2 Kings 18-25

Living Bible

18 ^1-3 New king of Judah: Hezekiah

⁴ He removed the shrines on the hills, broke down the obelisks, knocked down the shameful idols of Asherah, and broke up the bronze serpent that Moses had made, because the people of Israel had begun to worship it by burning incense to it; even though, as King Hezekiah^[a] pointed out to them, it was merely a piece of bronze. ⁵ He trusted very strongly in the Lord God of Israel. In fact, none of the kings before or after him were as close to God as he was. ⁶ For he followed the Lord in everything, and carefully obeyed all of God’s commands to Moses. ⁷ So the Lord was with him and prospered everything he did. Then he rebelled against the king of Assyria and refused to pay tribute any longer. ⁸ He also conquered the Philistines as far distant as Gaza and its suburbs, destroying cities both large and small.^[b]

⁹ It was during the fourth year of his reign (which was the seventh year of the reign of King Hoshea in Israel) that King Shalmaneser of Assyria attacked Israel and began a siege on the city of Samaria. ¹⁰ Three years later (during the sixth year of the reign of King Hezekiah and the ninth year of the reign of King Hoshea of Israel) Samaria fell. ¹¹ It was at that time that the king of Assyria transported the Israelis to Assyria and put them in colonies in the city of Halath and along the banks of the Habor River in Gozan, and in the cities of the Medes. ¹² For they had refused to listen to the Lord their God or to do what he wanted them to do. Instead, they had transgressed his covenant and disobeyed all the laws given to them by Moses the servant of the Lord.

¹³ Later, during the fourteenth year of the reign of King Hezekiah, King Sennacherib of Assyria besieged and captured all the fortified cities of Judah. ¹⁴ King Hezekiah sued for peace and sent this message to the king of Assyria at Lachish: “I have done wrong. I will pay whatever tribute you demand if you will only go away.” The king of Assyria then demanded a settlement of $1,500,000. ¹⁵ To gather this amount, King Hezekiah used all the silver stored in the Temple and in the palace treasury. ¹⁶ He even stripped off the gold from the Temple doors, and from the doorposts he had overlaid with gold, and gave it all to the Assyrian king.

¹⁷ Nevertheless the king of Assyria sent his field marshal, his chief treasurer, and his chief of staff from Lachish with a great army; and they camped along the highway beside the field where cloth was bleached, near the conduit of the upper pool. ¹⁸ They demanded that King Hezekiah come out to speak to them, but instead he sent a truce delegation of the following men: Eliakim, his business manager; Shebnah, his secretary; and Joah, his royal historian.

¹⁹ Then the Assyrian general sent this message to King Hezekiah: “The great king of Assyria says, ‘No one can save you from my power! ^20-21 You need more than mere promises of help before rebelling against me. But which of your allies will give you more than words? Egypt? If you lean on Egypt, you will find her to be a stick that breaks beneath your weight and pierces your hand. The Egyptian Pharaoh is totally unreliable! ²² And if you say, “We’re trusting the Lord to rescue us”—just remember that he is the very one whose hilltop altars you’ve destroyed. For you require everyone to worship at the altar in Jerusalem!’ ²³ I’ll tell you what: Make a bet with my master, the king of Assyria! If you have two thousand men left who can ride horses, we’ll furnish the horses! ²⁴ And with an army as small as yours,^[c] you are no threat to even the least lieutenant in charge of the smallest contingent in my master’s army. Even if Egypt supplies you with horses and chariots, it will do no good. ²⁵ And do you think we have come here on our own? No! The Lord sent us and told us, ‘Go and destroy this nation!’”

²⁶ Then Eliakim, Shebnah, and Joah said to them, “Please speak in Aramaic, for we understand it. Don’t use Hebrew, for the people standing on the walls will hear you.”

²⁷ But the Assyrian general replied, “Has my master sent me to speak only to you and to your master? Hasn’t he sent me to the people on the walls too? For they are doomed with you to eat their own excrement and drink their own urine!”

