The destruction of the city of Jerusalem in about 587 B.C. by the Babylonians was one of the darkest of days in Jewish history, one of those somber occasions still observed as a time of mourning by Jews over 2, 500 years later. Zedekiah the king was taken captive, bound, forced to witness the murder of his sons (with the exception of Mulek, who escaped and was led to America-Omni 1:15-16; Mosiah 25:2), blinded, and then taken to Babylon.
In addition, this powerful army from the East “burnt the house of the Lord [the temple], and the king’s house, and all the houses of Jerusalem, and every great [prominent] man’s house burnt [they] with fire. And all the army of the Chaldees, that were with the captain of the guard, brake down the walls of Jerusalem round about. Now the rest of the people that were left in the city, and the fugitives that fell away to the king of Babylon, with the remnant of the multitude, did Nebuzar-adan the captain of the guard carry away.
But the captain of the guard left of the poor of the land to be vinedressers and husbandman.” (2 Kings 25:9-12.) It was only at this point that Jeremiah, a contemporary and companion prophet of Lehi, was released after being held prisoner by his rebellious countrymen (Jeremiah 39).