1Zedekiah was twenty-one years old when he became king, and he reigned in Jerusalem eleven years. His mother’s name was Hamutal daughter of Jeremiah; she was from Libnah.
3For because of the anger of the LORD, all this happened in Jerusalem and Judah, until He finally banished them from His presence. And Zedekiah also rebelled against the king of Babylon.
4So in the ninth year of Zedekiah’s reign, on the tenth day of the tenth month, Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon marched against Jerusalem with his entire army. They encamped outside the city and built a siege wall all around it.
7Then the city was breached; and though the Chaldeans had surrounded the city, all the men of war fled the city by night by way of the gate between the two walls near the king’s garden. They headed toward the Arabah,
12On the tenth day of the fifth month, in the nineteenth year of Nebuchadnezzar’s reign over Babylon, Nebuzaradan captain of the guard, a servant of the king of Babylon, entered Jerusalem.
15Then Nebuzaradan captain of the guard carried into exile some of the poorest people and those who remained in the city, along with the deserters who had defected to the king of Babylon and the rest of the craftsmen.
17Moreover, the Chaldeans broke up the bronze pillars and stands and the bronze Sea in the house of the LORD, and they carried all the bronze to Babylon.
19The captain of the guard also took away the basins, censers, sprinkling bowls, pots, lampstands, pans, and drink offering bowls—anything made of pure gold or fine silver.
20As for the two pillars, the Sea, the twelve bronze bulls under it, and the movable stands that King Solomon had made for the house of the LORD, the weight of the bronze from all these articles was beyond measure.
22The bronze capital atop one pillar was five cubits high, with a network of bronze pomegranates all around. The second pillar, with its pomegranates, was similar.
25Of those still in the city, he took a court official who had been appointed over the men of war, as well as seven trusted royal advisers. He also took the scribe of the captain of the army, who had enlisted the people of the land, and sixty men who were found in the city.
27There at Riblah in the land of Hamath, the king of Babylon struck them down and put them to death. So Judah was taken into exile, away from its own land.
31On the twenty-fifth day of the twelfth month of the thirty-seventh year of the exile of Jehoiachin king of Judah, in the first year of the reign of Evil-merodach king of Babylon, he pardoned Jehoiachin king of Judah and released him from prison.