Bible Strands
Jeremiah 39:2
And on the ninth day of the fourth month of Zedekiah’s eleventh year, the city was breached.
Berean Standard Bible
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Study note
Setting — The narrative records the fall of Jerusalem to the Babylonian army during the reign of King Zedekiah. It marks the precise moment when the prolonged siege concluded with the city walls broken.
The words — בְּעַשְׁתֵּֽי־עֶשְׂרֵה (be./'ash.tei-'es.Reh) means "in the eleventh" and שָׁנָה (sha.Nah) means "year," anchoring the event to Zedekiah’s eleventh regnal year. לַחֹדֶשׁ הָרְבִיעִי (la./Cho.desh ha./re.vi.'I) translates literally to "of the month the fourth," specifying the fourth month.
The thread — This chronological marker appears in 2 Kings 25:3 and Jeremiah 52:6, but those accounts emphasize severe famine rather than the military breach. The date ties Judah’s fall to the broader narrative of Babylonian conquest.
Why it lands — The verse demands recognition that God’s judgment on Jerusalem reached its irreversible point at a precise historical moment. It calls the reader to acknowledge the fulfillment of prophetic warning through concrete, recorded history.
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 in the eleventh year of Zedekiah, in the fourth month, the ninth day of the month, the city was broken up.
Cross-references
- 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.
- Jeremiah 5:10 Go up through her vineyards and ravage them, but do not finish them off. Strip off her branches, for they do not belong to the LORD.
- 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.
- Ezekiel 33:21 In the twelfth year of our exile, on the fifth day of the tenth month, a fugitive from Jerusalem came to me and reported, “The city has been taken!”
- Micah 2:12 I will surely gather all of you, O Jacob; I will collect the remnant of Israel. I will bring them together like sheep in a pen, like a flock in the midst of its pasture—a noisy throng.
- Zephaniah 1:10 On that day,” declares the LORD, “a cry will go up from the Fish Gate, a wail from the Second District, and a loud crashing from the hills.