Zedekiah rebelled against the king of Babylon. In the ninth year of his reign, on the tenth day of the tenth month, Nebuchadnezzar came with his great power to Jerusalem, besieged it and built bulwarks around it until the eleventh year of Zedekiah. On the ninth day of the fourth month, the famine was severe in the city and there was no bread for the people of the land. Then a breach was made in the city and the king and all the men of war fled by night through the gate between the two walls by the king’s garden. The king fled toward the Jordan valley. But the Chaldeans, the besiegers, chased him, caught up with him and captured him and brought him to the king of Babylon in Riblah. They passed judgment against him and killed Zedekiah’s sons before his eyes and blinded him and brought him in chains to Babylon.
On the seventh day of the fifth month – which was the nineteenth year of Nebuchadnezzar – Nebuzaradan, chief among the bodyguard of Babylon came to Jerusalem and burned the house of the Lord, the king’s house and all the houses in the city. The whole army tore down the walls of the city. He carried away all the people who were left. But he left some of the poor to work the vineyards and fields. They brought the copper pillars, the sea, and the bases to Babylon. They took away the pots, shovels, knives, spoons and all the copper vessels for the sacrifices. The captain took away the pans and cups, everything that was gold and silver, the two pillars, the sea, and the bases that Solomon made for the house of the Lord. The pillar was eighteen cubits high, on which there was a copper knob three cubits high, and he took away the lattice work and pomegranates around the capital. He took the chief priests Seraiah and Zephaniah the second priest, the three keepers of the threshold, an officer and five men who were with the king, the scribe, the captain and sixty men of the people who were in the city with the king at Riblah in the land of Hamath. So Judah was carried away out of his land.