²⁸ Then the Assyrian ambassador shouted in Hebrew to the people on the wall, “Listen to the great king of Assyria! ²⁹ ‘Don’t let King Hezekiah fool you. He will never be able to save you from my power. ³⁰ Don’t let him fool you into trusting in the Lord to rescue you. ^31-32 Don’t listen to King Hezekiah. Surrender! You can live in peace here in your own land until I take you to another land just like this one—with plentiful crops, grain, grapes, olive trees, and honey. All of this instead of death! Don’t listen to King Hezekiah when he tries to persuade you that the Lord will deliver you. ³³ Have any of the gods of the other nations ever delivered their people from the king of Assyria? ³⁴ What happened to the gods of Hamath, Arpad, Sepharvaim, Hena, and Ivvah? Did they rescue Samaria? ³⁵ What god has ever been able to save any nation from my power? So what makes you think the Lord can save Jerusalem?’”

³⁶ But the people on the wall remained silent, for the king had instructed them to say nothing. ³⁷ Then Eliakim (son of Hilkiah) the business manager, and Shebnah the king’s secretary, and Joah (son of Asaph) the historian went to King Hezekiah with their clothes torn and told him what the Assyrian general had said.

19 When King Hezekiah heard their report, he tore his clothes and put on sackcloth and went into the Temple to pray. ² Then he told Eliakim, Shebnah, and some of the older priests to clothe themselves in sackcloth and to go to Isaiah (son of Amoz), the prophet, with this message:

³ “King Hezekiah says, ‘This is a day of trouble, insult, and dishonor. It is as when a child is ready to be born, but the mother has no strength to deliver it. ⁴ Yet perhaps the Lord your God has heard the Assyrian general defying the living God and will rebuke him. Oh, pray for the few of us who are left.’”

^5-6 Isaiah replied, “The Lord says, ‘Tell your master not to be troubled by the sneers these Assyrians have made against me.’ ⁷ For the king of Assyria will receive bad news from home and will decide to return; and the Lord will see to it that he is killed when he arrives there.”

⁸ Then the Assyrian general returned to his king at Libnah (for he received word that he had left Lachish). ⁹ Soon afterwards news reached the king that King Tirhakah of Ethiopia was coming to attack him. Before leaving to meet the attack, he sent back this message to King Hezekiah:

¹⁰ “Don’t be fooled by that god you trust in. Don’t believe it when he says that I won’t conquer Jerusalem. ¹¹ You know perfectly well what the kings of Assyria have done wherever they have gone; they have completely destroyed everything. Why would you be any different? ¹² Have the gods of the other nations delivered them—such nations as Gozan, Haran, Rezeph, and Eden in the land of Telassar? The former kings of Assyria destroyed them all! ¹³ What happened to the king of Hamoth and the king of Arpad? What happened to the kings of Sepharvaim, Hena, and Ivvah?”

¹⁴ Hezekiah took the letter from the messengers, read it, and went over to the Temple and spread it out before the Lord. ¹⁵ Then he prayed this prayer:

“O Lord God of Israel, sitting on your throne high above the angels,^[d] you alone are the God of all the kingdoms of the earth. You created the heavens and the earth. ¹⁶ Bend low, O Lord, and listen. Open your eyes, O Lord, and see. Listen to this man’s defiance of the living God. ¹⁷ Lord, it is true that the kings of Assyria have destroyed all those nations ¹⁸ and have burned their idol-gods. But they weren’t gods at all; they were destroyed because they were only things that men had made of wood and stone. ¹⁹ O Lord our God, we plead with you to save us from his power; then all the kingdoms of the earth will know that you alone are God.”

²⁰ Then Isaiah sent this message to Hezekiah: “The Lord God of Israel says, ‘I have heard you! ²¹ And this is my reply to King Sennacherib: The virgin daughter of Zion isn’t afraid of you! The daughter of Jerusalem scorns and mocks at you. ²² Whom have you defied and blasphemed? And toward whom have you felt so cocky? It is the Holy One of Israel!

²³ “‘You have boasted, “My chariots have conquered the highest mountains, yes, the peaks of Lebanon. I have cut down the tallest cedars and choicest cypress trees and have conquered the farthest borders. ²⁴ I have been refreshed at many conquered wells, and I destroyed the strength of Egypt just by walking by!”

