Sedecias had been reigning for eight years and ten months in Juda when Nabu-chodonosor king of Babylon led his armies to the siege of Jerusalem;

in the eleventh year, on the fifth day of the fourth month, the city wall was breached.

In they marched, Neregel, Sereser, Semegarnabu, Sarsachim, Rabsares, (Neregel, Sereser), and Rebmag,✻ and all the king of Babylon’s other chieftains, and occupied the central gate.

Sedecias king of Juda and all his warriors fled at their approach, leaving the city at dead of night by way of the royal garden and the gate between the two walls; it was the desert road they took when they left it.

The Chaldaean army went in pursuit, and overtook Sedecias in the open plain of Jericho; captured him, and brought him before Nabuchodonosor at Reblatha, in the Emath country; and there sentence was pronounced on him.

Slain by the king of Babylon were all his sons, there in their father’s sight; slain by the king of Babylon were all the nobles of Juda;

and as for Sedecias himself, his eyes were put out, and he was carried off, loaded with chains, to Babylon.

King’s palace and poor man’s house the Chaldaeans burnt to the ground, and threw down the walls of Jerusalem in ruins.

All the rest who survived, defenders and deserters alike, were carried off by Nabuzardan, the captain of the royal bodyguard, to Babylon;

he left none except the poorest of the inhabitants, landless men, in Juda, who found themselves enriched, that day, with vineyards and cisterns of their own.

This Nabuzardan, captain of the royal bodyguard had orders from king Nabuchodonosor about Jeremias;

Take him under thy loving charge, said he, and let him have what cheer he will.

So here were Nabuzardan, captain of the royal bodyguard, and Nabusezban, and Rabsares, and Neregel, and Sereser, and Rebmag, and all the king of Babylon’s great chieftains,

sending out to free Jeremias from his prison in the courtyard. And they entrusted him to the care of Godolias, son of Ahicam; with him Jeremias should dwell, and make his home among his own people.

While he was still in the courtyard prison, Jeremias had been entrusted with a message from the Lord for the Ethiopian, Abdemelech:

All my doom against this city, says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, I mean to fulfil; ban it is and not blessing, and thou shalt live to see it;

but to thee I will grant safety, the Lord says. Never shall dreaded foe have the mastery,

when I am there to deliver thee; thou art marked out for safety, that didst put thy confidence in me, the Lord says.