s were connected with levers, and the powerful recoil would send the
strong and sharp arrow a great distance.

Some of the machines were large enough to discharge beams loaded with
iron; and one kind, called the balista, would send great stones,
crushing through the houses on which they fell.

Among the spoil, taken by Nebuchadnezzar to Babylon, were the costly
vessels of the temple; and he graced his train with members of the royal
family and the principal nobles.

He placed Zedekiah on the throne of his Hebrew province, who soon after
rebelled against him.

In consequence of this revolt, the Babylonian king invaded Judea with a
great army, and, after taking most of the principal towns, sat down
before Jerusalem. Early in the next year the Egyptians marched an army
to the relief of their ally, but being intimidated by the alacrity with
which the Babylonians raised the siege and advanced to give them battle,
they returned home without risking an engagement. The return of the
Chaldeans to the siege, destroyed all the hopes which the approach of
the Egyptian succors had excited. The siege was now prosecuted with
redoubled vigor; and at length Jerusalem was taken by storm at midnight,
in the eleventh year of Zedekiah, and in the eighteenth month from the
commencement of the siege. Dreadful was the carnage. The people, young
and old, were slaughtered wherever they appeared; and even the temple
was no refuge for them; the sacred courts streamed with blood. Zedekiah
himself, with his family and some friends, contrived to escape from the
city; but he was overtaken and captured in the plains of Jericho. He was
sent in chains to Nebuchadnezzar, who had left the conclusion of the war
to his generals, and was then at Riblah in Syria. After sternly
reproving him for his ungrateful conduct, the conqueror ordered all the
sons of Zedekiah to be slain before his eyes, and then his own eyes to
be put out, thus making the slaughter of his children the last sight on
which his tortured memory could dwell. He was afterward sent in fetters
of brass to Babylon, where he remained until his death.

Nebuchadnezzar evidently felt that his purposes had not been fully
executed by the army, or else he was urged by the Edomites and others to
exceed his first intentions. He therefore sent Nebuzaradan, the captain
of the guard, with a sufficient force to complete the desolation of
Judah and Jerusalem. He burned the city and the temple to the ground