²⁵ “‘Why haven’t you realized long before this that it is I, the Lord, who lets you do these things? I decreed your conquest of all those fortified cities! ²⁶ So of course the nations you conquered had no power against you! They were like grass shriveling beneath the hot sun, and like grain blighted before it is half grown. ²⁷ I know everything about you. I know all your plans and where you are going next; and I also know the evil things you have said about me. ²⁸ And because of your arrogance against me, I am going to put a hook in your nose and a bridle in your mouth and turn you back on the road by which you came. ²⁹ And this is the proof that I will do as I have promised: This year my people will eat the volunteer wheat and use it as seed for next year’s crop; and in the third year they will have a bountiful harvest.

³⁰ “‘O my people Judah, those of you who have escaped the ravages of the siege shall become a great nation again; you shall be rooted deeply in the soil and bear fruit for God. ³¹ A remnant of my people shall become strong in Jerusalem. The Lord is eager to cause this to happen.

³² “‘And my command concerning the king of Assyria is that he shall not enter this city. He shall not stand before it with a shield, nor build a ramp against its wall, nor even shoot an arrow into it. ³³ He shall return by the road he came, ³⁴ for I will defend and save this city for the sake of my own name and for the sake of my servant David.’”

³⁵ That very night the Angel of the Lord killed 185,000 Assyrian troops, and dead bodies were seen all across the landscape in the morning.

³⁶ Then King Sennacherib returned to Nineveh; ³⁷ and as he was worshiping in the temple of his god Nisroch, his sons Adrammelech and Sharezer killed him. They escaped into eastern Turkey—the land of Ararat—and his son Esarhaddon became the new king.

20 Hezekiah now became deathly sick, and Isaiah the prophet went to visit him.

“Set your affairs in order and prepare to die,” Isaiah told him. “The Lord says you won’t recover.”

² Hezekiah turned his face to the wall.

³ “O Lord,” he pleaded, “remember how I’ve always tried to obey you and to please you in everything I do. . . . ” Then he broke down and cried.

⁴ So before Isaiah had left the courtyard, the Lord spoke to him again.

⁵ “Go back to Hezekiah, the leader of my people, and tell him that the Lord God of his ancestor David has heard his prayer and seen his tears. I will heal him, and three days from now he will be out of bed and at the Temple! ⁶ I will add fifteen years to his life and save him and this city from the king of Assyria. And it will all be done for the glory of my own name and for the sake of my servant David.”

⁷ Isaiah then instructed Hezekiah to boil some dried figs and to make a paste of them and spread it on the boil. And he recovered!

⁸ Meanwhile, King Hezekiah had said to Isaiah, “Do a miracle to prove to me that the Lord will heal me and that I will be able to go to the Temple again three days from now.”

⁹ “All right, the Lord will give you a proof,” Isaiah told him. “Do you want the shadow on the sundial to go forward ten points or backward ten points?”

¹⁰ “The shadow always moves forward,” Hezekiah replied; “make it go backward.”

¹¹ So Isaiah asked the Lord to do this, and he caused the shadow to move ten points backward on the sundial of Ahaz!^[e]

¹² At that time Merodach-baladan (the son of King Baladan of Babylon) sent ambassadors with greetings and a present to Hezekiah, for he had learned of his sickness. ¹³ Hezekiah welcomed them and showed them all his treasures—the silver, gold, spices, aromatic oils, the armory—everything.

¹⁴ Then Isaiah went to King Hezekiah and asked him, “What did these men want? Where are they from?”

“From far away in Babylon,” Hezekiah replied.

¹⁵ “What have they seen in your palace?” Isaiah asked.

And Hezekiah replied, “Everything. I showed them all my treasures.”

¹⁶ Then Isaiah said to Hezekiah, “Listen to the word of the Lord: ¹⁷ The time will come when everything in this palace shall be carried to Babylon. All the treasures of your ancestors will be taken—nothing shall be left. ¹⁸ Some of your own sons will be taken away and made into eunuchs who will serve in the palace of the king of Babylon.”

¹⁹ “All right,” Hezekiah replied, “if this is what the Lord wants, it is good.” But he was really thinking, “At least there will be peace and security during the remainder of my own life!”

