison until the day of his death.

¹² On the tenth day of the fifth month, in the nineteenth year of Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, Nebuzaradan, the captain of the guard, who served in the presence of the king of Babylon, entered Jerusalem.

¹³ He burned the house of the LORD and the king’s house; he burned every house in Jerusalem, including every great house, with fire.

¹⁴ And the whole Chaldean army that was with the captain of the guard tore down all the walls around Jerusalem.

¹⁵ Nebuzaradan, the captain of the guard, took into exile some of the poorest people, the rest of the people left in the city, the deserters who had defected to the king of Babylon, and the rest of the craftsmen.

¹⁶ But Nebuzaradan, the captain of the guard, left some of the poorest people in the land to tend the vineyards and work the fields.

¹⁷ The Chaldeans broke up the bronze pillars in the house of the LORD, the stands, and the bronze Sea that was in the house of the LORD, and they carried all the bronze to Babylon.

¹⁸ They also took the pots, shovels, snuffers, basins, bowls, and all the bronze utensils used in the service.

¹⁹ The captain of the guard took the cups, fire pans, basins, pots, lampstands, bowls, and drinking vessels: whatever was gold, as gold, and whatever was silver, as silver.

²⁰ As for the two pillars, the one Sea, and the twelve bronze oxen beneath the stands, which King Solomon had made for the house of the LORD, the bronze of all these objects could not be weighed.

²¹ Each pillar was eighteen cubits high, and a cord twelve cubits long went around it. It was four fingers thick and hollow.

²² On top of it was a bronze capital, and each capital was five cubits high. There was latticework and pomegranates all around the capital, all of bronze. The second pillar was the same, with pomegranates as well.

²³ There were ninety-six pomegranates exposed to the wind; all the pomegranates around the latticework numbered one hundred.

²⁴ The captain of the guard took Seraiah, the chief priest, Zephaniah, the second priest, and the three doorkeepers.

²⁵ From the city he took one official who was in charge of the men of war; seven of the king’s advisers who were found in the city; the army commander’s secretary, who enlisted the people of the land; and sixty men of the people of the land who were found inside the city.

²⁶ Nebuzaradan, the captain of the guard, took these people and brought them to the king of Babylon at Riblah.

²⁷ The king of Babylon struck them down and killed them at Riblah, in the land of Hamath. Thus Judah was taken into exile, away from its land.

²⁸ This is the number of people Nebuchadnezzar took into exile: in the seventh year, 3,023 Jews;

²⁹ in the eighteenth year of Nebuchadnezzar, 832 people from Jerusalem;

³⁰ in the twenty-third year of Nebuchadnezzar, Nebuzaradan, the captain of the guard, took 745 Jews into exile; the total was 4,600 people.

³¹ In the thirty-seventh year of the exile of Jehoiachin, king of Judah, on the twenty-fifth day of the twelfth month, Evil-merodach, king of Babylon, in the year he began to reign, lifted up the head of Jehoiachin, king of Judah, and released him from prison.

³² He spoke kindly to him and gave him a throne above the thrones of the kings who were with him in Babylon.

³³ Jehoiachin changed out of his prison clothes and ate at the king’s table every day for the rest of his life.

³⁴ The king of Babylon provided him with a regular allowance, a portion for each day, until the day of his death, every day for the rest of his life.

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