¹Zedekiah was twenty-one years old when he started to reign, and he reigned in Jerusalem for eleven years. And the name of his mother was Hamutal the daughter of Jeremiah, from Libnah. ²And he did what was wrong in the sight of the Lord, like everything that Jehoiakim did. ³For it was on account of the wrath of the Lord that this happened in Jerusalem and Judah, until he had banished them from his presence. Now Zedekiah rebelled against the king of Babylon. ⁴And it came to pass in the ninth year of his reign, in the tenth month, on the tenth day of the month, that Nebuchadrezzar king of Babylon – he himself and all his army – came against Jerusalem, and they encamped against it, and they built a wall of circumvallation around it. ⁵And the city came under siege until the eleventh year of King Zedekiah. ⁶In the fourth month, on the ninth day of the month, the famine in the city became severe, and there was no bread for the people of the land. ⁷And the city was breached, and all the warriors fled and departed from the city at night, through the gate between the two walls which were alongside the king's garden, while the Chaldeans were alongside the city around it. And the warriors went by the road through the arid tract. ⁸Then the Chaldean army pursued the king, and they caught up with Zedekiah in the arid tracts of Jericho, and all his army dispersed themselves away from him. ⁹And they caught the king, and they brought him up to the king of Babylon in Riblah in the land of Hamath, and sentence was passed on him. ¹⁰And the king of Babylon slaughtered Zedekiah's sons in his sight, and he also slaughtered all the officials of Judah in Riblah. ¹¹He also blinded Zedekiah's eyes, and he bound him in fetters, and the king of Babylon brought him to Babylon, and he kept him in prison until the day of his death. ¹²And in the fifth month, on the tenth day of the month, that is the nineteenth year of King Nebuchadrezzar king of Babylon, Nebuzaradan the chief guard came, who stood before the king of Babylon in Jerusalem, ¹³and he burnt the house of the Lord and the king's house, and all the houses of Jerusalem, and he burnt every high-ranking person's house with fire. ¹⁴And the whole army of the Chaldeans, who were under the chief guard, demolished all the walls of Jerusalem surrounding it. ¹⁵And Nebuzaradan the chief guard deported some of the poor among the people, and the rest of the people who remained in the city, and the defectors who had defected to the king of Babylon, and the rest of the population. ¹⁶But Nebuzaradan the chief guard left some of the poor of the land to be vine-growers and ploughmen. ¹⁷And the Chaldeans broke up the copper columns of the house of the Lord, and the plinths, and the copper artificial sea which was in the house of the Lord, and they carried all the copper taken from them to Babylon. ¹⁸And they took the pans and the shovels and the snuffers and the sprinkling basins and the ladles and all the copper equipment with which they served. ¹⁹And the chief guard took the dishes and the firepans and the sprinkling basins and the pans and the lampstands and the ladles and the vials, which were of solid gold and which were of solid silver. ²⁰As for the two columns, the one artificial sea, and the twelve copper oxen which were beneath its bottom, which King Solomon had made for the house of the Lord, the copper of all this equipment was of inestimable weight. ²¹And regarding the columns, eighteen cubits was the height of each column, and a cord of twelve cubits went round it, and its thickness was four fingers, and it was hollow. ²²And the capital on it was of copper, and the height of the first capital was five cubits, and the trellis and the pomegranates on the capital around it were all of copper, and the second column had the same features and pomegranates. ²³And the pomegranates were ninety-six in number on the exposed sides. The total number of pomegranates on the trellis was one hundred around it. ²⁴And the chief guard took Seraiah the head priest, and Zephaniah the second most senior priest, and the three doorkeepers, ²⁵and from the city he took one eunuch who was in charge of the warriors, and seven men from those who attended to the king, who were present in the city, and the scribe who was a commander of the army, who mobilized the people of the land, and sixty men from the people of the land who were present inside the city, ²⁶and Nebuzaradan the chief guard took them and led them to the king of Babylon in Riblah. ²⁷Then the king of Babylon struck them down and killed them in Riblah in the land of Hamath. And Judah was deported from its land. ²⁸This is the number of people whom Nebuchadrezzar deported. In the seventh year, three thousand and twenty-three Jews; ²⁹in the eighteenth year of Nebuchadrezzar, eight hundred and thirty-two people from Jerusalem. ³⁰In the twenty-third year of Nebuchadrezzar, Nebuzaradan the chief guard deported seven hundred and forty-five Jewish persons. And the total number of people was four thousand and six hundred. ³¹And it came to pass in the thirty-seventh year of the deportation of Jehoiachin king of Judah, in the twelfth month, on the twenty-fifth day of the month, that Evil-Merodach king of Babylon, in the year when he started to reign, gave Jehoiachin king of Judah his liberty, and he brought him out of the prison. ³²And he spoke welcome words to him, and he appointed his throne above the thrones of the kings who were with him in Babylon. ³³And he changed his prison clothes, and he ate food regularly in his presence all the days of his life. ³⁴And as for his meals, a regular meal was given to him by the king of Babylon as a day-to-day matter until the day of his death, all the days of his life.