first work of the besiegers is refuted by Eze 17:17 and Eze 21:27), but a watch, and that in a collective sense: watch-towers or siege-towers (cf. Ges. thes. p. 330, and Hävernick on Eze 4:2).
Verse 2
2Ki 25:2 “And the city was besieged till the eleventh year of king Zedekiah,” in which the northern wall of the city was broken through on the ninth day of the fourth month (2Ki 25:3). That Jerusalem could sustain a siege of this duration, namely eighteen months, shows what the strength of the fortifications must have been. Moreover the siege was interrupted for a short time, when the approach of the Egyptian king Hophra compelled the Chaldaeans to march to meet him and drive him back, which they appear to have succeeded in doing without a battle (cf. Jer 37:5., Eze 17:7).
Verses 3-4
Trusting partly to the help of the Egyptians and partly to the strength of Jerusalem, Zedekiah paid no attention to the repeated entreaties of Jeremiah, that he would save himself with his capital and people from the destruction which was otherwise inevitable, by submitting, to the Chaldaeans (cf. Jer 38:17, Jer 38:18), but allowed things to reach their worst, until the famine became so intense, that inhuman horrors were perpetrated (cf. Lam 2:20-21; Lam 4:9-10), and eventually a breach was made in the city wall on the ninth day of the fourth month. The statement of the month is omitted in our text, where the words הרביעי בּחרשׁ (Jer 52:6, cf. Jer 39:2) have fallen out before בּתשׁעה (2Ki 25:3, commencement) through the oversight of a copyist. The overwhelming extent of the famine is mentioned, not “because the people were thereby rendered quite unfit to offer any further resistance” (Seb. Schm.), but as a proof of the truth of the prophetic announcements (Lev 26:29; Deu 28:53-57; Jer 15:2; Jer 27:13; Eze 4:16-17). הארץ עם are the common people in Jerusalem, or the citizens of the capital. From the more minute account of the entrance of the enemy into the city in Jer 39:3-5 we learn that the Chaldaeans made a breach in the northern or outer wall of the lower city, i.e., the second wall, built by Hezekiah and Manasseh (2Ch 32:5; 2Ch 33:14), and forced their way into the lower city (המּשׁנה, 2Ki 22:14), so that their generals took their stand at the gate of the centre, which was in the wall that separated the lower city from the upper city upon Zion, and formed the passage from the one to the other. When Zedekiah saw them here, he fled by night with the soldiers out of the city, through the gate
