Jeremiah 52:5-9 New English Translation
5 The city remained under siege until Zedekiah’s eleventh year. 6 By the ninth day of the fourth month[a] the famine in the city was so severe the residents[b] had no food. 7 They broke through the city walls, and all the soldiers tried to escape. They left the city during the night. They went through the gate between the two walls that is near the king’s garden.[c] (The Babylonians had the city surrounded.) Then they headed for the rift valley.[d] 8 But the Babylonian army chased after the king. They caught up with Zedekiah in the plains[e] of Jericho, and his entire army deserted him. 9 They captured him and brought him up to the king of Babylon at Riblah[f] in the territory of Hamath and he passed sentence on him there.
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- Jeremiah 52:6 sn According to modern reckoning that would have been July 18, 586 b.c. The siege thus lasted almost a full eighteen months.
- Jeremiah 52:6 tn Heb “the people of the land.”
- Jeremiah 52:7 sn The king’s garden is mentioned again in Neh 3:15 in conjunction with the pool of Siloam and the stairs that go down from the City of David. This would have been in the southern part of the city near the Tyropean Valley, which agrees with the reference to the “two walls,” which were probably the walls on the eastern and western hills.
- Jeremiah 52:7 sn The rift valley (עֲרָבָה, ʿaravah) extends from Galilee to the Gulf of Aqaba. In this context the portion that they head to is the Jordan Valley near Jericho, intending to escape across the river to Moab or Ammon. It appears from 40:14 and 41:15 that the Ammonites were known to harbor fugitives from the Babylonians.
- Jeremiah 52:8 tn See the note at Jer 39:5.
- Jeremiah 52:9 sn Riblah was a strategic town on the Orontes River in Syria. It was at a crossing of the major roads between Egypt and Mesopotamia. Pharaoh Necho had earlier received Jehoahaz there and put him in chains (2 Kgs 23:33) prior to taking him captive to Egypt. Nebuchadnezzar had set up his base camp for conducting his campaigns against the Palestinian states there and was now sitting in judgment on prisoners brought to him.
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