Five years had elapsed since the battle of Karchemish when Nebuchadnezzar crossed the borders of Judah (600 B.C.).[613] Jehoiakim submitted and thus escaped destruction. After the subjugation of Ammon, Moab, and Judah, Nebuchadnezzar could turn his arms against the southern coast of Syria. This advance of Nebuchadnezzar and the necessity of preventing Babylonia from establishing herself on the borders of Egypt, could not but bring Egypt again into arms. Necho had had time to recover from the defeat of Karchemish. The hope of aid from Egypt induced Jehoiakim to renounce his obedience three years after he had submitted to Nebuchadnezzar, and to turn his arms against Babylonia. At Nebuchadnezzar's command the troops of the neighbouring states who had remained loyal, the Northern Syrians, the Ammonites, and Moabites, first invaded the land of Judah. When the Egyptians had been driven back into their borders, and the king of Babylon had "taken everything that belonged to the king of Egypt from the river Euphrates to the brook of Egypt," Nebuchadnezzar turned his arms back against Jerusalem to punish the rebels.[614] Jehoiakim had recently died, and the people had raised to the throne his son Jechoniah, a youth of eighteen years old. Jerusalem was invested by the Babylonian army: Nebuchadnezzar came in person to conduct the siege.[615] "By my life,"--such are the words Jeremiah puts in the mouth of Jehovah,--"if Jechoniah were a signet on my right hand, I would pluck him off, and give him into the hands of those who seek after his life, into the hands of the Chaldæans. I cast thee away and thy mother into another land, and they shall not bring thee back unto the land whither thy heart yearns to return."[616] Jechoniah had only sat three months on the throne when he saw himself compelled by the advance of the siege to open the gates of Jerusalem to the enemy. With his mother Nehustha, who appears to have been regent for him, with the officers of his household and the eunuchs, he went into the camp of the Chaldæans to give himself up to the king of Babylon (597 B.C.).[617]