OET-RV JER Chapter 52

52 Tsidkiyah (Zedekiah) was twenty-one when he began to reign and he reigned from Yerushalem (Jerusalem) for eleven years. His mother’s name was Hamutal. (She was the daughter of Yirmeyah from Livnah.) 2 He did what was evil in Yahweh’s sight just as his father Yehoyakim (Jehoiakim) had done. 3 All these events happened in Yerushalem and across the rest of Yehudah because of Yahweh’s anger, until he drove them out of his sight.

Then Tsidkiyah rebelled against the Babylonian king, 4 so on the 10th of the tenth month of the ninth year of King Tsidkiyah’s reign, the Babylonian King Nebuchadnezzar came and surrounded Yerushalem with all his army. They took action to put the city under siege[ref] 5 and the it remained under siege until the eleventh year of King Tsidkiyah’s reign. 6 By the 9th of the fourth month, the famine was so severe in the city that there was no more food for the residents. 7 Then the city was broken into, and all the fighting men fled out of the city at night by the way of the gate that was between the two walls near the king’s garden, even though the Chaldeans were all around the city. So they went in the direction of the Aravah plain along the Yarden river.[ref] 8 But the Chaldean army chased after the king, and overtook Tsidkiyah in the Yarden river plains near Yeriho (Jericho). All his army was then scattered away from him. 9 They captured the king and brought him up to the Babylonian king at Rivlah in Hamat region, where he passed sentence on him. 10 Then the Babylonian king slaughtered Tsidkiyah’s sons right there in front of his eyes, and he also slaughtered all of Yehudah’s leaders there at Rivlah. 11 Then he had Tsidkiyah’s eyes gouged out, shackled him with bronze chains, and took him to Babylon where the Babylonian king put him in prison until he died there.[ref]

12 Then on the 10th of the fifth month in the nineteenth year of the Babylonian King Nebuchadnezzar’s reign, Nevu-Zaradan came to Yerushalem (Jerusalem). He was the commander of the king’s bodyguards and a servant of the Babylonian king. 13 He burnt down Yahweh’s house, the king’s palace, and all the homes in Yerushalem, as well as every important building in the city.[ref] 14 As for the walls all around Yerushalem, they were pulled down by the Babylonian army who were with the commander of the bodyguards. 15 Some of the poorer people and the rest of the people who remained in the city, as well as those who’d defected to the Babylonian king, and the rest of the craftsmen were taken into exile by Nevu-Zaradan, 16 However, Nevu-Zaradan, the commander of the bodyguards, left some of the poorest people to work the vineyards and the fields.

17 As for the bronze pillars that were part of Yahweh’s temple, and the large bronze basin called ‘The Sea’, and the stands that were in it, the Chaldeans broke them into pieces and carried all the bronze back to Babylon.[ref] 18 The pots, shovels, lamp trimmers, bowls, and all the bronze utensils that the priests had used when serving in the temple, were all taken away by the Chaldeans. 19 Also, the basins and incense burners, the bowls, pots, lampstands, pans, and basins that were made of gold or silver, were taken away by the commander of the king’s bodyguards. 20 The two pillars, the large bronze basin known as ‘The Sea’, and the twelve bronze bulls that were under the stands, things that Shelomoh (Solomon) had made for Yahweh’s temple, contained too much bronze to weigh. 21 (Each pillar was eight metres high with a circumference of nearly six metres. Each pillar was hollow with a 8cm thick wall 22 with a bronze capital on the top. Each capital was over two metres high, with bronze latticework and bronze pomegranates all around. 23 There were ninety-six pomegranates on the sides of each capital, and another hundred pomegranates above the surrounding latticework.)

24 The commander of the bodyguards took the high priest Serayah prisoner, along with the second-level priest Tsefanyah, and the three gatekeepers. 25 From the city, he took an army commander prisoner, as well as seven of the king’s advisers who were still in the city. He also took prisoner the king’s army recruitment officer, along with sixty important men from the country who were in the city. 26 Then Nevu-Zaradan, the commander of the bodyguards, took them to the Babylonian king at Rivlah, 27 and the king put them to death there at Rivlah in the Hamat region.

So Yehudah’s people were taken out of their country and into exile. 28 These were the people who Nebuchadnezzar exiled:

• In Nebuchadnezzar’s seventh year, 3,023 Judeans.
• 29 In his eighteenth year, he took 832 people from Yerushalem.
• 30 In his twenty-third year, Nevu-Zaradan, the commander of the king’s bodyguards, exiled 745 Judean people.

All those exiles totalled 4,600 people.

31 Some time later on the 25th of the twelfth month of the thirty-seventh year of the exile of Yehudah’s King Yehoyakin (Jehoiachin), Babylon’s King Eveel-Merodak (in the first year of his reign) released King Yehoyakin from prison. 32 He spoke kindly to him and gave him a seat more honourable than that of the other exiled kings who were with him in Babylon. 33 Eveel-Merodak supplied new clothes for Yehoyakin to wear, and he ate regularly at the king’s table for the rest of his life. 34 He was also given a daily allowance by the king for the rest of his life.