Jeremiah 52:1-11
The fall of Jerusalem demonstrates that the covenant warnings proclaimed by the prophets were fulfilled through divine judgment against persistent rebellion.
1 Zedekiah was twenty-one years old when he began to reign. He reigned eleven years in Jerusalem: and his mother’s name was Hamutal the daughter of Jeremiah of Libnah.
2 He did that which was evil in Yahweh’s sight, according to all that Jehoiakim had done.
3 For through Yahweh’s anger this happened in Jerusalem and Judah, until he had cast them out from his presence. Zedekiah rebelled against the king of Babylon.
4 In the ninth year of his reign, in the tenth month, in the tenth day of the month, Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon came, he and all his army, against Jerusalem, and encamped against it; and they built forts against it round about.
5 So the city was besieged to the eleventh year of king Zedekiah.
6 In the fourth month, in the ninth day of the month, the famine was severe in the city, so that there was no bread for the people of the land.
7 Then a breach was made in the city, and all the men of war fled, and went out of the city by night by the way of the gate between the two walls, which was by the king’s garden. Now the Chaldeans were against the city all around. The men of war went toward the Arabah,
8 but the army of the Chaldeans pursued the king, and overtook Zedekiah in the plains of Jericho; and all his army was scattered from him.
9 Then they took the king, and carried him up to the king of Babylon to Riblah in the land of Hamath; and he pronounced judgment on him.
10 The king of Babylon killed the sons of Zedekiah before his eyes. He also killed all the princes of Judah in Riblah.
11 He put out the eyes of Zedekiah; and the king of Babylon bound him in fetters, and carried him to Babylon, and put him in prison until the day of his death.
The fall of Jerusalem demonstrates that the covenant warnings proclaimed by the prophets were fulfilled through divine judgment against persistent rebellion.
To record the historical fulfillment of Jeremiah’s warnings by describing the reign of Zedekiah, the Babylonian siege of Jerusalem, the city’s fall, and the capture and humiliation of Judah’s final king.
Jeremiah 52 begins the historical appendix describing the fall of Jerusalem and the consequences of Judah’s rebellion against God.
Jerusalem Fallen, the Temple Burned, and Hope Preserved in Exile
The LORD’s word is fulfilled in Jerusalem’s fall and the temple’s destruction, yet even in exile he preserves a witness that David’s line and covenant hope are not extinguished.