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This is the order which Yirmeyahu the prophet gave to S'rayah the son of Neriyah, the son of Machseyah, when he went to Bavel with Tzidkiyahu the king of Y'hudah in the fourth year of his reign. S'rayah was quartermaster.

Tzidkiyahu was twenty-one years old when he began to rule, and he ruled for eleven years in Yerushalayim. His mother's name was Hamutal the daughter of Yirmeyahu, from Livnah.

And it was because of Adonai 's anger that all these things happened to Yerushalayim and Y'hudah, until he had thrown them out of his presence. Tzidkiyahu rebelled against the king of Bavel;

so in the ninth year of his reign, in the tenth month, on the tenth day of the month, N'vukhadretzar king of Bavel marched against Yerushalayim with his entire army. He set up camp against it and built siege towers against it on every side.

But the army of the Kasdim went in pursuit of the king and overtook Tzidkiyahu on the plains near Yericho; all his troops deserted him.

The king of Bavel slaughtered his sons before his eyes; he also slaughtered all the leading men of Y'hudah in Rivlah.

Then the king of Bavel put out Tzidkiyahu's eyes, bound him in chains, carried him off to Bavel and kept him in prison until the day of his death.

There in Rivlah, in the land of Hamat, the king of Bavel had them put to death. Thus Y'hudah was carried away captive out of his land.

In the thirty-seventh year of the captivity of Y'hoyakhin king of Y'hudah, in the twelfth month, on the twenty-fifth day of the month, Eveel-M'rodakh began his reign as king of Bavel; and in his first year, he commuted the sentence of Y'hoyakhin king of Y'hudah and released him from prison.

and he was granted a daily allowance by the king of Bavel to spend on his other needs for as long as he lived, until the day of his death.

"May it not happen to you, all you passers-by! Just look, and see if there is any pain like the pain inflicted on me, which Adonai made me suffer on the day of his blazing anger.

"My sins have been bound into a yoke, knit together by his hand. It weighs down on my neck, and it saps my strength. Adonai has put me into the power of those I cannot withstand.

Tziyon spreads out her hands, but no one is there to console her. Concerning Ya‘akov, Adonai has ordered those around him to be his foes; Yerushalayim has become for them an unclean, filthy thing.

" Adonai is in the right, for I rebelled against his word. Listen, please, all you peoples; and see how I am in pain! My young women and my young men have gone into captivity.

How enveloped in darkness Adonai, in his anger, has made the daughter of Tziyon! He has thrown down from heaven to earth the splendor of Isra'el, forgotten his footstool [the sanctuary] on the day of his anger.

Without pity Adonai swallowed up all the dwellings of Ya‘akov. In his wrath he broke down the strongholds of the daughter of Y'hudah, brought them down to the ground, thus profaning the kingdom and its rulers.

In his fierce anger he cut off all the power of Isra'el, withdrew his protecting right hand at the approach of the enemy, and blazed up in Ya‘akov like a flaming fire devouring everything around it.

He bent his bow like an enemy, with his right hand set like a foe. He killed all who were pleasant to see. In the tent of the daughter of Tziyon, he poured out his fury like fire.

He wrecked his tabernacle as easily as a garden, destroyed his place of assembly. Adonai caused Isra'el to forget designated times and Shabbats. In the heat of his anger he rejected both king and cohen.

Adonai rejected his altar, disowned his sanctuary, and gave her palace walls over to the power of the foe, who raised such shouts in the house of Adonai that it sounded like a festival day.