Jeremiah 32:4-5

32:4 King Zedekiah of Judah will not escape from the Babylonians. ¹  He will certainly be handed over to the king of Babylon. He must answer personally to the king of Babylon and confront him face to face. ²  32:5 Zedekiah will be carried off to Babylon and will remain there until I have fully dealt with him. ³  I, the Lord, affirm it! ⁴  Even if you ⁵  continue to fight against the Babylonians, ⁶  you cannot win.’”

Jeremiah 52:11

52:11 He had Zedekiah’s eyes put out and had him bound in chains. ⁷  Then the king of Babylon had him led off to Babylon and he was imprisoned there until the day he died.

Jeremiah 52:2

52:2 He did what displeased the Lord ⁸  just as Jehoiakim had done.

Jeremiah 25:7

25:7 So, now the Lord says, ⁹  ‘You have not listened to me. But ¹⁰  you have made me angry by the things that you have done. ¹¹  Thus you have brought harm on yourselves.’

Ezekiel 12:13

12:13 But I will throw my net over him, and he will be caught in my snare. I will bring him to Babylon, the land of the Chaldeans ¹²  (but he will not see it), ¹³  and there he will die. ¹⁴ 

¹ tn Heb “The Chaldeans.” See the study note on 21:4 for further explanation.

² tn Heb “his [Zedekiah’s] mouth will speak with his [Nebuchadnezzar’s] mouth and his eyes will see his eyes.” The verbs here are an obligatory imperfect and its vav consecutive perfect equivalent. (See IBHS 508-9 §31.4g for discussion and examples of the former and IBHS 528 §32.2.1d, n. 16, for the latter.)

³ tn This is the verb (פָּקַד, paqad) that has been met with several times in the book of Jeremiah, most often in the ominous sense of “punish” (e.g., 6:15; 11:22; 23:24) but also in the good sense of “resume concern for” (e.g., 27:22; 29:10). Here it is obviously in the ominous sense referring to his imprisonment and ultimate death (52:11).

⁴ tn Heb “Oracle of the Lord.”

⁵ sn The pronouns are plural here, referring to the people of Judah and Jerusalem. Jeremiah had counseled that they surrender (cf. 27:12; 21:8-10) because they couldn’t succeed against the Babylonian army even under the most favorable circumstances (37:3-10).

⁶ tn Heb “The Chaldeans.” See the study note on 21:4 for further explanation.

⁷ tn Heb “fetters of bronze.” The more generic “chains” is used in the translation because “fetters” is a word unfamiliar to most modern readers.

⁸ tn Heb “what was evil in the eyes of the Lord.”

⁹ tn Heb “Oracle of the Lord.”

¹⁰ tn This is a rather clear case where the Hebrew particle לְמַעַן (lÿma’an) introduces a consequence and not a purpose, contrary to the dictum of BDB 775 s.v. מַעַן note 1. They have not listened to him in order to make him angry but with the result that they have made him angry by going their own way. Jeremiah appears to use this particle for result rather than purpose on several other occasions (see, e.g., 7:18, 19; 27:10, 15; 32:29).

¹¹ tn Heb “make me angry with the work of your hands.” The term “work of your own hands” is often interpreted as a reference to idolatry as is clearly the case in Isa 2:8; 37:19. However, the parallelism in 25:14 and the context in 32:30 show that it is more general and refers to what they have done. That is likely the meaning here as well.

¹² tn Or “Babylonians” (NCV, NLT).

¹³ sn He will not see it. This prediction was fulfilled in 2 Kgs 25:7 and Jer 52:11, which recount how Zedekiah was blinded before being deported to Babylon.

¹⁴ sn There he will die. This was fulfilled when King Zedekiah died in exile (Jer 52:11).