The siege lasted almost exactly a year and a half. Its calamities - famine, pestilence, and intense suffering - are best understood from the Lamentations of Jeremiah, written probably almost immediately after the capture.

And the city was besieged, etc. - Nebuchadnezzar, having routed the Egyptian army, returned to Jerusalem, and besieged it so closely that, being reduced by famine, and a breach made in the wall, the Chaldeans entered it on the ninth day of the fourth month, (Wednesday, July 27), Zedekiah and many others endeavoring to make their escape by night.

"And the city was besieged till the eleventh year of king Zedekiah," in which the northern wall of the city was broken through on the ninth day of the fourth month (2-Kings 25:3). That Jerusalem could sustain a siege of this duration, namely eighteen months, shows what the strength of the fortifications must have been. Moreover the siege was interrupted for a short time, when the approach of the Egyptian king Hophra compelled the Chaldaeans to march to meet him and drive him back, which they appear to have succeeded in doing without a battle (cf. Jeremiah 37:5., Ezekiel 17:7).