Babylonian Exile

Babylonian Exile is the carrying away of the people of Judah to Babylon by Nebuchadnezzar II, king of Babylon from 605 to 562 BC (2 Kings 24:15; 25:11). 2 Kings sums it up: "So Judah was taken into exile, away from its own land" (2 Kings 25:21). The northern kingdom of Israel had gone into an earlier exile, to Assyria, when Samaria fell in 722 BC (2 Kings 17:6). It came in stages: young nobles were brought into Nebuchadnezzar's court in Jehoiakim's third year (Daniel 1:1-4), and the main deportations followed in 597 BC, in 586 BC when Jerusalem fell, and about 582 BC (Jeremiah 52:28-30). The exiles served Nebuchadnezzar and his sons "until the kingdom of Persia came to power", and Chronicles counts the land's desolation as seventy years, as Jeremiah had foretold (2 Chronicles 36:20-21). In 538 BC Cyrus king of Persia issued an edict that let the exiles go up to Jerusalem to rebuild the temple, and some of them returned to Judah (Ezra 1:1-4).

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Judah between Babylon and Egypt

Josiah, king of Judah from 641 to 609 BC, went out to confront Pharaoh Neco of Egypt, and Neco killed him in the battle of Megiddo (2 Kings 23:29). In the fourth year of Jehoiakim (609-598 BC), which was the first year of Nebuchadnezzar, Nebuchadnezzar defeated Neco's army on the Euphrates in the battle of Carchemish (Jeremiah 25:1; 46:2). Jehoiakim became Nebuchadnezzar's vassal for three years and then rebelled, and the LORD sent Chaldean, Aramean, Moabite and Ammonite raiders against Judah, "according to the word that the LORD had spoken through His servants the prophets" (2 Kings 24:1-2).

In Jehoiakim's third year, by Daniel's account, young men of the royal family and the nobility were brought to Nebuchadnezzar's court to be taught "the language and literature of the Chaldeans", among them Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael and Azariah, whom the chief official renamed Belteshazzar, Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego (Daniel 1:1-7).

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The deportation of 597 BC

When Jehoiakim died, his son Jehoiachin (598-597 BC) reigned in Jerusalem for three months (2 Kings 24:6-8). Nebuchadnezzar's servants besieged the city, Jehoiachin surrendered, and in the eighth year of his reign the king of Babylon carried him to Babylon with the king's mother, his wives, his officials and the leading men of the land (2 Kings 24:10-15). He also carried off the treasures of the house of the LORD and the royal palace, and cut into pieces the gold articles that Solomon (970-931 BC) had made for the temple (2 Kings 24:13). 2 Kings gives ten thousand captives, and also counts seven thousand men of valor and a thousand craftsmen and metalsmiths; only the poorest people of the land remained (2 Kings 24:14-16). The king of Babylon then made Jehoiachin's uncle Mattaniah king in his place and changed his name to Zedekiah (2 Kings 24:17).

One of the Babylonian Chronicles records this first capture of Jerusalem: it says that Nebuchadnezzar "besieged the city of Judah" and gives the day as "the second day of the month of Addaru", in his seventh year, February or March 597 BC. It adds that he "appointed there a king of his own choice" and "received its heavy tribute and sent to Babylon". Jeremiah 52:28 also dates the first deportation to the seventh year, while 2 Kings 24:12 gives the eighth.

The prophet Ezekiel, a priest and the son of Buzi, was among these captives and dated his visions from this deportation: "the fifth year of the exile of King Jehoiachin" (Ezekiel 1:1-3).

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The fall of Jerusalem and the later deportations

Zedekiah (597-586 BC) in turn rebelled against the king of Babylon, and in his ninth year Nebuchadnezzar marched against Jerusalem, beginning the siege of Jerusalem (2 Kings 24:20; 25:1). The fall of Jerusalem came in 586 BC (some date it to 587 BC), in Zedekiah's eleventh year (2 Kings 25:2-4).

