Battle of Carchemish

Battle of Carchemish was fought at Carchemish on the Euphrates River, where the army of Pharaoh Neco king of Egypt was defeated by Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon in the fourth year of Jehoiakim son of Josiah king of Judah (Jeremiah 46:2). The book of Jeremiah counts that fourth year of Jehoiakim as the first year of Nebuchadnezzar (Jeremiah 25:1). In 605 BC the Babylonian army under Nebuchadnezzar attacked the city and defeated the Egyptians. Its site, Karkamış Höyük, lies in Karkamış, Gaziantep, with part of its outer town on the Syrian side in Jerablus. The city stood on the western bank of the Euphrates, along its middle course, where an important crossing served both trade and armies.

Carchemish first appears in texts from Ebla of the third millennium BC; while the Hittites controlled Syria it was the residence of a Hittite viceroy, and in the Neo-Hittite period it flourished under its own kings. Sargon II, king of Assyria from 722 to 705 BC, charged Pisiri, the last king of Carchemish, with breaking his oaths, took the city and made the territory an Assyrian province under a governor, and Isaiah names Carchemish among the cities that fell to Assyria: "Is not Calno like Carchemish?" (Isaiah 10:9).

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Background

In the fall of Nineveh, the Medes and the Babylonians besieged the Assyrian seat of government, plundered it and left it a ruin heap. Aššur-uballit II, king of Assyria from 612 to 609 BC, then took the throne in Harran, and in fear of the enemy he and the Egyptian army that had come to his aid abandoned the city and crossed the Euphrates. During the reign of Josiah, Pharaoh Neco king of Egypt went up to aid the king of Assyria at the Euphrates River (2 Kings 23:29). His forces sought to retake Harran on behalf of Aššur-uballit II. The Fall of Nineveh Chronicle (ABC 3) records a large army from Egypt crossing the Euphrates and marching against Harran to take it. 2 Chronicles names Carchemish as the place Neco marched up to fight (2 Chronicles 35:20). Josiah went out to meet him, and Neco sent word that he had not come against Judah but against another dynasty, and that God had told him to hurry (2 Chronicles 35:21). Josiah fought him on the Plain of Megiddo, was shot by archers, and was carried to Jerusalem, where he died (2 Chronicles 35:22-24). The people then made Josiah's son Jehoahaz king, but Neco imprisoned him at Riblah and set another son of Josiah, Eliakim, on the throne, renaming him Jehoiakim (2 Kings 23:30-34). Jehoiakim paid Neco the silver and gold he demanded, taxing the land to raise it (2 Kings 23:33-35).

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The Battle

The Babylonian chronicle of Nebuchadnezzar's early years (ABC 5), quoted here in a translation adapted from A. K. Grayson's Assyrian and Babylonian Chronicles (1975) and Jean-Jacques Glassner's Mesopotamian Chronicles (2004), introduces him as the eldest son and "the crown-prince." He crossed the river against the Egyptian army camped at Carchemish; the two armies fought, and the Egyptians fell back before him. In the district of Hamath, the chronicle says, Babylonian troops caught and crushed the Egyptians who had escaped the defeat, so that "not a single man escaped to his own country." At that time Nebuchadnezzar took the whole area of Hamath.

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Jeremiah's Oracle

Jeremiah's word from the LORD concerning Egypt takes this defeat as its subject (Jeremiah 46:1-2). It opens with orders to deploy shields, harness the horses and put on armor (Jeremiah 46:3-4), then turns at once to warriors in flight, with "terror is on every side" (Jeremiah 46:5). In the north by the River Euphrates the swift cannot flee, and they stumble and fall (Jeremiah 46:6). Egypt rises like the Nile, boasting that it will cover the earth, and the oracle summons warriors from Cush, Put and Lydia (Jeremiah 46:7-9). The day belongs to the Lord GOD of Hosts, "a day of vengeance against His foes," when He will hold "a sacrifice in the land of the north by the River Euphrates" (Jeremiah 46:10). Egypt will find no healing, and the nations will hear of its shame as warrior stumbles over warrior (Jeremiah 46:11-12).

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Aftermath

Nabopolassar, king of Babylon from 626 to 605 BC, died on 8 Abu after twenty-one years as king, and in the month of Ululu the crown prince returned to Babylon, where, as Nebuchadnezzar II, he "sat on the royal throne in Babylon." The king of Egypt never again marched out of his land, for the king of Babylon had taken everything he had held from the Brook of Egypt to the Euphrates (2 Kings 24:7).

By the account in Daniel, Nebuchadnezzar came to Jerusalem and besieged it in the third year of Jehoiakim, though Jeremiah dates Carchemish to that king's fourth year (Daniel 1:1; Jeremiah 46:2). The Lord delivered Jehoiakim into his hand with some of the articles from the house of God, and Nebuchadnezzar carried them off to the land of Shinar and placed them in the treasury of his god (Daniel 1:2). Alan R. Millard, who taught Hebrew and ancient Semitic languages at the University of Liverpool, argued in 1977 that Daniel's third year just fits if Jehoiakim's years are counted with an accession year and an autumn new year, and that Jeremiah's fourth year suits a spring new year. When Nebuchadnezzar invaded, Jehoiakim, who had paid tribute to Neco, became his vassal for three years and then turned and rebelled against him (2 Kings 23:35; 24:1).

In that same fourth year of Jehoiakim, Jeremiah announced that the LORD would bring His servant Nebuchadnezzar against Judah and all the surrounding nations, and that "these nations will serve the king of Babylon for seventy years" (Jeremiah 25:1-11). That year he also dictated the LORD's words to Baruch, who wrote them on a scroll; when it was read to Jehoiakim in his winter quarters, the king cut it off a few columns at a time with a scribe's knife and burned it all in the firepot (Jeremiah 36:1-4, 20-23).