Jeremiah 37:3

"And Zedekiah the king sent Jehucal the son of Shelemiah, and Zephaniah the son of Maaseiah, the priest, to the prophet Jeremiah, saying, Pray now unto Jehovah our God for us. Now Jeremiah came in and went out among the people; for they had not put him into prison. And Pharaoh's army was come forth out of Egypt; and when the Chaldeans that were besieging Jerusalem heard tidings of them, they brake up from Jerusalem."

"Pharaoh ..." (Jeremiah 37:5). "This was Pharaoh-Hophra, the Apries of Herodotus; his intervention availed nothing."[2] Feinberg stated that the "Babylonians defeated the Egyptian army";[3] but Harrison was of the opinion that the Egyptians "withdrew without a battle."[4] History has no record of any battle having been fought; and the opinion of Harrison seems more likely to be correct.

The reason for Zedekiah's request for Jeremiah to pray for the city seems to have been grounded in the hope that God would again spare the city from destruction as he had done by a miraculous intervention in the death of the entire army of Sennacherib in 701 B.C. Indeed, such a thing might have happened, if Zedekiah had been the kind of man that Hezekiah was; but Jeremiah 37:2, above, indicates that Zedekiah and all the people were solidly committed to wickedness and rebellion against God.