⁸ The Chaldeans shall return and attack this city; they shall capture it and destroy it by fire.^(A)

⁷ the city walls were breached. All the soldiers fled and left the city by night through the gate between the two walls which was near the king’s garden. With the Chaldeans surrounding the city, they went in the direction of the Arabah. ⁸ But the Chaldean army pursued the king and overtook Zedekiah in the wilderness near Jericho; his whole army fled from him.

⁹ The king, therefore, was arrested and brought to Riblah, in the land of Hamath, to the king of Babylon, who pronounced judgment on him. ¹⁰ As Zedekiah looked on, the king of Babylon slaughtered his sons before his eyes! All the nobles of Judah were slaughtered at Riblah. ¹¹ And the eyes of Zedekiah he then blinded, bound him with chains, and the king of Babylon brought him to Babylon and kept him in prison until the day he died.

Destruction of Jerusalem. ¹² On the tenth day of the fifth month, this was in the nineteenth year^[a] of Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, Nebuzaradan, captain of the bodyguard, came to Jerusalem as the representative of the king of Babylon. ¹³ He burned the house of the Lord, the palace of the king, and all the houses of Jerusalem; every large building he destroyed with fire.

¹⁷ Then he brought up against them the king of the Chaldeans, who killed their young men with the sword in their own sanctuary, with compassion for neither young men nor young women, neither the old nor the infirm; all of them he delivered into his power.^(A)

¹⁹ They burnt the house of God, tore down the walls of Jerusalem, burnt down all its palaces, and destroyed all its precious objects.^(A)