“And in the eleventh year of Zedekiah, in the fourth month, the ninth day of the month, the city was broken up.”
My Notes
What Does Jeremiah 39:2 Mean?
"In the eleventh year of Zedekiah, in the fourth month, the ninth day of the month, the city was broken up." The fall of Jerusalem is recorded with exactness: the specific year, month, and day. The precision is the precision of heartbreak — this date will be remembered for generations. The ninth of Tammuz became a fast day in Jewish tradition.
The phrase "broken up" (baqa) means breached, split open. The walls that had held for eighteen months of siege finally gave way. The breach wasn't negotiated or gradual — the wall was broken through, and the city's defenses collapsed.
The eleventh year of Zedekiah's reign means the siege lasted approximately two and a half years. Two and a half years of starvation, disease, and diminishing hope before the walls finally broke. The date records not just a military event but the end of an era — the Davidic kingdom, the city of God, the Temple of Solomon — all lost on this specific day.
Reflection Questions
- 1.Do you have a date that changed everything — a day the walls broke?
- 2.How does God recording the exact date of Jerusalem's fall affect how you think He views your own moments of collapse?
- 3.What was it like during the 'siege' — the long period before the break?
- 4.How do you rebuild after the walls come down?
Devotional
The ninth day of the fourth month. The eleventh year of Zedekiah. The city was broken up. The most important date in the Old Testament is recorded with the precision of a death certificate.
Two and a half years of siege. Two and a half years of dwindling food, dwindling water, dwindling hope. And then the walls broke. The defenses that held day after day finally gave way, and everything behind them — the Temple, the palace, the city, the kingdom — was exposed to destruction.
The precision of the date is the precision of trauma. Survivors remember the exact moment. The day the diagnosis came. The day the marriage ended. The day the call arrived. You remember the day because everything changed on it. Before that date, the walls held. After that date, everything was different.
Jerusalem's fall was prophesied for decades. Jeremiah said it was coming. The people didn't believe him. And then, on the ninth of Tammuz, the wall broke, and everything the prophet warned about became reality in a single day.
Do you have a ninth-of-Tammuz date? A day when the walls you thought would hold were broken up? The precision of your memory of that date tells you something: it changed everything. And the fact that God records it with such precision in His Word says: He knows. He was there. He remembers the exact day too.
Commentary
Trusted original commentary from respected historical Bible scholars and theologians.
And in the eleventh year of Zedekiah, in the fourth month,.... The month Tammuz, which answers to part of June, and part…
We were told, in the close of the foregoing chapter, that Jeremiah abode patiently in the court of the prison, until the…
Jer 39:3. and sat to carry out the matters arising from the capture.
Nergal-sharezer, etc.] From the Eng. it would…
Cross References
Related passages throughout Scripture