These two chapters present a detailed and terrible account of what happened in 587 B.C. The very exact dating given at the beginning of each chapter indicates that the event remained an indelible memory for the Jewish people. From the two chapters we can build up a clear picture ofthe disaster.

Zedekiah continued to resist; Jeremiah 37 indicates that Judah had been promised help by the Egyptian ruler but effective help never came. The Babylonian army completely surrounded the city and kept up the siege until there was no food left and the population was weakened by famine. The assault on the city walls was then carried out successfully by the Babylonians who finally smashed their way into the city. When this happened, Zedekiah's army fled, escaping in the night through the royal garden, at a place where they managed to avoid running into the Babylonian army. The Babylonians took over the city and then pursued Zedekiah and his fleeing soldiers. Zedekiah was captured near Jericho and was deserted by his soldiers. The Jewish king was treated with great cruelty, being forced to witness the execution of his sons, who were captured with him, and then blinded, before being taken as a prisoner to Babylon.

The Babylonians then looted the city of everything of value, burnt the Temple and city buildings and completed the destruction of the city walls. The punishment which they inflicted on the Jews for resisting them was as terrible as Jeremiah had prophesied.

The officials of Judah who were captured by the Babylonians were killed, and a very large number of the surviving citizens were taken as prisoners to Babylonia. The Babylonians set up administration of the country, as part of their empire, making the town of Mizpah the new administrative centre. A grandson of Shaphan, a man named Gedaliah, was put in by the Babylonians as governor of the land.

Jeremiah survived all this, as we learn from Jeremiah 39: 11-14. His prophetic ministry did not end with the fall of the city and the conquest of Judah, which happened as he had prophesied. He was by then an old man, but we last hear of him, still prophesying, in Jeremiah 43 and 44, in Egypt. The administration of Judah which the Babylonians set up did not go well; Gedaliah was murdered and the Jews at Mizpah fled for their lives to Egypt, fearing yet more Babylonian retaliation. Jeremiah was forced to go with them, although he gave them a message that they should stay in Judah even if the country was devastated and totally controlled by Babylonia. To the end of his life he remained faithful to his prophetic task.