“Therefore Yahweh brought up against them the king of the Chaldeans, who slew their young men with the sword in the house of their sanctuary. He had no compassion on young man or young women, the aged or the feeble. He gave them all into his hand. He brought to Babylon all the vessels of the house of God, large and small, the treasures of the house of Yahweh, and the treasures of the king and of his princes. They burned the house of God. They broke down the wall of Jerusalem. They burned all its palaces with fire. They destroyed all its precious vessels. The king of the Chaldeans took into exile in Babylon those who had escaped from the sword. They became servants to him and to his sons until the establishment of the kingdom of Persia, to fulfill the word of Yahweh by the mouth of Jeremiah, until the land had enjoyed its Sabbaths. All the days that it lay desolate it kept Sabbath, to fulfill seventy years.”
This is a short summary of 2 Kings, chapter 25. There is no exact date at in 2 Kings. King Zedekiah had probably began to plot with the Egyptians and rebelled against the king of Babylon. There are no details of the battles here. The invaders are called Chaldeans instead of Babylonian soldiers. There was no explicit mention of King Nebuchadnezzar, just the king of the Chaldeans. Neither is there any mention of the killing of the sons of King Zedekiah before his eyes. All the details of 2 Kings are missing about the destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple. There is no detailed description about all the sacred vessels that they took as in 2 Kings. They burned the Temple of Yahweh and the palace of the king, as well as all the great houses of Jerusalem. They tore down the wall around Jerusalem. They took all the people as captives. There is no indication that the poor people stayed in Judah as in 2 Kings. However, here there is an insertion about the prophet Jeremiah saying that the land would enjoy a Sabbath for 70 years until the Persian kingdom came into existence. The kingdom of Judah lasted about 134 years after the fall of Samaria.
Eugene Finnegan Bible Project 