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2 Kings 25:4-7
New English Translation

4 The enemy broke through the city walls,[a] and all the soldiers tried to escape. They left the city during the night.[b] They went through the gate between the two walls, which is near the king’s garden.[c] (The Babylonians were all around the city.) Then they headed for the rift valley.[d] 5 But the Babylonian army chased after the king. They caught up with him in the rift valley plains of Jericho,[e] and his entire army deserted him. 6 They captured the king and brought him up to the king of Babylon at Riblah,[f] where he[g] passed sentence on him. 7 Zedekiah’s sons were executed while Zedekiah was forced to watch.[h] The king of Babylon[i] then had Zedekiah’s eyes put out, bound him in bronze chains, and carried him off to Babylon.

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Footnotes

  1. 2 Kings 25:4 tn Heb “the city was breached.”
  2. 2 Kings 25:4 tn The Hebrew text is abrupt here: “And all the men of war by the night.” The translation attempts to capture the sense.
  3. 2 Kings 25:4 sn The king’s garden is mentioned again in Neh 3:15 in conjunction with the pool of Siloam and the stairs that go down from the City of David. This would have been in the southern part of the city near the Tyropean Valley which agrees with the reference to the “two walls” which were probably the walls on the eastern and western hills.
  4. 2 Kings 25:4 sn The rift valley (עֲרָבָה, ʿarabah) extends northward of the Dead Sea past Galilee and southward to the Gulf of Aqaba. Here the southern part of the Jordan Valley is in view with the intention to escape across the Jordan river to Moab or Ammon. It appears from Jer 40:14; 41:15 that the Ammonites were known to harbor fugitives from the Babylonians.
  5. 2 Kings 25:5 sn The rift valley plains of Jericho refer to the parts of the Jordan Valley in the vicinity of Jericho (see HALOT 880 s.v. עֲרָבָה). There the terrain is fairly level and slopes gently down to the Jordan, a descent of about 450 feet over five miles. Many translations render this as “the plains of Jericho” (ESV, NASB, NIV, KJV). See the note at Num 22:1.
  6. 2 Kings 25:6 sn Riblah was a strategic town on the Orontes River in Syria. It was at a crossing of the major roads between Egypt and Mesopotamia. Pharaoh Necho had earlier received Jehoahaz there and put him in chains (2 Kgs 23:33) prior to taking him captive to Egypt. Nebuchadnezzar had set up his base camp for conducting his campaigns against the Palestinian states there and was now sitting in judgment on prisoners brought to him.
  7. 2 Kings 25:6 tn The Hebrew text has the plural form of the verb, but the parallel passage in Jer 52:9 has the singular.
  8. 2 Kings 25:7 tn Heb “were killed before his eyes.”
  9. 2 Kings 25:7 tn Heb “he”; the referent (the king of Babylon) has been specified in the translation for clarity.
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