2 Kings 25:4

And the city was broken up.

Rather, "broken into.". breach was made in the walls through Which the enemy entered. Josephus says that the entrance was made at midnight, and Ezekiel says (9:2) that the breach was in the northern wall. On all other sides the city was defended by deep ravines, on the steep sides of which the walls stood. We quote Dean Stanley's description of the capture, based on numerous passages of Scripture and Josephus:

"It was at midnight, on the ninth day of the fourth month, still kept as. fast by the Jewish nation, that the breach was made in the walls. By that time the famine had so exhausted the inhabitants that there was no further power of resistance. The entrance was effected by the northern gate. Through the darkness of the night, lit up if at all, by the nine days' moon, the Chaldean guards silently made their way from street to street, till they suddenly appeared in the center of the temple court, in the middle gateway which opened directly on the great brazen altar. Never before had such. spectacle been seen in the inviolable sanctuary of Jerusalem. The number, the titles, of the chiefs who took the chief places, were all recorded (Jeremiah 39:3). Two of them bore. name famous in Babylonian annals,--Nergal-Sharezar or Neriglissar.. *. *. Then the sleeping city woke.It might well seem as if from the desecrated temple was heard the rushing wings of the departing cherubs, as if Jehovah had indeed cast off the altar, round which these savage warriors stood, the sanctuary, which they had made their own.. clang and. cry resounded through the silent precincts of that dread hour of night as if with the tumult of the great festivals. The first victims were those who were the habitual occupants of the sacred buildings; the prophets who crowded there in the vain hope that the temple was impregnable; the nobles who there pursued their idolatrous rites; the young Levites and priests who were bound to defend the sacred shrine with their swords and lives. The virgin marble of the courts ran red with blood like. rocky wine-press with the vintage."

All the men of war fled.

Jeremiah 52:7 says: "And the city was broken into, and all the men of war fled, and went out of the city by night by the way of the gate between two walls," etc. "Before the dawn the king, with his wives and children, and the royal guard, escaped, not by any of the regular gates, but by. passage broken through. narrow alley, between two walls, at the southeast corner of the city, which the Chaldeans had not been able to completely invest. They passed out with their heads muffled, either for disguise, or to express their sense of the greatness of the calamity, and bearing on their shoulders such articles of value as they hoped to save."

And the king went the way toward the plain.

The plain of the lower Jordan, on the road that leads over Olivet and down to Jericho. He sought to escape into the country east of the Jordan.