According to Josephus, the Egyptian army was beaten in a great battle. Jeremiah alone says it returned to Egypt. The Chaldeans continued the siege of Jerusalem, which lasted for nearly ten years: “The famine prevailed in the city, and there was no bread for the people of the land. And the city was broken up, and all the men of war fled by night by the way of the gate between two walls, which is by the king’s garden. Now, the Chaldeans were against the city round about: and the king went the way toward the plain. And the army of the Chaldeans pursued after the king, and overtook him in the plains of Jericho: and all his army were scattered from him. So they took the king and brought him up to the king of Babylon at Riblah.” The walls of Jerusalem were destroyed, the city was devastated by fire, and great numbers of prisoners were carried off to Babylon. The king of Babylon confided the government of the land to a Jew called Gedaliah, a friend of Jeremiah, and probably, like him, a partisan of peace and submission. Gedaliah established his residence at Mizpah, and announced to the Jews that they had nought to fear in remaining faithful to Nebuchadrezzar. The officers and soldiers who had hidden themselves in the provinces at the time of the taking of Jerusalem, returned in large numbers. A great number of Jews emigrated to Egypt, in spite of the prophecies of Jeremiah, announcing to them that they would be pursued by the vengeance of the king of Babylon, and that Egypt would be conquered. The prophet Ezekiel, one of those transported in Jehoiachin’s time, also prophesied the conquest of Egypt by the Chaldeans. According to Josephus, these predictions were fulfilled. Nebuchadrezzar had beaten and killed Hophra (Apries, Uah-ab-Ra), and had taken away into Chaldea the Jews established in the Delta. But M. Maspero says, “Egyptian accounts do not allow of admitting the authenticity of this tradition; on the contrary, they prove that Nebuchadrezzar met with a serious reverse.” An appendix to the Book of Jeremiah talks of 745 Jews carried away to Babylon five years after the fall of Jerusalem; but it is probable that they were taken from among those who had remained in Judea after the murder of Gedaliah. According to these passages, the total number of those transported thrice in the reign of Nebuchadrezzar would be forty-six hundred souls. This number is so weak that one might think the author had counted only the heads of the family. The Lamentations attributed to Jeremiah offer us a poetical picture of the misery of Jerusalem and Judea after the Chaldean conquest: