11 Tsidkiyah was twenty-one when he became king, and he reigned from Yerushalem for eleven years.[ref] 12 He did many things that Yahweh had said were evil, in fact, he didn’t even humble himself when the prophet Yermeyah (Jeremiah) brought him a message from Yahweh. 13 He had become very stubborn and wouldn’t return to Yisrael’s god Yahweh, and he also rebelled against King Nebuchadnezzar who’d made him promise in front of God to be loyal.[ref] 14 In addition, all the leaders of the priests and the people of Yehudah became more and more unfaithful and doing disgusting things often done in other nations, then they defiled Yahweh’s residence which he had consecrated in Yerushalem.

15 So Yahweh, the god of their ancestors, sent many messages via his prophets because he felt compassion on his people, and on his residence, 16 but they mocked God’s messengers and rejected the messages—ridiculing his prophets until Yahweh became so angry that he couldn’t be stopped. 17 So Yahweh sent the Chaldean king against them, and they ran their young men through with the sword, even in the temple, and they didn’t spare any of the young men or women, or even those who were older or elderly—God allowed Nebuchadnezzar to thoroughly defeat them.[ref] 18 Then he took everything valuable, big or small, from God’s temple as well as from the king and his officials. 19 They set God’s temple on fire, and tore down some of the wall surrounding Yerushalem, burnt all its palaces, and destroyed everything valuable.[ref] 20 Anyone else who was still alive was taken to Babylon where they became servants to the king and his children, until the time when the Persians came to power. 21 That fulfilled God’s message that Yirmeyah had previously proclaimed, that the land would become desolate to make up for the Rest Days that had been ignored—that took seventy years. [ref]