The Daily Audio Bible

³¹ Y’ho’achaz was twenty-three years old when he began his reign, and he ruled for three months in Yerushalayim. His mother’s name was Hamutal the daughter of Yirmeyahu from Livnah. ³² He did what was evil from Adonai’s perspective, following the example of everything his ancestors had done. ³³ Pharaoh N’khoh imprisoned him at Rivlah in the land of Hamat, so that he would not be able to rule in Yerushalayim. He also imposed a penalty on the land of three-and-a-quarter tons of silver and sixty-six pounds of gold. ³⁴ Then Pharaoh N’khoh made Elyakim the son of Yoshiyahu king in place of Yoshiyahu his father and changed his name to Y’hoyakim. He also carried Y’ho’achaz off to Egypt, where he died. ³⁵ Y’hoyakim remitted the silver and gold to Pharaoh; but in order to pay the money Pharaoh demanded, he had to levy a tax on the land. He taxed the people of the land, each according to his means, to pay the silver and gold to Pharaoh N’khoh.

³⁶ Y’hoyakim was twenty-five years old when he began his reign, and he ruled for eleven years in Yerushalayim. His mother’s name was Z’vudah the daughter of P’dayah, from Rumah. ³⁷ He did what was evil from the perspective of Adonai, following the example of everything his ancestors had done.

24 It was in Y’hoyakim’s time that N’vukhadnetzar king of Bavel invaded. Y’hoyakim became his vassal for three years, but then he turned against him and rebelled. ² Adonai sent against him raiding parties from the Kasdim, Aram, Mo’av and the people of ‘Amon; he sent them against Y’hudah to destroy it, in keeping with the word of Adonai which he had spoken through his servants the prophets. ³ Yes, it was at Adonai’s order that this happened to Y’hudah, in order to remove them from his sight because of the sins of M’nasheh and all he had done, ⁴ and also because of the innocent blood he had shed — for he had flooded Yerushalayim with innocent blood, and Adonai was unwilling to forgive.

⁵ Other activities of Y’hoyakim and all his accomplishments are recorded in the Annals of the Kings of Y’hudah. ⁶ Then Y’hoyakim slept with his ancestors, and Y’hoyakhin his son took his place as king.

⁷ The king of Egypt did not leave his own land any more, because the king of Bavel had captured all the territory of the king of Egypt between the Vadi of Egypt and the Euphrates River.

⁸ Y’hoyakhin was eighteen years old when he began his reign, and he ruled in Yerushalayim for three months. His mother’s name was N’chushta the daughter of Elnatan, from Yerushalayim. ⁹ He did what was evil from Adonai’s perspective, following the example of everything his father had done.

¹⁰ It was then that the officers of N’vukhadnetzar king of Bavel marched on Yerushalayim and laid siege to the city. ¹¹ N’vukhadnetzar king of Bavel himself went to the city while it was under siege; ¹² and Y’hoyakhin king of Y’hudah went out to meet the king of Bavel — he, his mother, and his servants, princes and officers; and the king of Bavel took him captive in the eighth year of his reign. ¹³ He also carried away from there all the treasures in the house of Adonai and the treasures in the royal palace. He cut in pieces all the articles of gold which Shlomo king of Isra’el had made in the temple of Adonai, as Adonai had said would happen. ¹⁴ He carried all Yerushalayim away captive — all the princes, all the bravest soldiers — 10,000 captives; also all the craftsmen and metalworkers. No one was left but the poorest people of the land.

¹⁵ Y’hoyakhin he carried off to Bavel; likewise he carried off the king’s mother, the king’s wives, his officers and the main leaders of the land from Yerushalayim into captivity in Bavel. ¹⁶ All the strong men — 7,000 of them, as well as 1,000 craftsmen and metalsmiths, all of them strong and trained for war — the king of Bavel brought captive to Bavel.

¹⁷ The king of Bavel made Matanyah, Y’hoyakhin’s father’s brother, king in place of Y’hoyakhin and changed his name to Tzidkiyahu. ¹⁸ Tzidkiyahu was twenty-one years old when he began to rule, and he ruled for eleven years in Yerushalayim. His mother’s name was Hamutal the daughter of Yirmeyahu, from Livnah. ¹⁹ He did what was evil from the perspective of Adonai, following the example of everything Y’hoyakim had done. ²⁰ And it was because of Adonai’s anger that all these things happened to Yerushalayim and Y’hudah, until he had thrown them out of his presence.

