⁴³ Before long your enemies will build ramparts against your walls and encircle you and close in on you from every side. ⁴⁴ They will crush you into the ground, and your children with you. Your enemies will not leave a single stone in place, because you did not recognize it when God visited you.^[a]”

²² The omen in his right hand says, ‘Jerusalem!’ With battering rams his soldiers will go against the gates, shouting for the kill. They will put up siege towers and build ramps against the walls.

⁷ “The king was furious, and he sent out his army to destroy the murderers and burn their town.

25 So on January 15,^[a] during the ninth year of Zedekiah’s reign, King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon led his entire army against Jerusalem. They surrounded the city and built siege ramps against its walls. 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,^[b] the famine in the city had become very severe, and the last of the food was entirely gone. ⁴ Then a section of the city wall was broken down. Since the city was surrounded by the Babylonians,^[c] the soldiers waited for nightfall and escaped^[d] through the gate between the two walls behind the king’s garden. Then they headed toward the Jordan Valley.^[e]

¹¹ Nebuchadnezzar himself arrived at the city during the siege. ¹² Then King Jehoiachin, along with the queen mother, his advisers, his commanders, and his officials, surrendered to the Babylonians.

In the eighth year of Nebuchadnezzar’s reign, he took Jehoiachin prisoner.

³² “And this is what the Lord says about the king of Assyria:

¹⁷ Nevertheless, the king of Assyria sent his commander in chief, his field commander, and his chief of staff^[a] from Lachish with a huge army to confront King Hezekiah in Jerusalem. The Assyrians took up a position beside the aqueduct that feeds water into the upper pool, near the road leading to the field where cloth is washed.^[b]