The Day the City Fell

Ezekiel was far away in Babylon, telling his picture-stories by the river. Years before, Nebuchadnezzar had carried off young King Jehoiachin and ten thousand of his people, and left Jehoiachin's uncle, Zedekiah, on the throne in Jerusalem.

Zedekiah promised to obey Babylon. Then he broke his promise.

So the army of Babylon came back and laid siege to the city. (A siege means an army camps in a ring around a city so nothing gets in, not bread, not visitors, not even a letter.) King Zedekiah sent for the prophet Jeremiah.

"Surrender to the king of Babylon," Jeremiah said, "and this city will not be burned. You and your family will live. If not, it will burn, and you will be caught."

Zedekiah was afraid, and he did not go.

For a year and a half the soldiers waited. Inside the walls the bread ran out. One night a shout rang down the streets. "The wall is broken! They're coming through!"

Zedekiah and his soldiers slipped out in the dark, through a gate beside the king's garden, and ran. The Babylonians caught him on the plains near Jericho, and his soldiers scattered. At Riblah the Babylonians killed Zedekiah's sons in front of him. Then they blinded him, bound him in bronze chains, and took him to Babylon. Jeremiah's warning had come true, every word.

A month later Nebuchadnezzar's captain set fire to the temple of the LORD, the king's palace, and every great house in Jerusalem. His men smashed the huge bronze pillars and hauled the pieces to Babylon. They pulled down the walls and killed Seraiah the chief priest and other leaders. Most of the people were marched away. Only the poorest stayed to tend the vineyards.

Why did God let his own city burn? For hundreds of years he had sent prophet after prophet, because he had pity on his people. "Turn back to me!" they called. The people laughed at them and kept bowing to idols. God's warnings had never been pretend.

Babylon put a good man named Gedaliah in charge of the ones left behind, but a man named Ishmael killed him, and everyone who was left ran off to Egypt.

Thirty-seven years after he was carried away, old Jehoiachin was still in a Babylonian prison. Then a new king took the throne, Evil-Merodach. (His name sounds like a storybook villain, but he was the kindest king on this page.) He set Jehoiachin free and spoke kindly to him. "Take off those prison clothes," he said. "From now on you eat at my table." For the rest of his life, a king from David's family ate supper with the king of Babylon.

Still, a seat at someone else's table is not a throne. Jehoiachin died in Babylon and never saw home again. But his family went on, son after son, all the way down to a carpenter named Joseph.

At last another son of that family came to Jerusalem. On his last night he went out of the city in the dark, as Zedekiah had, to a garden. Zedekiah ran from the soldiers. This king waited and let them take him. They led him outside the city wall and killed him, and he carried the punishment for every turning-away, so his people would never be sent away from God again.

On the third day he was alive. Now he opens prison doors, sets a table, and calls people home from far countries to eat with the King.

The King at that table is Jesus, and he never sends his guests away.