She who gave birth to seven sons withers away; Her breathing is labored. Her sun has set while it was still day; She has been shamed and humiliated. So I will turn over their survivors to the sword Before their enemies,” declares the Lord.

This entire land will be a place of ruins and an object of horror, and these nations will serve the king of Babylon for seventy years.

Babylon Will Be Judged

‘Then it will be when seventy years are completed I will punish the king of Babylon and that nation,’ declares the Lord, ‘for their wrongdoing, and the land of the Chaldeans; and I will make it an everlasting desolation.

So Hananiah the prophet died in the same year, in the seventh month.

“For this is what the Lord says: ‘When seventy years have been completed for Babylon, I will visit you and fulfill My good word to you, to bring you back to this place.

“So I bought the field which was in Anathoth from Hanamel my uncle’s son, and I weighed out the silver for him, seventeen shekels of silver.

“At the end of seven years each of you shall set free his Hebrew brother who has been sold to you and has served you for six years, and you shall send him out free from you.” But your forefathers did not obey Me nor incline their ear to Me.

Gedaliah Is Murdered

Now in the seventh month Ishmael the son of Nethaniah, the son of Elishama, of the royal family and one of the chief officers of the king, along with ten men, came to Mizpah to Gedaliah the son of Ahikam. While they were eating bread together there in Mizpah,

He also took from the city one official who was overseer of the warriors, seven of the king’s advisers who were found in the city, the scribe of the commander of the army who mustered the people of the land, and sixty men from the people of the land who were found inside the city.

These are the people whom Nebuchadnezzar took into exile: in the seventh year 3,023 Jews;

Now it came about in the thirty-seventh year of the exile of Jehoiachin king of Judah, in the twelfth month, on the twenty-fifth of the month, that Evil-merodach king of Babylon, in the first year of his reign, showed favor to Jehoiachin king of Judah and brought him out of prison.