²⁰ The rest of the history of Hezekiah and his great deeds—including the pool and conduit he made and how he brought water into the city—are recorded in The Annals of the Kings of Judah. ²¹ When he died, his son Manasseh became the new king.

21 ^1-2 New king of Judah: Manasseh

^3-5 He rebuilt the hilltop shrines that his father Hezekiah had destroyed. He built altars for Baal and made a shameful Asherah idol, just as Ahab the king of Israel had done. Heathen altars to the sun god, moon god, and the gods of the stars were placed even in the Temple of the Lord—in the very city and building that the Lord had selected to honor his own name. ⁶ And he sacrificed one of his sons as a burnt offering on a heathen altar. He practiced black magic and used fortune-telling, and patronized mediums and wizards. So the Lord was very angry, for Manasseh was an evil man, in God’s sight. ⁷ Manasseh even set up a shameful Asherah idol in the Temple—the very place that the Lord had spoken to David and Solomon about when he said, “I will place my name forever in this Temple, and in Jerusalem—the city I have chosen from among all the cities of the tribes of Israel. ⁸ If the people of Israel will only follow the instructions I gave them through Moses, I will never again expel them from this land of their fathers.”

⁹ But the people did not listen to the Lord, and Manasseh enticed them to do even more evil than the surrounding nations had done, even though Jehovah had destroyed those nations for their evil ways when the people of Israel entered the land.

¹⁰ Then the Lord declared through the prophets, ¹¹ “Because King Manasseh has done these evil things and is even more wicked than the Amorites who were in this land long ago, and because he has led the people of Judah into idolatry: ¹² I will bring such evil upon Jerusalem and Judah that the ears of those who hear about it will tingle with horror. ¹³ I will punish Jerusalem as I did Samaria, and as I did King Ahab of Israel and his descendants. I will wipe away the people of Jerusalem as a man wipes a dish and turns it upside down to dry. ¹⁴ Then I will reject even those few of my people who are left, and I will hand them over to their enemies. ¹⁵ For they have done great evil and have angered me ever since I brought their ancestors from Egypt.”

¹⁶ In addition to the idolatry which God hated and into which Manasseh led the people of Judah, he murdered great numbers of innocent people. And Jerusalem was filled from one end to the other with the bodies of his victims.

¹⁷ The rest of the history of Manasseh’s sinful reign is recorded in The Annals of the Kings of Judah. ¹⁸ When he died he was buried in the garden of his palace at Uzza, and his son Amon became the new king.

²¹ He did all the evil things his father had done: he worshiped the same idols ²² and turned his back on the Lord God of his ancestors. He refused to listen to God’s instructions. ²³ But his aides conspired against him and killed him in the palace. ²⁴ Then a posse of civilians killed all the assassins and placed Amon’s son Josiah upon the throne. ²⁵ The rest of Amon’s biography is recorded in The Annals of the Kings of Judah. ²⁶ He was buried in a crypt in the garden of Uzza, and his son Josiah became the new king.

22 ^1-2 New king of Judah: Josiah

^3-4 In the eighteenth year of his reign, King Josiah sent his secretary Shaphan (son of Azaliah, son of Meshullam) to the Temple to give instruction to Hilkiah, the High Priest:

“Collect the money given to the priests at the door of the Temple when the people come to worship. ^5-6 Give this money to the building superintendents so that they can hire carpenters and masons to repair the Temple, and to buy lumber and stone.”

⁷ (The building superintendents were not required to keep account of their expenditures, for they were honest men.)

⁸ One day Hilkiah the High Priest went to Shaphan the secretary and exclaimed, “I have discovered a scroll in the Temple, with God’s laws written on it!”

He gave the scroll to Shaphan to read. ^9-10 When Shaphan reported to the king about the progress of the repairs at the Temple, he also mentioned the scroll found by Hilkiah. Then Shaphan read it to the king. ¹¹ When the king heard what was written in it, he tore his clothes in terror. ^12-13 He commanded Hilkiah the priest, and Shaphan, and Asaiah, the king’s assistant, and Ahikam (Shaphan’s son), and Achbor (Michaiah’s son) to ask the Lord, “What shall we do? For we have not been following the instructions of this book: you must be very angry with us, for neither we nor our ancestors have followed your commands.”

