Jeremiah 39:4
And it came to pass, that when Zedekiah the king of Judah saw them, and all the men of war, then they fled, and went forth out of the city by night, by the way of the king’s garden, by the gate betwixt the two walls: and he went out the way of the plain.
Jeremiah 39 belongs to the historical account of the two years before Jerusalem fell. Within the chapter the section of verses 1-14 follows verses 15-18 in chronological order. The arrangement is not chronological because of how the manuscript rolls were gathered, but this does not change the teaching.
The verse belongs to the account of Nebuchadnezzar's final siege of Jerusalem after Zedekiah rebelled against Babylon. After a siege of a year and a half Jerusalem was taken, the temple and the houses of the leading men were burned, the city walls were broken down, and Zedekiah and many of the people were carried to Babylon. It records that when Zedekiah king of Judah and his men of war saw the Chaldean invaders, they fled out of the city by night as the city fell. The flight did not succeed, for Zedekiah was captured by the Chaldeans. The verse thus places his capture in the setting of Jerusalem's fall.
The flight was the consequence of Zedekiah's refusal to obey the Lord's warning and forms part of the account of his sad fate. Fear of the people led him to reject the last offer to spare the city, and he did not escape the Chaldeans. This illustrates the cost of fearing people more than trusting and obeying God's word. The verse explicitly describes an event occurring at night as happening at night rather than calling it day, supporting the distinction between the light part of a twenty-four-hour day and nighttime.