Jeremiah 39:1

“Yahweh will lead you and your king, whom you set over you, to a nation which neither you nor your fathers have known, and there you shall serve other gods, wood and stone.

Now in the ninth year of his reign, on the tenth day of the tenth month, Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon came, he and all his military force, against Jerusalem, and he camped against it and built a siege wall all around it.

The word that came to Jeremiah from Yahweh in the tenth year of Zedekiah king of Judah, which was the eighteenth year of Nebuchadnezzar.

The word which came to Jeremiah from Yahweh, when Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon and all his military force, with all the kingdoms of the earth that were under his dominion and all the peoples, were fighting against Jerusalem and against all its cities, saying,

‘Behold, I am going to command,’ declares Yahweh, ‘and I will cause them to return to this city; and they will fight against it and capture it and burn it with fire; and I will make the cities of Judah a desolation without inhabitant.’”

For thus says Yahweh of hosts, the God of Israel, “As My anger and wrath have been poured out on the inhabitants of Jerusalem, so My wrath will be poured out on you when you enter Egypt. And you will become a curse, an object of horror, an imprecation, and a reproach; and you will see this place no more.”

Now it happened in the ninth year of his reign, on the tenth day of the tenth month, that Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon came, he and all his military force, against Jerusalem, and they camped against it and built a siege wall all around it.

“Now as for you, get yourself an iron plate and set it up as an iron wall between you and the city, and establish your face toward it so that it is under siege, and besiege it. This is a sign to the house of Israel.

“One-third you shall burn in the fire at the center of the city when the days of the siege are fulfilled. Then you shall take one-third and strike it with the sword all around the city, and one-third you shall scatter to the wind; and I will unsheathe a sword behind them.

“Son of man, write the name of the day, this very day. The king of Babylon has laid siege to Jerusalem this very day.

Now it happened in the twelfth year of our exile, on the fifth of the tenth month, that those who escaped from Jerusalem came to me, saying, “The city has been struck down.”

In the twenty-fifth year of our exile, at the beginning of the year, on the tenth of the month, in the fourteenth year after the city was struck down, on that same day the hand of Yahweh was upon me, and He brought me there.

The Walls of Jerusalem Torn Down