¹⁴ So Hilkiah the priest, and Ahikam, and Achbor, and Shaphan, and Asaiah went to the Mishneh section of Jerusalem to find Huldah the prophetess. (She was the wife of Shallum—son of Tikvah, son of Harhas—who was in charge of the palace tailor shop.) ^15-16 She gave them this message from the Lord God of Israel:

“Tell the man who sent you to me that I am going to destroy this city and its people, just as I stated in that book you read. ¹⁷ For the people of Judah have thrown me aside and have worshiped other gods and have made me very angry; and my anger can’t be stopped. ^18-19 But because you were sorry and concerned and humbled yourself before the Lord when you read the book and its warnings that this land would be cursed and become desolate, and because you have torn your clothing and wept before me in contrition, I will listen to your plea. ²⁰ The death of this nation will not occur until after you die—you will not see the evil that I will bring upon this place.”

So they took the message to the king.

23 ^1-2 Then the king sent for the elders and other leaders of Judah and Jerusalem to go to the Temple with him. So all the priests and prophets and the people, small and great, of Jerusalem and Judah gathered there at the Temple so that the king could read to them the entire book of God’s laws which had been discovered in the Temple. ³ He stood beside the pillar in front of the people, and he and they made a solemn promise to the Lord to obey him at all times and to do everything the book commanded.

⁴ Then the king instructed Hilkiah the High Priest and the rest of the priests and the guards of the Temple to destroy all the equipment used in the worship of Baal, Asherah, and the sun, moon, and stars. The king had it all burned in the fields of the Kidron Valley outside Jerusalem, and he carried the ashes to Bethel. ⁵ He killed the heathen priests who had been appointed by the previous kings of Judah, for they had burned incense in the shrines on the hills throughout Judah and even in Jerusalem. They had also offered incense to Baal and to the sun, moon, stars, and planets. ⁶ He removed the shameful idol of Asherah from the Temple and took it outside Jerusalem to Kidron Brook; there he burned it and beat it to dust and threw the dust on the graves of the common people. ⁷ He also tore down the houses of male prostitution around the Temple, where the women wove robes for the Asherah idol.

⁸ He brought back to Jerusalem the priests of the Lord, who were living in other cities of Judah, and tore down all the shrines on the hills where they had burned incense, even those as far away as Geba and Beersheba. He also destroyed the shrines at the entrance of the palace of Joshua, the former mayor of Jerusalem, located on the left side as one enters the city gate. ⁹ However, these priests^[f] did not serve at the altar of the Lord in Jerusalem, even though they ate with the other priests.

¹⁰ Then the king destroyed the altar of Topheth in the valley of the sons of Hinnom, so that no one could ever again use it to burn his son or daughter to death as a sacrifice to Molech. ¹¹ He tore down the statues of horses and chariots located near the entrance of the Temple, next to the quarters of Nathan-melech the eunuch. These had been dedicated by former kings of Judah to the sun god. ¹² Then he tore down the altars that the kings of Judah had built on the palace roof above the Ahaz Room. He also destroyed the altars that Manasseh had built in the two courts of the Temple; he smashed them to bits and scattered the pieces in Kidron Valley.

¹³ Next he removed the shrines on the hills east of Jerusalem and south of Destruction Mountain. (Solomon had built these shrines for Ashtoreth, the evil goddess of the Sidonians; and for Chemosh, the evil god of Moab; and for Milcom, the evil god of the Ammonites.) ¹⁴ He smashed the obelisks and cut down the shameful idols of Asherah; then he defiled these places by scattering human bones over them. ¹⁵ He also tore down the altar and shrine at Bethel that Jeroboam I had made when he led Israel into sin. He crushed the stones to dust and burned the shameful idol of Asherah.

¹⁶ As Josiah was looking around, he noticed several graves in the side of the mountain. He ordered his men to bring out the bones in them and to burn them there upon the altar at Bethel to defile it, just as the Lord’s prophet had declared would happen to Jeroboam’s altar.^[g]

¹⁷ “What is that monument over there?” he asked.

And the men of the city told him, “It is the grave of the prophet who came from Judah and proclaimed that what you have just done would happen here at the altar at Bethel!”

