1. Zedekiah was 21 years old when he became king. And he was king in Jerusalem for 11 years. His mother’s name was Hamutal daughter of Jeremiah. She was from Libnah.
2. Zedekiah did what the Lord said was wrong, just as Jehoiakim had done.
3. All this happened in Jerusalem and Judah because the Lord was angry with them. Finally, he threw them out of his presence.Zedekiah turned against the king of Babylon.
4. Then Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon marched against Jerusalem with his whole army. They made a camp around the city. Then they built devices all around the city walls to attack it. This happened during Zedekiah’s ninth year, tenth month and tenth day as king.
5. The city was under attack until Zedekiah’s eleventh year as king.
6. By the ninth day of the fourth month, the hunger was terrible in the city. There was no food for the people to eat.
7. Then the city wall was broken through. And the whole army ran away at night. They went through the gate between the two walls by the king’s garden. The Babylonians were still surrounding the city. Zedekiah and his men ran toward the Jordan Valley.
8. But the Babylonian army chased King Zedekiah. They caught up with him in the plains of Jericho. All of his army was scattered from him.
9. So they captured Zedekiah and took him to the king of Babylon at Riblah. Riblah is in the land of Hamath. There he passed sentence on Zedekiah.
10. There at Riblah the king of Babylon killed Zedekiah’s sons as he watched. The king also killed all the officers of Judah.
11. Then he put out Zedekiah’s eyes. He put bronze chains on him and took him to Babylon. And the king kept Zedekiah in prison there until the day he died.
12. Nebuzaradan was the commander of the king’s special guards. This servant of the king of Babylon came to Jerusalem. This was on the tenth day of the fifth month. This was in Nebuchadnezzar’s nineteenth year as king of Babylon.