1. In the ninth year of his reign, in the tenth month, on the tenth day of the month, Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon came, he and all his army, against Jerusalem, and set up camp near it. They built siege mounds against it all around.
2. The city came under siege until the eleventh year of King Zedekiah.
3. On the ninth day of the fourth month the famine was severe in the city, and there was no food for the people of the land.
4. The city was breached, and all the fighting men fled by night by the way of thegate between the two walls, which is by the king’s garden, though the Chaldeans were all around the city. They went along the way of the Arabah.
5. Then the army of the Chaldeans pursued the king and overtook him in the plains of Jericho. All his army deserted him.
6. So they captured the king and brought him up to the king of Babylon at Riblah, and they passed sentence upon him.
7. They slaughtered the sons of Zedekiah before his eyes, and put out the eyes of Zedekiah. They bound him with bronze fetters and brought him to Babylon.
8. In the fifth month, on the seventh day of the month (that was the nineteenth year of King Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon), Nebuzaradan, the captain of the bodyguard, a servant of the king of Babylon, came to Jerusalem.
9. He burned the house of the Lord, the king’s house, and all the houses of Jerusalem. Every great house he burned with fire.
10. All the army of the Chaldeans who were with the captain of the guard tore down the walls of Jerusalem all around.
11. The rest of the people who remained in the city, the deserters who had defected to the king of Babylon, and the rest of the crowd Nebuzaradan the captain of the bodyguard took into exile.
12. But the captain of the bodyguard left some of the poor of the land to be vinedressers and farmers.
13. The bronze pillars that were in the house of the Lord, the stands, and the bronze sea that were in the house of the Lord the Chaldeans broke in pieces, and carried their bronze to Babylon.