The Fall of Jerusalem

¹Zedekiah was twenty-one years old when he became king of Judah, and he ruled in Jerusalem for eleven years. His mother's name was Hamutal, the daughter of the Jeremiah who lived in the city of Libnah.

²King Zedekiah sinned against the Lord, just as King Jehoiakim had done.

³The Lord became so angry with the people of Jerusalem and Judah that he banished them from his sight. Zedekiah rebelled against King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylonia,

⁴and so Nebuchadnezzar came with all his army and attacked Jerusalem on the tenth day of the tenth month of the ninth year of Zedekiah's reign. They set up camp outside the city, built siege walls around it,

⁵and kept it under siege until Zedekiah's eleventh year.

⁶On the ninth day of the fourth month of that same year, when the famine was so bad that the people had nothing left to eat,

⁷the city walls were broken through. Although the Babylonians were surrounding the city, all the soldiers escaped during the night. They left by way of the royal garden, went through the gateway connecting the two walls, and fled in the direction of the Jordan Valley.

⁸But the Babylonian army pursued King Zedekiah, captured him in the plains near Jericho, and all his soldiers deserted him.

⁹Zedekiah was taken to King Nebuchadnezzar, who was in the city of Riblah in the territory of Hamath, and there Nebuchadnezzar passed sentence on him.

¹⁰At Riblah he put Zedekiah's sons to death while Zedekiah was looking on and he also had the officials of Judah executed.

¹¹After that, he had Zedekiah's eyes put out and had him placed in chains and taken to Babylon. Zedekiah remained in prison in Babylon until the day he died.

The Destruction of the Temple

¹²On the tenth day of the fifth month of the nineteenth year of King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylonia, Nebuzaradan, adviser to the king and commander of his army, entered Jerusalem.

¹³He burned down the Temple, the palace, and the houses of all the important people in Jerusalem;

¹⁴and his soldiers tore down the city walls.

¹⁵Then Nebuzaradan took away to Babylonia the people who were left in the city, the remaining skilled workers, and those who had deserted to the Babylonians.

¹⁶But he left in Judah some of the poorest people, who owned no property, and he put them to work in the vineyards and fields.

¹⁷The Babylonians broke in pieces the bronze columns and the carts that were in the Temple, together with the large bronze tank, and they took all the bronze to Babylon.

¹⁸They also took away the shovels and the ash containers used in cleaning the altar, the tools used in tending the lamps, the bowls used for catching the blood from the sacrifices, the bowls used for burning incense, and all the other bronze articles used in the Temple service.

¹⁹They took away everything that was made of gold or silver: the small bowls, the pans used for carrying live coals, the bowls for holding the blood from the sacrifices, the ash containers, the lampstands, the bowls used for incense, and the bowls used for pouring out wine offerings.

²⁰The bronze objects that King Solomon had made for the Temple—the two columns, the carts, the large tank, and the twelve bulls that supported it—were too heavy to weigh.

^21-22The two columns were identical: each one was 27 feet high and 18 feet around. They were hollow, and the metal was 3 inches thick. On top of each column was a bronze capital 7½ feet high, and all around it was a grillwork decorated with pomegranates, all of which was also made of bronze.

²³On the grillwork of each column there were a hundred pomegranates in all, and ninety-six of these were visible from the ground.

The People of Judah Are Taken to Babylonia

²⁴In addition, Nebuzaradan, the commanding officer, took away as prisoners Seraiah the High Priest, Zephaniah the priest next in rank, and the three other important Temple officials.

²⁵From the city he took the officer who had been in command of the troops, seven of the king's personal advisers who were still in the city, the commander's assistant, who was in charge of military records, and sixty other important men.

²⁶Nebuzaradan took them to the king of Babylonia, who was in the city of Riblah

²⁷in the territory of Hamath. There the king had them beaten and put to death. So the people of Judah were carried away from their land into exile.

