⁶ By the ninth day of the fourth month the famine in the city had become so severe that there was no food for the people to eat.^(A)

² And on the ninth day of the fourth^(A) month of Zedekiah’s eleventh year, the city wall^(B) was broken through.^(C)

Judgment on Jerusalem and Judah

⁹ “My lord the king, these men have acted wickedly in all they have done to Jeremiah the prophet. They have thrown him into a cistern,^(A) where he will starve to death when there is no longer any bread^(B) in the city.”

³ By the ninth day of the fourth^[a] month the famine^(A) in the city had become so severe that there was no food for the people to eat.

¹⁹ This is what the Lord Almighty says: “The fasts of the fourth,^(A) fifth,^(B) seventh^(C) and tenth^(D) months will become joyful^(E) and glad occasions and happy festivals for Judah. Therefore love truth^(F) and peace.”

²¹ “For this is what the Sovereign Lord says: How much worse will it be when I send against Jerusalem my four dreadful judgments^(A)—sword^(B) and famine^(C) and wild beasts and plague^(D)—to kill its men and their animals!^(E)

¹⁰ Therefore in your midst parents will eat their children, and children will eat their parents.^(A) I will inflict punishment on you and will scatter all your survivors to the winds.^{(B) 11} Therefore as surely as I live,^(C) declares the Sovereign^(D) Lord, because you have defiled my sanctuary^(E) with all your vile images^(F) and detestable practices,^(G) I myself will shave you; I will not look on you with pity or spare you.^{(H) 12} A third of your people will die of the plague or perish by famine inside you; a third will fall by the sword outside your walls; and a third I will scatter to the winds^(I) and pursue with drawn sword.^(J)