HOMILY for FRIDAY of the 12th Week in ORD Time I 2 Kings 25: 1-12 I CARMEL LIGHT I June 26

2 Kings 25: 1-12 Judah was taken into exile out of its land (25:21). In the ninth year of the reign of Zedekiah in the tenth month, on the tenth day of the month, Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon came with all his army against Jerusalem and laid siege to it. And they built siege works all round it. So the city was besieged till the eleventh year of King Zedekiah. On the ninth day of the fourth month the famine was so severe in the city that there was no food for the people of the land. Then a breach was made in the city, and all the men of war fled by night by the way of the gate between the two walls, by the king’s garden, and the Chaldeans were round the city. And they went in the direction of the Arabah. But the army of the Chaldeans pursued the king and overtook him in the plains of Jericho, and all his army was scattered from him. Then they captured the king and brought him up to the king of Babylon at Riblah, and they passed sentence on him. They slaughtered the sons of Zedekiah before his eyes, and put out the eyes of Zedekiah and bound him in chains and took him to Babylon. In the fifth month, on the seventh day of the month - that was the nineteenth year of King Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon - Nebuzaradan, the captain of the bodyguard, a servant of the king of Babylon, came to Jerusalem. And he burned the house of the Lord and the king’s house and all the houses of Jerusalem; every great house he burned down. And all the army of the Chaldeans, who were with the captain of the guard, broke down the walls round Jerusalem. And the rest of the people who were left in the city and the deserters who had deserted to the king of Babylon, together with the rest of the multitude, Nebuzaradan the captain of the guard carried into exile. But the captain of the guard left some of the poorest of the land to be vine dressers and ploughmen. Psalm 137: 1-2, 3, 4-5, 6 (R.6abc) O let my tongue cleave to my palate if I remember you not! 1. By the rivers of Babylon there we sat and wept, remembering Sion; on the poplars that grew there we hung up our harps. 2. For it was there that they asked us, our captors, for songs, our oppressors, for joy. “Sing to us,” they said, “one of Sion’s songs.” 3. O how could we sing the song of the Lord on foreign soil? If I forget you, Jerusalem, let my right hand wither! 4. O let my tongue cleave to my palate if I remember you not, if I prize not Jerusalem as the first of my joys!