The Babylonian Exile – 1 / Beginnings

The rest of the people who were left in the city and the deserters who had deserted to the king of Babylon, together with the rest of the multitude, were carried into exile by Nebuzaradan the captain of the guard. But the captain of the guard left some of the poorest of the land to be vine dressers and plowmen.  (2 Kings 25:11–12)

The calamities that befell Judah when king Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon crushed Zedekiah’s rebellion and destroyed Jerusalem in 586 BCE are stated concisely but poignantly in the narrative prose accounts in the books of Kings and Jeremiah. The king’s sons were executed before his eyes; then Zedekiah himself was blinded and imprisoned. The Temple was burned; the Temple officials, military commanders and noblemen were executed; and, finally, the survivors were exiled (2 Kings 25:7–21; Jeremiah 39:1–10 and 52:1–16).

Following this, Nebuchadnezzar appointed Gedaliah as governor. Gedaliah established his administrative center at Mizpah. Although the biblical account does not indicate the extent of Gedaliah’s authority, there was apparently some hope for peace and economic recovery under his leadership.  This hope was thwarted, however, by the assassination of Gedaliah and the flight of his supporters and others to Egypt. Thus, in addition to the destruction of Jerusalem and the exile of its leaders to Babylonia, this dispersion to Egypt further weakened the nation (2 Kings 25:22–26; Jeremiah 40:1–44:30). All these developments profoundly affected the course of Jewish life in Palestine and abroad, that is, in the Diaspora.

How Many Exiles?

In reprisal for Gedaliah’s assassination, the Babylonians deported still more Jews to Babylon. According to Jeremiah, 745 people were deported in 582 BCE (Jeremiah tells us that, previously, 832 people had been deported in 586 BCE and 3,023 in 597 BCE, when King Jehoiachin was defeated [Jeremiah 52:28–30]).

There are several surprises in Jeremiah’s figures. First, the number of deportees to Babylonia at the time of Gedaliah’s assassination was not much smaller than the number of those taken into exile at the destruction of Jerusalem (only 87 fewer). Second, the number deported in the exile of 586 BCE is itself not very large (832). And third, neither of these deportations was as large as the exile of 597 BCE: Of the total number of deportees (4,600), virtually two-thirds (3,023) went into exile with the captivity of King Jehoiachin in 597 BCE.

No figures are given in 2 Kings for the number of deportees in 586 BCE (when Jerusalem was destroyed), and no reference is made to a deportation following Gedaliah’s assassination. Numbers are given, however, for the first deportation under Jehoiachin. According to 2 Kings 24:14, 10,000 people were exiled at that time (including 7,000 soldiers and 1,000 craftsmen and smiths). This number greatly exceeds the figure given in Jeremiah. Whatever the true figures, it is clear enough that it was the leadership of society that was removed and that about 90 percent of the population remained in Palestine.

The lack of specific figures in 2 Kings for the exile of 586 BCE is not surprising; the writer wished to stress the destruction of the city and its Temple and the fate of the survivors. But one thing is clear: For the writer of 2 Kings, as for the editor of Jeremiah, the Babylonian Exile began in 597 BCE, when Nebuchadnezzar removed and imprisoned King Jehoiachin and appointed Zedekiah as a puppet-king to reign in his stead.

Neither is it surprising then that the concluding words of 2 Kings concern King Jehoiachin. There we learn that in the 37th year of his exile (561 BCE), the king was released from prison and granted a position of status by the Babylonian king Evil-merodach (Amel-Marduk in Babylonian records) (2 Kings 25:27–30; see also Jeremiah 52:31–34). Why was this important to the biblical writers? Because their hope for the restoration of the Davidic dynasty (the divine election of which played such an important role in their theology of history) lay with Jehoiachin, not with Zedekiah. Zedekiah had been appointed king by the Babylonians only after Jehoiachin had been taken hostage; Zedekiah’s reign was viewed by many as only temporary. In Babylonia, Jehoiachin was regarded as the exiled Judahite king, both before and after the deportation of 586 BCE It was certainly not accidental that the leader of the first wave of Jewish exiles to return to Jerusalem was Jehoiachin’s son, Sheshbazzar, and that the builder of the Second Temple was his grandson, Zerubbabel.

In short, according to the editors of 2 Kings and Jeremiah, the Exile to Babylonia began in 597 B.C.E. when King Jehoiachin was taken hostage by Nebuchadnezzar (2 Kings 24:12–17; Jeremiah 52:28–30). This was the first and largest of three separate deportations; a second deportation occurred at the time of the destruction of Jerusalem in 586 BCE (2 Kings 25:8–12; Jeremiah 52:12–16) and, according to Jeremiah, a third occurred after the assassination of Gedaliah in 582 BCE (Jeremiah 52:30).

