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.”

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

¹⁶ These are the things you are to do: Speak the truth^(A) to each other, and render true and sound judgment^(B) in your courts;^(C)

⁵ “Ask all the people of the land and the priests, ‘When you fasted^(A) and mourned in the fifth and seventh^(B) months for the past seventy years,^(C) was it really for me that you fasted?

³ by asking the priests of the house of the Lord Almighty and the prophets, “Should I mourn^(A) and fast in the fifth^(B) month, as I have done for so many years?”

⁴ So in the ninth year of Zedekiah’s reign, on the tenth^(A) day of the tenth month, Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon marched against Jerusalem^(B) with his whole army. They encamped outside the city and built siege works^(C) all around it.^(D)

²⁵ In the seventh month, however, Ishmael son of Nethaniah, the son of Elishama, who was of royal blood, came with ten men and assassinated^(A) Gedaliah and also the men of Judah and the Babylonians who were with him at Mizpah.^(B)

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. ⁴ Then the city wall was broken through,^(B) and the whole army fled at night through the gate between the two walls near the king’s garden, though the Babylonians^[b] were surrounding^(C) the city. They fled toward the Arabah,^[c]