¹⁹ “This is what the Lord of Heaven’s Armies says: The traditional fasts and times of mourning you have kept in early summer, midsummer, autumn, and winter^[a] are now ended. They will become festivals of joy and celebration for the people of Judah. So love truth and peace.

⁵ “Say to all your people and your priests, ‘During these seventy years of exile, when you fasted and mourned in the summer and in early autumn,^[a] was it really for me that you were fasting?

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.

¹⁶ But this is what you must do: Tell the truth to each other. Render verdicts in your courts that are just and that lead to peace.

³ They were to ask this question of the prophets and the priests at the Temple of the Lord of Heaven’s Armies: “Should we continue to mourn and fast each summer on the anniversary of the Temple’s destruction,^[a] as we have done for so many years?”

⁴ So on January 15,^[a] during the ninth year of Zedekiah’s reign, King Nebuchadnezzar^[b] of Babylon led his entire army against Jerusalem. They surrounded the city and built siege ramps against its walls.

²⁵ But in midautumn of that year,^[a] Ishmael son of Nethaniah and grandson of Elishama, who was a member of the royal family, went to Mizpah with ten men and killed Gedaliah. He also killed all the Judeans and Babylonians who were with him at Mizpah.

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