The Destruction of Jerusalem

00:00:00 Speaker 1: Previously on the Chosen people. The siege arrived like a slow mounting tide. King nebukad Nezza was patient, inevitable take them. The army of Babylon was released like wolves. Every corner of the city was ransacked. Men were killed, priests were put on pikes, and the monuments to Judah's former greatness were burnt to a crisp. The work of Solomon ashes the legacy of David Rubbel. Nebukad Nezza knew better than to simply subjugate a people. He wanted them to lose all sense of culture and history. He wanted their heritage diluted and their heroes forgotten. For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord. Plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you and a future. And somewhere in the temple once the footstool of the Most High, the smoke no longer rose, because the covenant had been broken, not just once, but a thousand times, that the God of Jacob was still watching, waiting. 00:01:26 Speaker 2: Shello, my friends from here in the Holy Land of Israel, i'm Ya l Extein with the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews and welcome to the Chosen People. Each day we'll hear a dramatic story inspired by the Bible, stories filled with timeless lessons of faith, love, and the meaning of life. Through Israel's story, we will find this truth that we are all chosen for something great. So take a moment today to follow the podcast. If you're feeling extra grateful for these stories, we would love it if you let does a review. I read every single one of them, and if you're interested in hearing more about the prophetic, life saving work of the Fellowship, you can visit IFCJ dot Org. Let's begin. 00:02:16 Speaker 1: There was a moment, a flicker of mercy, a single breath suspended between empire and annihilation. It was the moment when King Zedekiah could have listened to the Lord, he could have bent, could have lived. But Judah's final king, like everyone before him, had confused humility with humiliation. Underneath his borrowed crown and ceremonial rogues, he was afraid, afraid of Nebel Dadlezza, afraid of the Lord, afraid of Jeremiah's voice, afraid to act, and more afraid to be still. He ruled for eleven years, not with wisdom, not with tyranny, but with crippling indecision. His reign was a slow, passive descent into doom. In the half lit palace hall, taut light flickered off golden columns. No one polished anymore. The walls echoed with the absence of faith. Zedekiah paced each step heavier than the last. His eyes were ringed with sleeplessness, his movements to Kato with anxiety. The few advisors who hadn't fled or defected stood in a line, hollow eyed and tight lipped, as if their very presence could be held against them. 00:03:51 Speaker 3: We can't keep babbling to God. We can't keep bowing bowing to babbleon Babylon. What's left of our people are restless. But we we must at We must act, my Lord. 00:04:04 Speaker 1: Rebellion means death. Nebugineszza does not know mercy, but the. 00:04:10 Speaker 3: But the Lord. But the Lord does. Perhaps he will will deliver. 00:04:14 Speaker 1: Us were so far gone. If the Lord was to act, wouldn't he have already? The words were heavy. No one said anything after that. Beneath the palace, beneath the streets, beneath even the prayers, there was a pit not a prison, her tomb with air, a hole carved into the shame of a nation that could no longer hear its own prophet. At the bottom of that pit lay the prophet Jeremiah, broken but unbent, muttering scripture and warnings in equal measure. His wrists were bruised from rope, his lips cracked from thirst that the fire in his bones was lit and refused to be put out. He leaned his head against the cold stone, sighing another prayer. Then from above, her voice sneered into the dark. 00:05:14 Speaker 3: Still alive. 00:05:15 Speaker 1: Down there, pride, still alive, still prophesighing, would you like to hear the word of God again? 00:05:23 Speaker 4: We heard enough, doole for a lunton. 00:05:27 Speaker 1: You haven't heard enough, not nearly enough. They all thought if they ignored Jeremiah long enough, he'd die off like an infection. But prophets don't die easily. Jeremiah's voice had haunted Jerusalem for years, scraping the temple walls, bleeding through palace corridors. They jailed him, beat him, starved him, called him a traitor. But the Lord didn't stop speaking, and Jeremiah, God help him, didn't stop listening. Outside the city The second siege didn't come like thunder. It came like cancer. Quiet, total, slow. Babylonian armies surrounded the city with the patients. Nebukat Neza was a brutal man, but he was no barbarian. He was calculated and understood the worth of every