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Old Testament Reading - Exile to Babylon

¹Then King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon mobilized his entire army and laid siege to Jerusalem, arriving on March 25 of the ninth year of the reign of King Zedekiah of Judah. ²The siege continued into the eleventh year of his reign.

³The last food in the city was eaten on July 24, ^4-5and that night the king and his troops made a hole in the inner wall and fled out toward the Arabah through a gate that lay between the double walls near the king’s garden. The Babylonian troops surrounding the city took out after him and captured him in the plains of Jericho, and all his men scattered. ⁶He was taken to Riblah, where he was tried and sentenced before the king of Babylon. ⁷He was forced to watch as his sons were killed before his eyes; then his eyes were put out, and he was bound with chains and taken away to Babylon.

⁸General Nebuzaradan, the captain of the royal bodyguard, arrived at Jerusalem from Babylon on July 22 of the nineteenth year of the reign of King Nebuchadnezzar. ⁹He burned down the Temple, the palace, and all the other houses of any worth. ¹⁰He then supervised the Babylonian army in tearing down the walls of Jerusalem. ¹¹ The remainder of the people in the city and the Jewish deserters who had declared their allegiance to the king of Babylon were all taken as exiles to Babylon. ¹²But the poorest of the people were left to farm the land.