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]