In the ninth year of Tsidkiyah’s reign, on the tenth day of the tenth month, the Babylonian King Nevukadnetstsar brought all his army to Yerushalem. They made their camp outside the city, and then built attack structures all around it 2 and besieged the city for two years. 3 The people didn’t have enough to eat and the famine became severe. 4 Then the Babylonians began breaking into the city, but the local fighters sneaked out at night through a gate between two walls near the king’s garden and escaped down to the desert plain. 5 However, the Babylonian soldiers chased after the king and they overtook him on the Yeriho (Jericho) plains, and his army scattered. 6 King Tsidkiyah was captured and taken to the Babylonian king at Rivlah, where he was sentenced—7 He was forced to watch as his sons were slaughtered, then his eyes were gouged out and he was taken to Babylon restrained with two bronze chains.

8 On the seventh day of the fifth month of Babylonian King Nevukadnetstsar’s nineteenth year as king, his servant Nevuzaradan, who was his chief bodyguard, went to Yerushalem. 9 He set fire to Yahweh’s temple and the palace, and all of Yerushalem’s houses, so no important building remained. 10 Then the army under the command of Nevuzaradan tore down the walls surrounding Yerushalem. 11 He exiled all the rest of the people from the city, all the surrendered soldiers, and the rest of the population,