Zedekiah צדקיהו מלך יהודה

Mattaniah, uncle of the deported Jehoiachin and son of Josiah, was made king by Nebuchadnezzar himself and renamed Zedekiah. He was twenty-one and reigned eleven years (2 Kings 24:17–18).

His whole reign passed between two forces: Jeremiah, who said that Babylon must be submitted to and life preserved, and the officers, who called for alliance with Egypt. The king listened to both and resolved on nothing; he summoned the prophet in secret to ask him, then handed him over to the men who threw him into the pit. In his ninth year he rebelled, and Nebuchadnezzar laid siege to the city.

The siege lasted about thirty months. On the ninth day of the fourth month of the eleventh year the bread ran out, the wall was breached, and the king fled by night through the garden towards the Arabah. He was overtaken in the plains of Jericho; his sons were slaughtered before his eyes, and then he himself was blinded and taken to Babylon in fetters (2 Kings 25:1–7). The Talmud notes that here two seemingly incompatible prophecies met: Jeremiah said he would «come to Babylon», Ezekiel that he would «not see Babylon». Both came true literally.

A little over a month later, on the ninth of Av in AM 3338, the Temple was burned. His reign was AM 3327–3338 by the traditional count, 597–586 BCE by the academic one.