¹⁸ So King Josiah replied, “Leave it alone. Don’t disturb his bones.”

So they didn’t burn his bones or those of the prophet from Samaria.^[h]

¹⁹ Josiah demolished the shrines on the hills in all of Samaria. They had been built by the various kings of Israel and had made the Lord very angry. But now he crushed them into dust, just as he had done at Bethel. ²⁰ He executed the priests of the heathen shrines upon their own altars, and he burned human bones upon the altars to defile them. Finally he returned to Jerusalem.

²¹ The king then issued orders for his people to observe the Passover ceremonies as recorded by the Lord their God in The Book of the Covenant. ²² There had not been a Passover celebration like that since the days of the judges of Israel, and there was never another like it in all the years of the kings of Israel and Judah. ²³ This Passover was in the eighteenth year of the reign of King Josiah, and it was celebrated in Jerusalem.

²⁴ Josiah also exterminated the mediums and wizards, and every kind of idol worship, both in Jerusalem and throughout the land. For Josiah wanted to follow all the laws that were written in the book that Hilkiah the priest had found in the Temple. ²⁵ There was no other king who so completely turned to the Lord and followed all the laws of Moses; and no king since the time of Josiah has approached his record of obedience.

²⁶ But the Lord still did not hold back his great anger against Judah, caused by the evils of King Manasseh. ²⁷ For the Lord had said, “I will destroy Judah just as I have destroyed Israel; and I will discard my chosen city of Jerusalem and the Temple that I said was mine.”

²⁸ The rest of the biography of Josiah is written in The Annals of the Kings of Judah. ²⁹ In those days King Neco of Egypt went out to help the king of Assyria at the Euphrates River. Then King Josiah went out with his troops to fight King Neco; but King Neco withstood him at Megiddo and killed him. ³⁰ His officers took his body back in a chariot from Megiddo to Jerusalem and buried him in the grave he had selected. And his son Jehoahaz was chosen by the nation as its new king.

³³ Pharaoh Neco jailed him at Riblah in Hamath to prevent his reigning in Jerusalem, and he levied a tax against Judah totaling $230,000. ³⁴ The Egyptian king then chose Eliakim, another of Josiah’s sons, to reign in Jerusalem; and he changed his name to Jehoiakim. Then he took King Jehoahaz to Egypt, where he died. ³⁵ Jehoiakim taxed the people to get the money that the Pharaoh had demanded.

24 During the reign of King Jehoiakim, King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon attacked Jerusalem. Jehoiakim surrendered and paid him tribute for three years, but then rebelled. ² And the Lord sent bands of Chaldeans, Syrians, Moabites, and Ammonites against Judah in order to destroy the nation, just as the Lord had warned through his prophets that he would. ^3-4 It is clear that these disasters befell Judah at the direct command of the Lord. He had decided to wipe Judah out of his sight because of the many sins of Manasseh, for he had filled Jerusalem with blood, and the Lord would not pardon it.

⁵ The rest of the history of the life of Jehoiakim is recorded in The Annals of the Kings of Judah. ⁶ When he died, his son Jehoiachin became the new king. ⁷ (The Egyptian Pharaoh never returned after that, for the king of Babylon occupied the entire area claimed by Egypt—all of Judah from the brook of Egypt to the Euphrates River.)

¹⁰ During his reign the armies of King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon besieged the city of Jerusalem. ¹¹ Nebuchadnezzar himself arrived during the siege, ¹² and King Jehoiachin, all of his officials, and the queen mother surrendered to him. The surrender was accepted, and Jehoiachin was imprisoned in Babylon during the eighth year of Nebuchadnezzar’s reign.

¹³ The Babylonians carried home all the treasures from the Temple and the royal palace; and they cut apart all the gold bowls which King Solomon of Israel had placed in the Temple at the Lord’s directions. ¹⁴ King Nebuchadnezzar took ten thousand captives from Jerusalem, including all the princes and the best of the soldiers, craftsmen, and smiths. So only the poorest and least skilled people were left in the land. ¹⁵ Nebuchadnezzar took King Jehoiachin, his wives and officials, and the queen mother, to Babylon. ¹⁶ He also took seven thousand of the best troops and one thousand craftsmen and smiths, all of whom were strong and fit for war. ¹⁷ Then the king of Babylon appointed King Jehoiachin’s great-uncle,^[i] Mattaniah, to be the next king; and he changed his name to Zedekiah.

