Judah’s end was drawn out. The first exiles went to Babylon in 605 bc; this chapter depicts the siege which culminated in the fall of the city and the capture of Zedekiah in 587 (v 20). The descriptions are by now familiar: the slow death by starvation (v 9), the inability of mothers to feed their young (v 4), the rich reduced to living skeletons (vv 7,8) ,…