body. Every man he slaid was one less hand to aid in building his empire. He wouldn't butcher them carelessly, but he was not a king of mercy. He came, and he came with strength. There were no demands, no battles, just the sound of gaits sealing from the outside, a silence that choked hope like a noose. Inside a crumbling home near the city wall, a woman stirred a pot, not of food, just water. She moved slowly, not out of reverence, but because starvation had stolen her strength. Her child watched, eyes wide and glassy, ribs like blades beneath his skin. The child whined in hunger, wondering if his mother was cooking something for him. She wasn't, She couldn't. Around the city, the whispers spread like rot of rats roasted over coals of leather, belts softened in boiling water, of infants buried without names. Every alley carried stories of mothers holding silence where children used to be. The prophets kept screaming. No one listened any more. In the royal chambers, Zadekiah sat alone, the sound of wailing rising through the stone beneath his feet like a fumve dirge that never ended. He unrolled a scroll with shaking fingers, Jeremiah's handwriting, smuggled in by someone still foolish enough. 00:08:08 Speaker 4: To hope surrender. There is no other way. 00:08:14 Speaker 1: This is not abandonment, this is discipline. Yahweh weeps, but he does not relent. Zadekiah crumpled the parchment. 00:08:25 Speaker 3: And wept, thank you, thank you. I can't be I can't be the king who surrenders. 00:08:37 Speaker 1: But the fool didn't realize that he already was. The choice had been made two years past, two years of starvation and silence, two years of priests pretending the lord still lived behind the veil, two years of prayer echoing off like stones off a dead wall. And then it happened. The ram came at the edge of night. Babylon's battering Ram strut Joson's wall with the force of divine judgment, stones split fire followed, the defenses crumbled. Zedekiah fled like a coward. Long gone were the days of King David, valiantly roaring into battle ahead of his armies. Zedekiah ran like a frightened rabbit. He ran through the garden and the broken palace gate. With his sons and his guards at his side. He ran toward the plains, toward Jericho, toward the faint, impossible hope that Judgment could still be outrung. But it couldn't. In the dust of the plains, Babylonian soldiers closed in. They came slowly, purposeful, They didn't rush, and the helm was King nebukud Nezza, clad in dark, polished armor. They turned the corner, meeting Zedekiah in flight. Zedekiah's eyes widened in horror. He tried to turn, but his frantic sons behind him caused him to trip. Nebukud Neza sighed and softly commanded his archer in the sun. His archer was quick and precise, releasing an arrow that hit Zedekiah square in the right shoulder. The King of Judah writhed on the floor. The Babylonians marched forward, surrounding Zedekiah and his sons. The king of Babylon sauntered towards Zedekiah. The King of Judah held out his one good arm with pleas for mercy. Please me, please, Lord. 00:11:12 Speaker 4: Quiet. 00:11:14 Speaker 1: The hulking man gave a swift kick Toa's ribs, knocking the air out of his lungs. He drew his sword and named its tip at one of Zedekiah's sons. I made you king, Saidekah, I gave you Judah. 00:11:32 Speaker 3: I know, I know you were, You were more than fair. 00:11:39 Speaker 1: Yet you broke your oath. Nebuchadnezza unceremoniously drove his dagger into the throat of Zedekiah's oldest sad. 00:11:54 Speaker 3: Why boy, I said quite. 00:12:00 Speaker 1: He strode to the other boy, who was bound by his soldiers. He slashed his throat with cold quiet ease. 00:12:09 Speaker 4: I'm a man of war zidegaya unquiest glory as such, I must be a man who. 00:12:19 Speaker 1: Moves another son another blade to the throat. I've read rod Moses standing against Merrow. I've read about Joshua toppling a fortified wall of your forefather, bathing slaying a giant. The Babylonian king drove his sword downward into Zedekiah, the youngest son, letting the steel sink deep and remain there. He then turned and retrieved a hot iron from the hearth near by, its tip pulsed with white hot intensity. Nebucha Nezza leaned forward, Zedekiah. 