^22 (A)Behold, I will command,’ says the Lord, ‘and cause them to return to this city. They will fight against it ^(B)and take it and burn it with fire; and ^(C)I will make the cities of Judah a desolation without inhabitant.’ ”

^8 (A)And the Chaldeans burned the king’s house and the houses of the people with ^(B)fire, and broke down the ^(C)walls of Jerusalem.

The Fall of Jerusalem^(A)

39 In the ^(B)ninth year of Zedekiah king of Judah, in the tenth month, Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon and all his army came against Jerusalem, and besieged it. ² In the ^(C)eleventh year of Zedekiah, in the fourth month, on the ninth day of the month, the ^[a]city was penetrated.

¹³ He burned the house of the Lord and the king’s house; all the houses of Jerusalem, that is, all the houses of the great, he burned with fire.

⁷ Then the city wall was broken through, and all the men of war fled and went out of the city at night by way of the gate between the two walls, which was by the king’s garden, even though the Chaldeans were near the city all around. And they went by way of the ^[a]plain.

²² So the Lord could no longer bear it, because of the evil of your doings and because of the abominations which you committed. Therefore your land is a desolation, an astonishment, a curse, and without an inhabitant, ^(A)as it is this day.

¹⁰ “Thus says the Lord: ‘Again there shall be heard in this place—^(A)of which you say, “It is desolate, without man and without beast”—in the cities of Judah, in the streets of Jerusalem that are desolate, without man and without inhabitant and without beast,

⁷ But when the king heard about it, he was furious. And he sent out ^(A)his armies, destroyed those murderers, and burned up their city.

¹⁴ “But ^(A)I scattered them with a whirlwind among all the nations which they had not known. Thus the land became desolate after them, so that no one passed through or returned; for they made the pleasant land desolate.”