1Zedekiah was 21 years old when he was appointed king of Judah, and he ruled from Jerusalem for eleven years. His mother Hamutal was the daughter of Jeremiah from the town of Libnah.
2Zedekiah disobeyed the Lord, just as Jehoiakim had done,
3and it was Zedekiah who finally rebelled against Nebuchadnezzar.
The people of Judah and Jerusalem had made the Lord so angry that he finally turned his back on them. That's why horrible things were happening there.
4 King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylonia led his entire army to attack Jerusalem. The troops set up camp outside the city and built ramps up to the city walls.
5-6After a year and a half, all the food in Jerusalem was gone. Then on the ninth day of the fourth month,
7 Nebuchadnezzar's officer in charge of the guards arrived in Jerusalem. His name was Nebuzaradan,
13 and even some of the poor people of Judah.
16Only the very poorest were left behind to work the vineyards and the fields.
17-20 The soldiers broke these things into pieces so they could take them to Babylonia. There was so much bronze that it could not be weighed.
21For example, the columns were about 8 meters high and 5.5 meters around. They were hollow, but the bronze was about 75 millimeters thick.
22Each column had a bronze cap over 2 meters high that was decorated with bronze designs. Some of these designs were like chains and others were like pomegranates.
23There were 96 pomegranates evenly spaced around each column, and a total of 100 pomegranates were located above the chains.
24Next, Nebuzaradan arrested Seraiah the chief priest, Zephaniah his assistant, and three temple officials.
25Then he arrested one of the army commanders, seven of King Zedekiah's personal advisors, and the officer in charge of gathering the troops for battle. He also found 60 more soldiers who were still in Jerusalem.
26-27Nebuzaradan led them to Riblah in the land of Hamath, where Nebuchadnezzar had them killed.
The people of Judah no longer lived in their own country.
People of Judah Taken Prisoner28-30Here is a list of the number of the people of Judah that Nebuchadnezzar took to Babylonia as prisoners:
In his seventh year as king, he took 3,023 people.
In his eighteenth year as king, he took 832 from Jerusalem.
In his twenty-third year as king, his officer Nebuzaradan took 745 people.
So, Nebuchadnezzar took a total of 4,600 people from Judah to Babylonia.
Jehoiachin Is Set Free(2 Kings 25.27-30)31Jehoiachin was a prisoner in Babylon for 37 years. Then Evil Merodach became king of Babylonia, and in the first year of his rule, on the twenty-fifth day of the twelfth month, he let Jehoiachin out of prison.
32Evil Merodach was kind to Jehoiachin and honored him more than any of the other kings held prisoner there.
33Jehoiachin was allowed to wear regular clothes instead of a prison uniform, and he even ate at the king's table every day.
34As long as Jehoiachin lived, he was paid a daily allowance to buy whatever he needed.
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