All your leaders have fled together; they have been captured without using the bow. All you who were caught were taken prisoner together, having fled while the enemy was still far away. – Isaiah 22:3

Today’s Scripture Reading (February 18, 2020): Isaiah 22

In 587 B.C.E., Nebuchadnezzar laid siege to Jerusalem. Depending on the account, the attack on the city lasted between eighteen and thirty months. Finally, Nebuchadnezzar broke through the walls of the city ending the siege. As the Babylonians entered the city, King Zedekiah attempted to escape with some of his followers, but they were caught on the plains of Jericho and recaptured. Zedekiah was then forced to watch as the Babylonians killed his sons, and then the King was blinded and taken captive. The King was never allowed to be a free man again. He died as a prisoner of the Babylonians. The last thing that he would see with his eyes was the death of his sons.

After the fall of the city, the Babylonian general Nebuzaraddan was dispatched to finish the job of dismantling the city. Jerusalem was leveled, including the beloved Temple of Solomon, and anything valuable was removed and taken back to Babylon. Most of the people were also removed from the land and taken to Babylon, but a lucky few remained to toil on the now vacant farms. Gedediah was made governor over the remnant left in Judah, and a few of the people who had run at the onset of the siege returned to the nation to live and work once more. But after only two months, Gedediah was assassinated, and everyone left in the land escaped to the relative safety of Egypt.

In our romantic view of sieges, often, we envision a lengthy battle as those within the walls fight against those on the outside, but that does not seem to have happened here. There does not seem to be any kind of a fight by the inhabitants of the city against the Babylonian onslaught. Those outside the city when the siege began ran, even though no one was following them. Those inside the city either died of famine or disease or were taken captive when the walls of the city finally came down.

And all of this was the fulfillment of a prophecy that Isaiah had written down well over a hundred years earlier. Jerusalem had died with a whimper, and the city of David was left to be returned to nature.

Tomorrow’s Scripture Reading: Isaiah 23