Bible Strands
2 Kings 25:3
By the ninth day of the fourth month, the famine in the city was so severe that the people of the land had no food.
Berean Standard Bible
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Study note
Setting — The narrator documents the chronological progression of Jerusalem’s siege during King Zedekiah’s eleventh year, marking the point when the blockade reaches its critical threshold.
The words — וַיֶּחֱזַק (va/yi·che·zak) literally means "and it was strong" or "severe," directly modifying הָרָעָב (ha·ra·av), "the famine," to describe its intensification within the city walls.
The thread — The text’s description of starvation under siege directly fulfills the covenant warnings in Leviticus 26:26 and Deuteronomy 28:52, and mirrors the precise conditions outlined in Jeremiah 38:2.
Why it lands — The passage requires the reader to acknowledge that sustained deprivation eliminates all alternatives, compelling a direct confrontation with the reality of surrender or death.
Drafted by a language model from the text, its original words and its cross-references, then checked against them. It can still be wrong: open the verse in the app to report it.
The Hebrew words
King James Version
And on the ninth day of the fourth month the famine prevailed in the city, and there was no bread for the people of the land.
Cross-references
- Leviticus 26:26 When I cut off your supply of bread, ten women will bake your bread in a single oven and dole out your bread by weight, so that you will eat but not be satisfied.
- Deuteronomy 28:52 They will besiege all the cities throughout your land, until the high and fortified walls in which you trust have fallen. They will besiege all your cities throughout the land that the LORD your God has given you.
- Jeremiah 38:2 “This is what the LORD says: Whoever stays in this city will die by sword and famine and plague, but whoever surrenders to the Chaldeans will live; he will retain his life like a spoil of war, and he will live.
- Jeremiah 52:6 By the ninth day of the fourth month, the famine in the city was so severe that the people of the land had no food.
- Lamentations 4:4 The nursing infant’s tongue clings in thirst to the roof of his mouth. Little children beg for bread, but no one gives them any.
- Ezekiel 5:12 A third of your people will die by plague or be consumed by famine within you, a third will fall by the sword outside your walls, and a third I will scatter to every wind and unleash a sword behind them.
- Ezekiel 7:15 The sword is outside; plague and famine are within. Those in the country will die by the sword, and those in the city will be devoured by famine and plague.
- Ezekiel 14:21 For this is what the Lord GOD says: ‘How much worse will it be when I send against Jerusalem My four dire judgments—sword, famine, wild beasts, and plague—in order to cut off from it both man and beast?
- Jeremiah 37:21 So King Zedekiah gave orders for Jeremiah to be placed in the courtyard of the guard and given a loaf of bread daily from the street of the bakers, until all the bread in the city was gone. So Jeremiah remained in the courtyard of the guard.
- Jeremiah 39:2 And on the ninth day of the fourth month of Zedekiah’s eleventh year, the city was breached.