Chapter 3

¹ When this man, then, had been removed, his son Jehoiakim reigned three years.

² And against him Nebuchadnezzar came up and deported both him and ten thousand men of the people into Babylon, and set up in his place Jeconiah, his father’s brother, whom he also renamed Zedekiah; and having made oaths and a covenant with him, he departed to Babylon.

³ This man, having reigned eleven years, revolted from him and gave himself over to Pharaoh king of Egypt.

⁴ And in the twelfth year Nebuchadnezzar came against him with all the host of the Chaldeans, and they threw up a palisade around the city, encamped against it on every side, and pressed it in from all directions; whence the greater part of them perished by famine, others were destroyed by the sword, and some of them were taken captive. And the city was set ablaze with fire, and the temple and the wall were torn down.

⁵ And the host of the Chaldeans took all the treasures found in the house of the Lord, and all the vessels, both the golden and the silver; and Nebuzaradan the chief steward cut up all the bronze and carried them off to Babylon. Zedekiah himself, who is also Jeconiah, as he fled by night with seven hundred men, the forces of the Chaldeans pursued, and overtook him at Jericho, and brought him to the king of Babylon at Riblah.

⁶ And the king entered into judgment with him in wrath, because he had transgressed the oath of the Lord and the covenant which he had made with him.

⁷ And taking his sons, he slaughtered them before him, and he put out the eyes of Zedekiah, who is also Jeconiah, and bound him in iron fetters, and they led him to Babylon. And he was grinding at the mill until the day he died;

⁸ and when he died, they took his body and cast it behind the wall of Nineveh.

⁹ In him is fulfilled the prophecy of Jeremiah the prophet, who says: As I live, says the Lord, even if Jeconiah the son of Josiah, king of Judah, should become a signet upon my right hand, from there I will tear you off and hand you over into the hands of those who seek your life, those before whose face you stand in dread, into the hands of the Chaldeans. And I will cast you and your mother who bore you out into a land where you were not born, and there you shall die. But to the land for which they yearn in their souls, they shall not return. Jeconiah is dishonored like a useless vessel for which there is no need, because he has been cast out and thrown into a land which he did not know. O land, land, hear the word of the Lord. Write this man down as a man proclaimed outcast, for none of his seed shall prosper, sitting on the throne of David and ruling any longer in Judah.