The Broken Arms of Pharaoh

²⁰ On April 29,^[a] during the eleventh year of King Jehoiachin’s captivity, this message came to me from the Lord: ²¹ “Son of man, I have broken the arm of Pharaoh, the king of Egypt. His arm has not been put in a cast so that it may heal. Neither has it been bound up with a splint to make it strong enough to hold a sword. ²² Therefore, this is what the Sovereign Lord says: I am the enemy of Pharaoh, the king of Egypt! I will break both of his arms—the good arm along with the broken one—and I will make his sword clatter to the ground. ²³ I will scatter the Egyptians to many lands throughout the world. ²⁴ I will strengthen the arms of Babylon’s king and put my sword in his hand. But I will break the arms of Pharaoh, king of Egypt, and he will lie there mortally wounded, groaning in pain. ²⁵ I will strengthen the arms of the king of Babylon, while the arms of Pharaoh fall useless to his sides. And when I put my sword in the hand of Babylon’s king and he brings it against the land of Egypt, Egypt will know that I am the Lord. ²⁶ I will scatter the Egyptians among the nations, dispersing them throughout the earth. Then they will know that I am the Lord.”

Egypt Compared to Fallen Assyria

31 On June 21,^[a] during the eleventh year of King Jehoiachin’s captivity, this message came to me from the Lord: ² “Son of man, give this message to Pharaoh, king of Egypt, and all his hordes:

¹⁰ “Therefore, this is what the Sovereign Lord says: Because Egypt^[b] became proud and arrogant, and because it set itself so high above the others, with its top reaching to the clouds, ¹¹ I will hand it over to a mighty nation that will destroy it as its wickedness deserves. I have already discarded it. ¹² A foreign army—the terror of the nations—has cut it down and left it fallen on the ground. Its branches are scattered across the mountains and valleys and ravines of the land. All those who lived in its shadow have gone away and left it lying there.

¹⁵ “This is what the Sovereign Lord says: When Assyria went down to the grave,^[c] I made the deep springs mourn. I stopped its rivers and dried up its abundant water. I clothed Lebanon in black and caused the trees of the field to wilt. ¹⁶ I made the nations shake with fear at the sound of its fall, for I sent it down to the grave with all the others who descend to the pit. And all the other proud trees of Eden, the most beautiful and the best of Lebanon, the ones whose roots went deep into the water, took comfort to find it there with them in the depths of the earth. ¹⁷ Its allies, too, were all destroyed and had passed away. They had gone down to the grave—all those nations that had lived in its shade.

¹⁸ “O Egypt, to which of the trees of Eden will you compare your strength and glory? You, too, will be brought down to the depths with all these other nations. You will lie there among the outcasts^[d] who have died by the sword. This will be the fate of Pharaoh and all his hordes. I, the Sovereign Lord, have spoken!”

² Jerusalem was kept under siege until the eleventh year of King Zedekiah’s reign.

³ By July 18 in the eleventh year of Zedekiah’s reign,^[a] the famine in the city had become very severe, and the last of the food was entirely gone.

² Two and a half years later, on July 18^[a] in the eleventh year of Zedekiah’s reign, a section of the city wall was broken down. ³ All the officers of the Babylonian army came in and sat in triumph at the Middle Gate: Nergal-sharezer of Samgar, and Nebo-sarsekim,^[b] a chief officer, and Nergal-sharezer, the king’s adviser, and all the other officers of the king of Babylon.

⁴ Then a section of the city wall was broken down. Since the city was surrounded by the Babylonians,^[a] the soldiers waited for nightfall and escaped^[b] through the gate between the two walls behind the king’s garden. Then they headed toward the Jordan Valley.^[c]

⁵ But the Babylonian^[d] troops chased the king and overtook him on the plains of Jericho, for his men had all deserted him and scattered. ⁶ They captured the king and took him to the king of Babylon at Riblah, where they pronounced judgment upon Zedekiah.

¹⁰ The king of Babylon made Zedekiah watch as he slaughtered his sons. He also slaughtered all the officials of Judah at Riblah. ¹¹ Then he gouged out Zedekiah’s eyes and bound him in bronze chains, and the king of Babylon led him away to Babylon. Zedekiah remained there in prison until the day of his death.

The Temple Destroyed

¹² On August 17 of that year,^[a] which was the nineteenth year of King Nebuchadnezzar’s reign, Nebuzaradan, the captain of the guard and an official of the Babylonian king, arrived in Jerusalem.

¹⁷ The Babylonians broke up the bronze pillars in front of the Lord’s Temple, the bronze water carts, and the great bronze basin called the Sea, and they carried all the bronze away to Babylon. ¹⁸ They also took all the ash buckets, shovels, lamp snuffers, basins, dishes, and all the other bronze articles used for making sacrifices at the Temple. ¹⁹ The captain of the guard also took the small bowls, incense burners, basins, pots, lampstands, ladles, bowls used for liquid offerings, and all the other articles made of pure gold or silver.

²⁰ The weight of the bronze from the two pillars, the Sea with the twelve bronze oxen beneath it, and the water carts was too great to be measured. These things had been made for the Lord’s Temple in the days of King Solomon. ²¹ Each of the pillars was 27 feet tall and 18 feet in circumference.^[a] They were hollow, with walls 3 inches thick.^{[b] 22} The bronze capital on top of each pillar was 7 1⁄2 feet^[c] high and was decorated with a network of bronze pomegranates all the way around. ²³ There were 96 pomegranates on the sides, and a total of 100 pomegranates on the network around the top.

¹³ He burned down the Temple of the Lord, the royal palace, and all the houses of Jerusalem. He destroyed all the important buildings^[a] in the city. ¹⁴ Then he supervised the entire Babylonian^[b] army as they tore down the walls of Jerusalem on every side.

²⁴ Nebuzaradan, the captain of the guard, took with him as prisoners Seraiah the high priest, Zephaniah the priest of the second rank, and the three chief gatekeepers. ²⁵ And from among the people still hiding in the city, he took an officer who had been in charge of the Judean army; seven of the king’s personal advisers; the army commander’s chief secretary, who was in charge of recruitment; and sixty other citizens. ²⁶ Nebuzaradan, the captain of the guard, took them all to the king of Babylon at Riblah. ²⁷ And there at Riblah, in the land of Hamath, the king of Babylon had them all put to death. So the people of Judah were sent into exile from their land.