2 Kings 25:4 - Coke's Commentary on the Holy Bible

The men of war fled by night— It is difficult to conceive how the besieged could make their escape, as the Chaldees had encompassed the city. Josephus indeed gives us this account, that as the city was taken about midnight, the captains with the rest of the soldiers went directly into the temple; which Zedekiah perceiving, he took his wives, children, commanders, and friends, and they all slipped away together by a narrow passage towards the wilderness; but then what this narrow passage was is still the question. The Jews think that there was a subterraneous passage from the palace to the plains of Jericho, and that the king and his courtiers might endeavour to make their escape that way. Dion, it is true, tells us, lib. 66: that, in the last siege of Jerusalem, the Jews had covered ways, which lay under the walls of the city, to a considerable distance into the country, out of which they were wont to sally, and fall upon the Romans that were straggling from their camp; but since neither Josephus nor the sacred historian take notice of any such subterraneous passage at this siege, we may suppose that, the Chaldeans having made a breach in the wall, the besieged got away privately between the wall and the out-works, by a passage which they did not suspect. See Jeremiah 25:4 and Joseph. Hist. Bell. lib. 10: cap. 11.