Tzidkiyahu rebelled against the king of Bavel;

25 so in the ninth year of his reign, in the tenth month, on the tenth day of the month, N’vukhadnetzar king of Bavel marched against Yerushalayim with his entire army. He set up camp against it and built siege towers against it on every side. ² The city remained under siege into the eleventh year of King Tzidkiyahu.

³ On the ninth day of the [fourth] month, when the famine in the city was so severe that there was no food for the people of the land, ⁴ they broke through into the city. All the soldiers [fled] by night through the gate between the two walls, near the king’s garden. Because the Kasdim were surrounding the city, the king took the route through the ‘Aravah. ⁵ But the army of the Kasdim went in pursuit of the king and overtook him on the plains near Yericho; all his troops deserted him. ⁶ Then they took the king and brought him up to the king of Bavel in Rivlah, where they passed judgment on him. ⁷ They slaughtered his sons before his eyes. Then they put out Tzidkiyahu’s eyes, bound him in chains and carried him off to Bavel.

⁸ In the fifth month, on the seventh day of the month, which was also the nineteenth year of King N’vukhadnetzar, king of Bavel, N’vuzar’adan, the commander of the guard and an officer of the king of Bavel, entered Yerushalayim. ⁹ He burned down the house of Adonai, the royal palace and all the houses in Yerushalayim — every notable person’s house he burned to the ground. ¹⁰ The whole army of the Kasdim, who were with the commander of the guard, broke down the walls of Yerushalayim on every side. ¹¹ N’vuzar’adan the commander of the guard then deported the remaining population of the city, the deserters who had defected to the king of Bavel and the rest of the common people. ¹² But the commander of the guard left behind some of the poor people of the land to be vineyard-workers and farmers.

¹³ The Kasdim smashed the bronze columns in the house of Adonai, also the trolleys and bronze Sea that were in the house of Adonai, and carried their bronze to Bavel. ¹⁴ They also took away the pots, shovels, snuffers, pans, and all the bronze articles that had been used for worship. ¹⁵ The commander of the guard took the censers, the sprinkling bowls, everything made of gold and everything made of silver. ¹⁶ The bronze in the two columns, the one Sea and the bases, all of which Shlomo had made for the house of Adonai, was more than could be weighed. ¹⁷ The height of one column was thirty-one-and-a-half feet; on it was a capital of bronze five-and-a-quarter feet high, with netting and pomegranates all around the capital, all of bronze; the second column was similar, also with netting.

¹⁸ The commander of the guard took [prisoner] S’rayah the chief cohen, Z’kharyah the second-ranking cohen and three doorkeepers. ¹⁹ From the city he took an official in charge of the soldiers, five close associates of the king who had been found in the city, the army commander’s secretary in charge of military conscription, and sixty of the common people found in the city. ²⁰ N’vuzar’adan the commander of the guard took them and brought them to the king of Bavel in Rivlah. ²¹ There in Rivlah, in the land of Hamat, the king of Bavel had them put to death. Thus Y’hudah was carried away captive out of his land.

²² N’vukhadnetzar king of Babylon appointed G’dalyahu the son of Achikam, the son of Shafan, governor over the people remaining behind in the land of Y’hudah after he left. ²³ When all the army officers and their men heard that the king of Bavel had made G’dalyahu governor, they came to G’dalyahu in Mitzpah — Yishma‘el the son of N’tanyah, Yochanan the son of Kareach, S’rayah the son of Tanchumet the N’tofati and Ya’azanyahu the son of the Ma‘akhati — they and their men. ²⁴ Taking an oath, G’dalyahu said to them, “Don’t be afraid of the servants of the Kasdim. Just live in the land and serve the king of Bavel, and things will go well for you.” ²⁵ But in the seventh month Yishma‘el the son of N’tanyah, the son of Elishama, of royal blood, came with ten men and assassinated G’dalyah and the Judeans and Kasdim who were with him in Mitzpah. ²⁶ In the wake of this, all kinds of people, great and small, as well as the army officers, set out and went to Egypt; because they were afraid of the Kasdim.

²⁷ In the thirty-seventh year of the captivity of Y’hoyakhin king of Y’hudah, in the twelfth month, on the twenty-seventh day of the month, Eveel-M’rodakh began his reign as king of Bavel; and in his first year he commuted the sentence of Y’hoyakhin king of Y’hudah and released him from prison. ²⁸ He treated him with kindness and gave him a throne higher than those of the other kings there with him in Bavel. ²⁹ So Y’hoyakhin no longer had to wear prison clothes; moreover, he was provided with food as long as he lived; ³⁰ and he was granted a daily allowance by the king to spend on his other needs for as long as he lived.

¹⁷ “After I had returned to Yerushalayim, it happened that as I was praying in the Temple, I went into a trance, ¹⁸ and I saw Yeshua. ‘Hurry!’ he said to me, ‘Get out of Yerushalayim immediately, because they will not accept what you have to say about me.’ ¹⁹ I said, ‘Lord, they know themselves that in every synagogue I used to imprison and flog those who trusted in you; ²⁰ also that when the blood of your witness Stephen was being shed, I was standing there too, in full agreement; I was even looking after the clothes of the ones who were killing him!’ ²¹ But he said, ‘Get going! For I am going to send you far away — to the Goyim!’”

²² They had been listening to him up to this point; but now they shouted at the top of their lungs, “Rid the earth of such a man! He’s not fit to live!” ²³ They were screaming, waving their clothes and throwing dust into the air; ²⁴ so the commander ordered him brought into the barracks and directed that he be interrogated and whipped, in order to find out why they were yelling at him like this.

²⁵ But as they were stretching him out with thongs to be flogged, Sha’ul said to the captain standing by, “Is it legal for you to whip a man who is a Roman citizen and hasn’t even had a trial?” ²⁶ When the captain heard that, he went and reported it to the commander, “Do you realize what you’re doing? This man is a Roman citizen!” ²⁷ The commander came and said to Sha’ul, “Tell me, are you a Roman citizen?” “Yes,” he said. ²⁸ The commander replied, “I bought this citizenship for a sizeable sum of money.” “But I was born to it,” Sha’ul said. ²⁹ At once the men who had been about to interrogate him drew back from him; and the commander was afraid too, because he realized that he had put this man who was a Roman citizen in chains.

³⁰ However, the next day, since he wanted to know the specific charge the Judeans were bringing against him, he released him and ordered the head cohanim and the whole Sanhedrin to meet. Then he brought Sha’ul down and put him in front of them.

23 Sha’ul looked straight at them and said, “Brothers, I have been discharging my obligations to God with a perfectly clear conscience, right up until today.” ² But the cohen hagadol, Hananyah, ordered those standing near him to strike him on the mouth. ³ Then Sha’ul said to him, “God will strike you, you whitewashed wall! Will you sit there judging me according to the Torah, yet in violation of the Torah order me to be struck?” ⁴ The men nearby said, “This is the cohen hagadol of God that you’re insulting!” ⁵ Sha’ul said, “I didn’t know, brothers, that he was the cohen hagadol; for it says in the Torah, ‘You are not to speak disparagingly of a ruler of your people.’”^[a]

⁶ But knowing that one part of the Sanhedrin consisted of Tz’dukim and the other of P’rushim, Sha’ul shouted, “Brothers, I myself am a Parush and the son of P’rushim; and it is concerning the hope of the resurrection of the dead that I am being tried!” ⁷ When he said this, an argument arose between the P’rushim and the Tz’dukim, and the crowd was divided. ⁸ For the Tz’dukim deny the resurrection and the existence of angels and spirits; whereas the P’rushim acknowledge both. ⁹ So there was a great uproar, with some of the Torah-teachers who were on the side of the P’rushim standing up and joining in — “We don’t find anything wrong with this man; and if a spirit or an angel spoke to him, what of it?” ¹⁰ The dispute became so violent that the commander, fearing that Sha’ul would be torn apart by them, ordered the soldiers to go down, take him by force and bring him back into the barracks.