00:13:01 Speaker 4: And poor of your exists, ties with you, you cowld the letic, sniveling, double minded dog. 00:13:11 Speaker 1: He pressed the iron rod forward into Zedekiah's eyes. Zedekiah thrashed. The guards held him still. He did not scream, now he couldn't. He just convulsed, then silence. His hands claweded, his face, blood running down his beard in streams. The sockets were blackened voids, and in that void he was still alive, alive to remember to carry the last thing he ever saw, burned onto the back of his ruined eyelids, his sons dying one by one. They chained him after that led him away. The man who once sat on David's throne, who once signed decrees in God's name, was now just a blind animal being hauled off to a foreign zoo. Not a king, not a man, just a cautionary tale in the dark pit of a Babylonian prison cell. Zedekiah sat his hands rested in his lap, like they had forgotten how to pray. His eyes now just scars, stared at nothing. Sometimes he whispered scripture what he could remember, which was very little. Sometimes he cried, but mostly he was silent. This was how it ended, the last King of Judah. The line of David was broken, the walls of Jerusalem cracked, The Covenant was scattered like bones across a battlefield. But despite what so many living in this darkness thought, the Lord was not gone. He was in the pit with Jeremiah. He was in the dust beside Ezekiel. He was standing next to young Daniel in a foreign court. Because judgment is not absence, its presence in the fire. It is mercy disguised as ruin. It is exile, not as an ending, but as a beginning. It took eleven days to unmake a city that took centuries to build, eleven days for King nebukud Nezza to turn the Covenant people into a valley of dry bones. He did not rage, he did not roar. He moved through Zion like a surgeon through cancer, laid steady, expression, blank, dissecting every sacred thing Judah thought untouchable. And when he stood in the temple courts beneath the massive bronze pillars beside the altar, soaked in generations of prayer, he didn't tremble. He smiled, not cruelly, not joyfully, just professionally. None of this was personal. It was business, the business of conquest. Morning broke through the smoke on the temple mount. The priests who hadn't been slaughtered during the initial breach now stood barefoot in the outer court, wrapped in sackcloth, eyes wide with the kind of disbelief that doesn't leave room for words. Some still held incense burners, shaking hands, lifting them like shields against death. Others mouthed psalms, the old songs, the ones they learned as children in temple schools that no longer stood. How lovely is your dwelling place, O, Lord Almighty. The temple gates thudded my soul, yerns, even faints for the courts of the Lord. The hinges were breaking, the onslaught was coming. My heart and my flesh high out oil, living god coals from the burning battering rams spat through the cracks of the gates. Better is one day in your courts? Better is one day in your house? Better? Thousand elsewhere, the gates gave way, and swiftly, turning to ash. Beneath the blue flames, the priests beheld the force of Babylon, armed with spears and torches. Lord Almighty, bless it are those who trusted. New Fiery arrows filled the smoke filled skies like stars against the night, and then the flames touched gold. The fire reached the temple, and, licking along the beams like the fire itself, wanted to savor the taste of holiness, and then it devoured. Babylonian soldiers tore through the sacred walls with sound and fury. They didn't dismantle, they desecrated. The inner court collapsed under bootn blade. Not one stone was left on another. They ransacked God's house, and the temple was utterly consumed, along with the hope of Israel. It was dark inside the temple sanctuary, the Lord's footstool. It was the place where Heaven once touched earth, but now it was a relic. The sacred vessels were ripped from their stations, gold basins, silver trumpets and bowls sanctified with generations of blood and incense, were torn down, carried out, and piled like trophies. Load them on Mamylon will melt down the worship of this god alternity decurrency. A young priest no older than twenty lunged, his voice cracked with grief and fury. No, that gold is holy, that buyer is forbidden. You'll regret tampering with it. A soldier came to thrust a spear in the young man's belly, but the king stopped him, to me, what do you think will happen if I play with your God's toys? Our people have stories, stories of men being struck dead for even touching such things in good faith. Let alone with disgrace. Our God is not marked. Nebuchadnezzar didn't move, He didn't argue, He nodded. Once her Babylonian soldier stepped forward. One thrust. The boy found beneath the manora. The palace went next. The throne room, where David once played hard, was soaked in blood and ash. Lions embroidered into velvet curtains, shriveled in the flames, the cedar beams brought down from Lebanon generations ago to declare the glory of Israel's kingship. Split and hissed like serpents as they turned to cinders. Then came the walls, then the town, than the homes, then the people. The ones who fled were cut down in alleys. The ones who stayed were dragged from hiding places and made to watch. No one died with dignity. They died with open mouths, screaming or praying. The two were one and the same. By sunset, the city was unrecognizable. Streets, once filled with pilgrims and laughter, now choked with smoke and silence. Bodies slumped in heaps like punctuation marks to unfinished prayers. Mothers wandered arms, empty eyes, searching for children already turned to ash. Dogs licked the blood from stones, and somewhere in the smoke, Jeremiah stumbled through the rubble. His robe hung in tatters, his voice was hoarse. He collapsed near the remains of the city gate, ash caking his face. Jeremiah looked up at Zion. Her towers were shattered, her sanctuary gone, her streets soaked in blood. And then the prophets screamed, not words, wailing, rage, despair. This wasn't just a conquest. It was uncreation, genesis in reverse, the undoing of Sinai. It felt like the very end of the Covenant. The priests were slaughtered, the scrolls reduced to floating flecks of carbon, the temple now just broken stone and melting gold. A God shaped hole was carved into the city in the city square. What remained of the people were bound in chains. Bakers, stonecutters, scribes, poets, singers, every voice that once defined the soul of Judah now herded like cattle toward a future they did not choose. Jeremiah fell to his knees in sorrow. He stumbled to a ridge on his hands and knees, watching his people march in Babylonian chains. The wind whispered something a prophecy, a promise, his trembling voice calling out over the ridge for the chosen people to hear. Hear the words of your God, O Israel. 00:23:41 Speaker 2: When seventy years are completed for Babylon, I will send for you. 00:23:46 Speaker 1: I will set you free and bring you back to this place. For I know the plans I. 00:23:52 Speaker 4: Have for you, plans to prosper and not harm you. Plans to give you hope and a future. Then you will call on me, Come and pray to me, and I will listen. You will seek me and find me. When you seek me with all your heart, I will be found by you and will bring you back from captivity. I will gather you from all the nations and places where I have banished you, and will bring you back to my arms. 00:24:29 Speaker 1: The children of God were silent after that, because hope doesn't always need to shout. Sometimes it simply breathes. Jeremiah's words were not a revival. They were not the beginning of restoration. Those words were something different, stranger, holier. This was mercy where it shouldn't have been. This was grace leaking through the cracks of pain. This was the whisper in the smoke, the ember in the ash, the broken covenant still breathing because the Lord had not forgotten. Mercy hides in margins. The God who once thundered from Sinai knows how to set a table. Even in Babylon, ash still covered Zion like a burial cloth. Bones still littered the valley, The temple was still gone. The king was blind, the ark was missing, the songs were faint, but hope, Hope was eating dinner in Babylon, and the Lord was not done, not even close. 00:25:52 Speaker 2: If your faith has been kindled by this podcast and it has affected your life, we'd love it if you left her of view. We read them, and me personally, I cherish them as you venture forth boldly and faithfully. I leave you with the biblical blessing from numbers six ivare hashem vischmerechra, Yeah Heir hashempanave eleven ye sa hashempanave Lechra. 00:26:21 Speaker 1: Salon. 00:26:22 Speaker 2: May the Lord bless you and keep you. May the Lord make his face shine upon you. May he be gracious to you. May the Lord turn his face towards you and give you peace. 00:26:34 Speaker 1: Amen. You can listen to The Chosen People with Isle Exstein add free by downloading and subscribing to the pray dot Com app today. This prey dog com production is only made possible by our dedicated team of creative talents. Steve Katina, Max Bard, Zach Shellavaga and Ben Gammon are the executive producers of the Chosen People with Yaile Exstein. Edited by Alberto Ave narrated by Paul Coltofianu. Characters are voiced by Jonathan Cotton, Aaron Salvado, Sarah Seltz, Mike Reagan, Stephen Ringwold, Sylvia Zaradoc, Thomas Copeland Junior, Rosanna Pilcher, and Mitch Leshinsky, and the opening prayer is voiced by John Moore. Music by Andrew Morgan Smith, written by Aaron Salvado, bre Rosalie and Chris Baig. Special thanks to Bishop Paul Lanier, Robin van Ettin, Kayleb Burrows, Jocelyn Fuller, Rabbi Edward Abramson, and the team at International Fellowship of Christians and Jews. 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