2 Kings 25:25
But it came to pass in the seventh month, that Ishmael the son of Nethaniah, the son of Elishama, of the seed royal, came, and ten men with him, and smote Gedaliah, that he died, and the Jews and the Chaldees that were with him at Mizpah.
2 Kings 25:25 belongs to the third great division of the history of the kings, the story of the remaining kingdom of Judah after the ten tribes were swept away, covering 2 Kings 18 to 25 at the close of the continuous account from the accession of Solomon to the Babylonian captivity. The two books of Kings containing it form one whole, counted as one book in the Hebrew canon and divided into two only in the old versions that reckoned Samuel and Kings as a continuous series called the four books of the Kingdoms or Kings, a title retained in the Authorized Version, with the division between 1 Kings and 2 Kings falling at an arbitrary point of no special significance in the history. The same history appears as the concluding chapter of Jeremiah, presented as an addition to the words of Jeremiah, which some ascribe to Ezra. The close of Kings where the verse stands records the wicked and weak reigns of the kings of Judah. The term Jew in the verse is used in its earlier narrower sense of a member of the kingdom of Judah after the ten tribes separated.
Its setting is the taking, burning and laying waste of Jerusalem by Nebuchadnezzar, the carrying of Judah into Babylonian captivity, and the rebellion, downfall and capture of Zedekiah the last king, whom Nebuchadnezzar blinded and took to Babylon where he died in captivity. After that destruction the king of Babylon appointed Gedaliah the son of Ahikam as governor over the very poor remnant left in the land to be vinedressers and husbandmen, a little company under Gedaliah.
About two months after that appointment, and soon afterward, Ishmael of the seed royal, a member of the royal family, came with ten men and murdered Gedaliah by treachery. After the murder all the remainder, including the people and the army captains, arose and fled to Egypt for fear of the Chaldees, contrary to the counsel of Jeremiah. That flight left the land desolate to fulfill the word of the Lord by Jeremiah that the land would enjoy her Sabbaths for seventy years, closing the history of the kingdom of Judah, so that whatever self-government Judah had afterward was only as a province subservient to the great world kingdoms. The killing of the governor in the seventh month was the historical reason for the fast of the seventh month.