²⁰ So the Lord finally, in his anger, destroyed the people of Jerusalem and Judah. But now King Zedekiah rebelled against the king of Babylon.

25 Then King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon mobilized his entire army and laid siege to Jerusalem, arriving on March 25 of the ninth year of the reign of King Zedekiah of Judah. ² The siege continued into the eleventh year of his reign.

³ The last food in the city was eaten on July 24, ^4-5 and that night the king and his troops made a hole in the inner wall and fled out toward the Arabah through a gate that lay between the double walls near the king’s garden. The Babylonian troops surrounding the city took out after him and captured him in the plains of Jericho, and all his men scattered. ⁶ He was taken to Riblah, where he was tried and sentenced before the king of Babylon. ⁷ He was forced to watch as his sons were killed before his eyes; then his eyes were put out, and he was bound with chains and taken away to Babylon.

⁸ General Nebuzaradan, the captain of the royal bodyguard, arrived at Jerusalem from Babylon on July 22 of the nineteenth year of the reign of King Nebuchadnezzar. ⁹ He burned down the Temple, the palace, and all the other houses of any worth. ¹⁰ He then supervised the Babylonian army in tearing down the walls of Jerusalem. ¹¹ The remainder of the people in the city and the Jewish deserters who had declared their allegiance to the king of Babylon were all taken as exiles to Babylon. ¹² But the poorest of the people were left to farm the land.

¹³ The Babylonians broke up the bronze pillars of the Temple and the bronze tank and its bases and carried all the bronze to Babylon. ^14-15 They also took all the pots, shovels, firepans, snuffers, spoons, and other bronze instruments used for the sacrifices. The gold and silver bowls, with all the rest of the gold and silver, were melted down to bullion. ¹⁶ It was impossible to estimate the weight of the two pillars and the great tank and its bases—all made for the Temple by King Solomon—because they were so heavy. ¹⁷ Each pillar was 27 feet high, with an intricate bronze network of pomegranates decorating the 4-1/2-foot capitals at the tops of the pillars.

¹⁸ The general took Seraiah, the chief priest, his assistant Zephaniah, and the three Temple guards to Babylon as captives. ¹⁹ A commander of the army of Judah, the chief recruiting officer, five of the king’s counselors, and sixty farmers, all of whom were discovered hiding in the city, ²⁰ were taken by General Nebuzaradan to the king of Babylon at Riblah, ²¹ where they were put to the sword and died.

So Judah was exiled from its land.

²² Then King Nebuchadnezzar appointed Gedaliah (the son of Ahikam and grandson of Shaphan) as governor over the people left in Judah. ²³ When the Israeli guerrilla forces learned that the king of Babylon had appointed Gedaliah as governor, some of these underground leaders and their men joined him at Mizpah. These included Ishmael, the son of Nethaniah; Johanan, the son of Kareah; Seraiah, the son of Tanhumeth the Netophathite; and Jaazaniah, son of Maachathite, and their men.

²⁴ Gedaliah vowed that if they would give themselves up and submit to the Babylonians, they would be allowed to live in the land and would not be exiled. ²⁵ But seven months later, Ishmael, who was a member of the royal line, went to Mizpah with ten men and killed Gedaliah and his court—both the Jews and the Babylonians.

²⁶ Then all the men of Judah and the guerrilla leaders fled in panic to Egypt, for they were afraid of what the Babylonians would do to them.

²⁷ King Jehoiachin was released from prison on the twenty-seventh day of the last month of the thirty-seventh year of his captivity.

This occurred during the first year of the reign of King Evil-merodach of Babylon. ²⁸ He treated Jehoiachin kindly and gave him preferential treatment over all the other kings who were being held as prisoners in Babylon. ²⁹ Jehoiachin was given civilian clothing to replace his prison garb, and for as long as he lived, he ate regularly at the king’s table. ³⁰ The king also gave him a daily cash allowance for the rest of his life.