“In the Ninth Year of His Reign . . . Nebuchadnezzar King of Babylon Came . . . and the City Was Besieged unto the Eleventh Year of King Zedekiah . . . and the City Was Broken Up . . . And in the Fifth Month, on the Seventh Day of the Month . . . He Burnt the House of the Lord, and the King’s House, and All the Houses of Jerusalem”
(See 2 Kings 25:1–21.)
Dr. Ellis T. Rasmussen wrote:
“So, as the prophets had warned, Judah was conquered after a two-year siege of Jerusalem, and its leaders, warriors, and people were killed or captured. Zedekiah was triply tortured as his sons were killed in his sight, his eyes were put out, and he was taken in chains to Babylon. Other sources record that his daughters were not carried off by the Babylonian conquerors but were taken to Egypt by a group of Jewish refugees, as was Jeremiah the prophet (Jer. 43:5–7). The Book of Mormon indicates that a son of Zedekiah named Mulek escaped by sea with a group that ended up in the Western Hemisphere (Omni 1:14–19). . . .
“Just a month after the invaders broke in, the temple was destroyed. It had stood since King Solomon’s time, nearly four hundred years before. It was the end of an epoch for Jerusalem. Only the poor of the land were left to produce crops.
“Valuable brass and bronze works of the temple compound were broken up and taken to Babylon. Many fine vessels were taken intact, however, and eventually were returned to the second temple, which was built in Jerusalem some seventy years later (2 Kgs. 25:13–17; Ezra 1:7–11; 7:19; 8:24–36).
“Certain religious leaders and others who had somehow been missed earlier were also taken and slain, but Jeremiah the prophet was sought out by Nebuchadnezzar’s leaders of the siege and was permitted to do whatever he chose—perhaps because he had advised the kings not to fight against Babylon to save themselves (2 Kgs. 25:18–21; Jer. 39:11–14).”
(A Latter-day Saint Commentary on the Old Testament [1993], 325–26.)
