his friends perverted him, and dissuaded him
from what the prophet advised, and obliged him to do what they pleased.
Ezekiel also foretold in Babylon what calamities were coming upon the
people, which when he heard, he sent accounts of them unto Jerusalem.
But Zedekiah did not believe their prophecies, for the reason following:
It happened that the two prophets agreed with one another in what they
said as in all other things, that the city should be taken, and Zedekiah
himself should be taken captive; but Ezekiel disagreed with him, and
said that Zedekiah should not see Babylon, while Jeremiah said to him,
that the king of Babylon should carry him away thither in bonds....

3. Now when Zedekiah had preserved the league of mutual assistance he
had made with the Babylonians for eight years, he brake it, and revolted
to the Egyptians, in hopes, by their assistance, of overcoming the
Babylonians. When the king of Babylon knew this, he made war against
him: he laid his country waste, and took his fortified towns, and came
to the city Jerusalem itself to besiege it. But when the king of Egypt
heard what circumstances Zedekiah his ally was in, he took a great army
with him, and came into Judea, as if he would raise the siege;
upon which the king of Babylon departed from Jerusalem, and met the
Egyptians, and joined battle with them, and beat them; and when he had
put them to flight, he pursued them, and drove them out of all Syria.
Now as soon as the king of Babylon was departed from Jerusalem, the
false prophets deceived Zedekiah, and said that the king of Babylon
would not any more make war against him or his people, nor remove them
out of their own country into Babylon; and that those then in captivity
would return, with all those vessels of the temple of which the king
of Babylon had despoiled that temple. But Jeremiah came among them, and
prophesied what contradicted those predictions, and what proved to be
true, that they did ill, and deluded the king; that the Egyptians would
be of no advantage to them, but that the king of Babylon would renew
the war against Jerusalem, and besiege it again, and would destroy the
people by famine, and carry away those that remained into captivity,
and would take away what they had as spoils, and would carry off those
riches that were in the temple; nay, that, besides this, he would burn
it, and utterly overthrow the city, and that they should serve him and
his posterity seventy years; tha