5. But the Chaldean army chased King Zedekiah and caught up with him in the Jericho plains. His entire army deserted him.
6. So the Chaldeans captured the king and brought him back to the Babylonian king, who was at Riblah. There his punishment was determined.
7. Zedekiah’s sons were slaughtered right before his eyes. Then he was blinded, put in bronze chains, and taken off to Babylon.
8. On the seventh day of the fifth month in the nineteenth year of Babylon’s King Nebuchadnezzar, Nebuzaradan arrived at Jerusalem. He was the commander of the guard and an official of the Babylonian king.
9. He burned down the Lord’s temple, the royal palace, and all of Jerusalem’s houses. He burned down every important building.
10. The whole Chaldean army under the commander of the guard tore down the walls surrounding Jerusalem.
11. Then Nebuzaradan the commander of the guard exiled the people who were left in the city, those who had already surrendered to Babylon’s king, and the rest of the population.
12. The commander of the guard left some of the land’s poor people behind to work the vineyards and be farmers.
13. The Chaldeans shattered the bronze columns, the stands, and the bronze Sea that were in the Lord’s temple. They carried the bronze off to Babylon.
14. They also took the pots, the shovels, the wick trimmers, the dishes, and all the bronze items that had been used in the temple.
15. The commander of the guard took the fire pans and the sprinkling bowls, which were made of pure gold and pure silver.
16. The bronze in all these objects—the two pillars, the Sea, and the stands that Solomon had made for the Lord’s temple—was too heavy to weigh.
17. Each pillar was twenty-seven feet high. The bronze capital on top of the first pillar was four and a half feet high. Decorative lattices and pomegranates, all made from bronze, were around the capital. And the second pillar was decorated with lattices just like the first.
18. The commander of the guard also took away Seraiah the chief priest, Zephaniah the priest next in rank, and the three doorkeepers.