Nebuchadnezzar II Conquers Jerusalem
Nebuchadnezzar took Jerusalem in March 597 BC, deported its king and its elite to Babylon, and came back eleven years later to destroy the city. Judah was a small kingdom caught between empires. Assyria had collapsed, Egypt and Babylon were fighting over the corridor between them, and Judah's kings kept choosing the losing side. Jehoiakim had submitted to Babylon and then rebelled on Egyptian encouragement. He died during the siege, and his eighteen-year-old son Jehoiachin surrendered after three months. The Babylonian Chronicle records the capture of the city of Judah and the appointment of a king of Babylon's choosing, which is one of the rare cases where a biblical narrative and a cuneiform tablet describe the same event. Some 10,000 people were taken, by the account in Kings — the court, the craftsmen, the smiths and the soldiers, which is a deliberate removal of the capacity to rebel. Zedekiah was installed and rebelled anyway. The second siege lasted about eighteen months and ended in 587 or 586 with the walls breached, the temple burned, the palace destroyed, Zedekiah's sons killed in front of him and then his eyes put out, and a second and larger deportation. Ration tablets from Babylon list Jehoiachin and his sons receiving oil. The exile lasted until Cyrus took Babylon in 539. What it produced is the point. Judaism as a religion of text, sabbath and law rather than of one temple was substantially formed there, and much of the Hebrew Bible was edited into its present shape by people thinking about why this had happened.
- Year: 597 BCE
- Category: Military