²⁸This is the record of the people that Nebuchadnezzar took away as prisoners: in his seventh year as king he carried away 3,023;

²⁹in his eighteenth year, 832 from Jerusalem;

³⁰and in his twenty-third year, 745—taken away by Nebuzaradan. In all, 4,600 people were taken away.

³¹In the year that Evil-merodach became king of Babylonia, he showed kindness to King Jehoiachin of Judah by releasing him from prison. This happened on the twenty-fifth day of the twelfth month of the thirty-seventh year after Jehoiachin had been taken away as a prisoner.

³²Evil-merodach treated him kindly and gave him a position of greater honor than he gave the other kings who were exiles with him in Babylonia.

³³So Jehoiachin was permitted to change from his prison clothes and to dine at the king's table for the rest of his life.

³⁴Each day for as long as he lived, he was given a regular allowance for his needs.

The Lord Will Punish Edom

¹This is the prophecy of Obadiah—what the Sovereign Lord said about the nation of Edom. The Lord has sent his messenger to the nations, and we have heard his message: “Get ready! Let us go to war against Edom!”

²The Lord says to Edom, “I will make you weak; everyone will despise you.

³Your pride has deceived you. Your capital is a fortress of solid rock; your home is high in the mountains, and so you say to yourself, ‘Who can ever pull me down?’

⁴Even though you make your home as high as an eagle's nest, so that it seems to be among the stars, yet I will pull you down.

⁵“When thieves come at night, they take only what they want. When people gather grapes, they always leave a few. But your enemies have wiped you out completely.

⁶Descendants of Esau, your treasures have been looted.

⁷Your allies have deceived you; they have driven you from your country. People who were at peace with you have now conquered you. Those friends who ate with you have laid a trap for you; they say of you, ‘Where is all that cleverness he had?’

⁸“On the day I punish Edom, I will destroy their clever men and wipe out all their wisdom.

⁹The fighting men of Teman will be terrified, and every soldier in Edom will be killed.

Reasons for Edom's Punishment

¹⁰“Because you robbed and killed your relatives, the descendants of Jacob, you will be destroyed and dishonored forever.

¹¹You stood aside on that day when enemies broke down their gates. You were as bad as those strangers who carried off Jerusalem's wealth and divided it among themselves.

¹²You should not have gloated over the misfortune of your relatives in Judah. You should not have been glad on the day of their ruin. You should not have laughed at them in their distress.

¹³You should not have entered the city of my people to gloat over their suffering and to seize their riches on the day of their disaster.

¹⁴You should not have stood at the crossroads to catch those trying to escape. You should not have handed them over to the enemy on the day of their distress.

God Will Judge the Nations

¹⁵“The day is near when I, the Lord, will judge all nations. Edom, what you have done will be done to you. You will get back what you have given.

¹⁶My people have drunk a bitter cup of punishment on my sacred hill. But all the surrounding nations will drink a still more bitter cup of punishment; they will drink it all and vanish away.

The Victory of Israel

¹⁷“But on Mount Zion some will escape, and it will be a sacred place. The people of Jacob will possess the land that is theirs by right.

¹⁸The people of Jacob and of Joseph will be like fire; they will destroy the people of Esau as fire burns stubble. No descendant of Esau will survive. I, the Lord, have spoken.

¹⁹“People from southern Judah will occupy Edom; those from the western foothills will capture Philistia. Israelites will possess the territory of Ephraim and Samaria; the people of Benjamin will take Gilead.

²⁰The army of exiles from northern Israel will return and conquer Phoenicia as far north as Zarephath. The exiles from Jerusalem who are in Sardis will capture the towns of southern Judah.

²¹The victorious men of Jerusalem will attack Edom and rule over it. And the Lord himself will be king.”

¹³Listen before you answer. If you don't, you are being stupid and insulting.

¹⁴Your will to live can sustain you when you are sick, but if you lose it, your last hope is gone.

¹⁵Intelligent people are always eager and ready to learn.

¹⁶Do you want to meet an important person? Take a gift and it will be easy.