“‘“Here I am commanding,” is the utterance of Jehovah, “and I shall certainly bring them back to this city, and they must fight against it and capture it and burn it with fire; and the cities of Judah I shall make a desolate waste without an inhabitant.”’”​—Jer. 34:17-22; compare Genesis 15:10-18.

9. When after the sabbath year did the siege of Jerusalem begin, how long did this last, and how did the city become an object at which to quake for fear of suffering a like end?

⁹ In 609 B.C.E. the sabbath year ended on the 9th day of the 7th lunar month (Tishri), the day before Atonement Day. After that, on the 10th day of the 10th lunar month (Tebeth) of that same year, Emperor Nebuchadnezzar and his Babylonian military forces opened up their siege of Jerusalem. (2 Ki. 25:1, 2) Eighteen months dragged on till Jerusalem fell, that is, on the 9th day of the 4th lunar month (Tammuz), in 607 B.C.E. In his trying to escape and thus defeat Jehovah’s prophecy, King Zedekiah got only as far as the city of Jericho, and then his Babylonian pursuers caught him. Then they brought him back for a face-to-face meeting with Nebuchadnezzar and to hopeless exile in idolatrous Babylon. (Jer. 34:2, 3) In the following lunar month, or on Ab 7, 607 B.C.E., Jerusalem was looted and burned down. Its desecrated temple of Jehovah did not save it. (2 Ki. 25:3-17) Truly the horrible destruction of Jerusalem was something to make other nations quake in fear of like treatment at the hands of Babylon.

10. Does Christendom quake at that ancient spectacle, and with what will her own destruction start?

¹⁰ However, centuries later the power of the spectacle of Jerusalem in ruins to inspire horror has been lost on Christendom. She does not quake. She sees in the ancient spectacle no prophetic illustration warning her of her own fast approaching destruction on a worldwide scale. This will start off the destruction of all false religion in the greatest tribulation ever to come upon this anti-Jehovah world. It will be as foretold in Matthew 24:15-22.

Later, in the seventh lunar month of that disastrous year, Jeremiah was carried down to Egypt by those panic-stricken men who had rebelled against domination by Babylon. Thus the whole land of the kingdom of Judah became desolate without man or domestic animal. (2 Ki. 25:22-26) Thus the land came to enjoy an unbroken sabbath of 70 years. (2 Chron. 36:20, 21)