² In the fifth year of King Rehoboam, because they had been unfaithful to the Lord, King Shishak of Egypt came up against Jerusalem^(A)

⁴⁰ Solomon sought therefore to kill Jeroboam, but Jeroboam promptly fled to Egypt, to King Shishak of Egypt, and remained in Egypt until the death of Solomon.

²² The Lord could no longer bear the sight of your evil doings, the abominations that you committed; therefore your land became a desolation and a waste and a curse, without inhabitant, as it is to this day.^{(A) 23} It is because you burned offerings and because you sinned against the Lord and did not obey the voice of the Lord or walk in his law and in his statutes and in his decrees that this disaster has befallen you, as is still evident today.”^(B)

²⁶ “Nevertheless, they were disobedient and rebelled against you and cast your law behind their backs and killed your prophets, who had warned them in order to turn them back to you, and they committed great blasphemies.^{(A) 27} Therefore you gave them into the hands of their enemies, who made them suffer. Then in the time of their suffering they cried out to you, and you heard them from heaven, and according to your great mercies you gave them saviors who saved them from the hands of their enemies.

¹⁴ All the leading priests and the people also were exceedingly unfaithful, following all the abominations of the nations, and they polluted the house of the Lord that he had consecrated in Jerusalem.

The Fall of Jerusalem

¹⁵ The Lord, the God of their ancestors, sent persistently to them by his messengers, because he had compassion on his people and on his dwelling place,^{(A) 16} but they kept mocking the messengers of God, despising his words, and scoffing at his prophets until the wrath of the Lord against his people became so great that there was no remedy.^(B)

¹⁷ Therefore he brought up against them the king of the Chaldeans, who killed their youths with the sword in the house of their sanctuary and had no compassion on young man or young woman, the aged or the feeble; he gave them all into his hand.^{(C) 18} All the vessels of the house of God, large and small, and the treasures of the house of the Lord, and the treasures of the king and of his officials, all these he brought to Babylon.^{(D) 19} They burned the house of God, broke down the wall of Jerusalem, burned all its palaces with fire, and destroyed all its precious vessels.^(E)