The Book of Chronicles presents quite a different picture: Here there is only one deportation, at the time of the destruction of the Temple in 586 BCE, and indeed very little is said about it (2 Chronicles 36:20–21). Although the Chronicler records the deportation of Jehoiachin himself in 597 BCE (2 Chronicles 36:10), he does not associate the beginning of the national Exile with that event. Rather, the Chronicler states that “the precious vessels of the house of the Lord” were removed to Babylon with the exile of Jehoiachin; the removal of the Temple vessels is what is important, not the removal of the people.

Second Chronicles is a simplified retelling of the story in which the historian has stressed what he considers most significant. The Temple—its plan, construction, furnishings, administration and service—is of paramount importance throughout the Chronicler’s history. In Ezra 1–6 (a continuation of the narrative of 2 Chronicles 36), the Chronicler regards the return of the Temple vessels at the end of the Exile as an important link in establishing continuity between the cultic establishment of the First and Second Temples (Ezra 1:7–11, 5:14–15, 6:5).5 For the Chronicler, when the Jews returned from Exile, they returned not with a king to reestablish the older political order, but with the Temple vessels to continue the cultic order that had allegedly existed in ancient times.

Equally important for the Chronicler is his claim that the Exile resulted in the land becoming desolate and lying fallow (in effect keeping its own Sabbath) (2 Chronicles 36:21). This description of the land seems to have been derived from a tradition (Leviticus 26:1–39) preserved in the Holiness Code; the code states that the punishment for idolatry is banishment to a foreign land, with the result that the land lies fallow:

And I will scatter you among the nations, and I will unsheath the sword after you; and your land shall be a desolation, and your cities shall be a waste. Then the land shall enjoy its sabbaths as long as it lies desolate, while you are in your enemies’ land; then the land shall rest, and enjoy its sabbaths. (Leviticus 26:33–34)

The Chronicler also made use of Jeremiah’s prophecy of an exile of 70 years (Jeremiah 25:11, 29:10), not simply to indicate that this would be the duration of the Exile, but to stress that the land would have a tenfold (seven years times ten) Sabbath rest:

He took into exile in Babylon those who had escaped from the sword to fulfill the word of the Lord by the mouth of Jeremiah, until the land had enjoyed its sabbaths. All the days that it lay desolate it kept sabbath, to fulfill seventy years. (2 Chronicles 36:21)

The prophet Zechariah also uses the 70-year designation to characterize the period of divine anger (Zechariah 1:12; 7:3, 5) and is also certainly dependent on Jeremiah. If the number 70 was important, one had to begin counting at some point. Both Zechariah and the Chronicler chose to begin with the time of the destruction of Jerusalem in 586 B.C.E., not the captivity of Jehoiachin in 597 BCE.

The Chronicler’s account of the Exile appears to have been shaped by his editorial concerns. It is thus less useful for historical reconstruction than the traditions in 2 Kings and Jeremiah, especially when Chronicles is in disagreement with these two sources. What does seem fairly certain, however, is that the Babylonian Exile began before the destruction of Jerusalem in 586 BCE When the deportees in 586 BCE, and at any subsequent time, reached Babylonia they joined a Jewish community that was already established. Given that the Judahite leaders were among the last to be deported, the task of reestablishing the community began in earnest after 586 BCE.

Moreover, in the late eighth century BCE, exiles from Israelite Samaria had been settled by the Assyrians in western Syria, Mesopotamia and Media (see 2 Kings 15:29, 17:6; 1 Chronicles 5:26). The annals of Sargon II indicate a deportation/settlement (and also military conscription) of about 27,000 Israelites. The preaching of Ezekiel shows that not all of these communities had been assimilated by pagan cultures; much of this biblical book is concerned with the reunification of the Judahite and Israelite branches of the nation after the destruction of Jerusalem in 586 BCE Indeed, some passages in Ezekiel read as if they were actually directed at specific Israelite—that is, northern—communities in exile. The Jews of the military colony at Elephantine in Egypt (see below) may also have been of northern, Israelite origin.

Thus, while we may date the Babylonian Exile from 597 and 586 BCE, this event was but part of a long process of establishing Israelite/Judahite settlements in Mesopotamia and Babylonia, a process that had begun earlier and that would continue. Most of Israel was not deported, and many of the descendants of the exiles never returned; the Jewish people had become a people both in their ancestral homeland and in the Diaspora.