Then the king of Assyria took men from Babylon and from Cuthah and Avva and Hamath and Sepharvaim, and put them in the towns of Samaria in place of the children of Israel; so they got Samaria for their heritage, living in its towns.

The men of Babylon made Succoth-benoth, and the men of Cuth made Nergal, and the men of Hamath made Ashima,

At that time, Merodach-baladan, the son of Baladan, king of Babylon, sent letters with an offering to Hezekiah, because he had news that Hezekiah had been ill.

Then Isaiah the prophet came to King Hezekiah and said to him, What did these men say and where did they come from? And Hezekiah said, They came from a far country, even from Babylon.

Truly, days are coming when everything in your house, and whatever your fathers have put in store till this day, will be taken away to Babylon: all will be gone, says the Lord.

And your sons, the offspring of your body, they will take away to be unsexed servants in the house of the king of Babylon.

In his days, Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, came up and Jehoiakim was his servant for three years; then he took up arms against him.

And the king of Egypt did not come out of his land again, for the king of Babylon had taken all his country, from the stream of Egypt to the river Euphrates.

And Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, came there, while his servants were shutting in the town;

Then Jehoiachin, king of Judah, went out to the king of Babylon, with his mother and his servants and his chiefs and his unsexed servants; and in the eighth year of his rule the king of Babylon took him.

He took Jehoiachin a prisoner to Babylon, with his mother and his wives and his unsexed servants and the great men of the land; he took them all as prisoners from Jerusalem to Babylon.

And all the men of war, seven thousand of them, and a thousand expert workmen and metal-workers, all of them strong and able to take up arms, the king of Babylon took away as prisoners into Babylon.

And the king of Babylon made Mattaniah, his father's brother, king in place of Jehoiachin, changing his name to Zedekiah.

And because of the wrath of the Lord, this came about in Jerusalem and Judah, till he had sent them all away from before him: and Zedekiah took up arms against the king of Babylon.

Now in the ninth year of his rule, on the tenth day of the tenth month, Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, came against Jerusalem with all his army and took up his position before it, building earthworks all round the town.

And they made the king a prisoner and took him up to the king of Babylon at Riblah to be judged.

And they put the sons of Zedekiah to death before his eyes, and then they put out his eyes, and chaining him with iron bands, took him to Babylon.

Now in the fifth month, on the seventh day of the month, in the nineteenth year of Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, Nebuzaradan, the captain of the armed men, a servant of the king of Babylon, came to Jerusalem;

And the rest of the people who were still in the town, and all those who had given themselves up to the king of Babylon, and all the rest of the workmen, Nebuzaradan, the captain of the armed men, took away as prisoners;

And the brass pillars in the house of the Lord, and the wheeled bases, and the great brass water-vessel in the house of the Lord, were broken up by the Chaldaeans, who took the brass to Babylon.

These Nebuzaradan, the captain of the armed men, took with him to the king of Babylon at Riblah.

And the king of Babylon put them to death at Riblah in the land of Hamath. So Judah was taken away prisoner from his land.

As for the people who were still living in the land of Judah, whom Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, did not take away, he made Gedaliah, the son of Ahikam, the son of Shaphan, ruler over them.

Now the captains of the armed forces, hearing that the king of Babylon had made Gedaliah ruler, came with their men to Gedaliah at Mizpah; Ishmael, the son of Nethaniah, and Johanan, the son of Kareah, and Seraiah, the son of Tanhumeth the Netophathite, and Jaazaniah, the son of the Maacathite, came with all their men.

Then Gedaliah gave his oath to them and their men, saying, Have no fear because of the servants of the Chaldaeans; go on living in the land under the rule of the king of Babylon, and all will be well.

And in the thirty-seventh year after Jehoiachin, king of Judah, had been taken prisoner, in the twelfth month, on the twenty-seventh day of the month, Evil-merodach, king of Babylon, in the first year of his rule, took Jehoiachin, king of Judah, out of prison;

And said kind words to him, and put his seat higher than the seats of the other kings who were with him in Babylon.