A month later, in Nebuchadnezzar's nineteenth year, Nebuzaradan the captain of the guard burned the house of the LORD, the royal palace and the houses of Jerusalem, and the Chaldean army broke down the city's walls (2 Kings 25:8-10). Nebuzaradan carried into exile the people left in the city and the deserters who had gone over to the king of Babylon, but left some of the poorest of the land to tend the vineyards and fields (2 Kings 25:11-12). Excavations in Jerusalem have exposed the layer of destruction the Babylonians left in 586 BC: in one large public building in the Givati Parking Lot, the remains include heavy debris of ash, charred beams and stone fallen from the second story.

Nebuchadnezzar appointed Gedaliah son of Ahikam over the people left in the land, but at Mizpah Ishmael son of Nethaniah, of the royal family, killed him, and the people fled to Egypt for fear of the Chaldeans (2 Kings 25:22-26); their commanders took the prophet Jeremiah with them (Jeremiah 43:4-7).

Jeremiah 52:28-30 counts three deportations: 3,023 Jews in Nebuchadnezzar's seventh year, 832 people from Jerusalem in his eighteenth, and 745 Jews carried away by Nebuzaradan in his twenty-third, about 582 BC, 4,600 people in all. The larger figures of 2 Kings 24:14-16 cover the deportation of 597 BC alone.

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Why it happened

2 Kings says the disaster came on Judah "at the LORD's command, to remove them from His presence because of the sins of Manasseh", king of Judah from 687 to 643 BC, and for the innocent blood he had shed in Jerusalem, which the LORD was unwilling to forgive (2 Kings 24:3-4). Chronicles relates that the LORD sent word to His people "again and again" through His messengers because He had compassion on them, but they mocked the messengers and scoffed at His prophets "until the wrath of the LORD against His people was stirred up beyond remedy" (2 Chronicles 36:15-16). So the land "enjoyed its Sabbath rest all the days of the desolation" (2 Chronicles 36:21).

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Life in Babylonia

Babylon lay on the Euphrates; a section of its glazed-brick Ishtar Gate, built by order of Nebuchadnezzar II, has been reconstructed in the Pergamon Museum in Berlin. Ezekiel came to "the exiles at Tel-abib who dwelt by the River Kebar" and sat among them for seven days (Ezekiel 3:15). The River Kebar was probably the canal named in contract tablets found at Nippur. In the sixth year the elders of Judah sat before Ezekiel in his house (Ezekiel 8:1). The prophet Jeremiah told "all the exiles who were carried away from Jerusalem to Babylon" to build houses, plant gardens, marry, and "Seek the prosperity of the city to which I have sent you as exiles" (Jeremiah 29:4-7).

Tablets from a settlement in Babylonia called Judahtown, the Al-Yahudu tablets, date from roughly 572 to 477 BC. In 2014 Laurie E. Pearce of Berkeley and Cornelia Wunsch of London published an edition of 103 of these texts, from the collection of David Sofer. The texts show Judeans who farmed the land, built houses, paid taxes and owed service to the king.

Psalm 137 gives the exiles' grief its words: "By the rivers of Babylon we sat and wept when we remembered Zion" (Psalms 137:1). In the thirty-seventh year of his exile, the year Evil-merodach (562-560 BC) became king of Babylon, Jehoiachin was released from prison, given a throne above the other kings with him in Babylon and fed at the king's table for the rest of his life (2 Kings 25:27-30). In Daniel the astrologers answer the king in Aramaic (Daniel 2:4). During the exile the Jews also took up a script derived from Aramaic, which replaced the old Hebrew script and later became the square Hebrew script used today.

At Nebuchadnezzar's order Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego were thrown into "the blazing fiery furnace", and they came out with "no smell of fire on them" (Daniel 3:19-27). Daniel himself was later thrown into the den of lions and lifted out unharmed, "because he had trusted in his God" (Daniel 6:16-23).

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The seventy years and the prophets

Jeremiah announced that "these nations will serve the king of Babylon for seventy years", after which the LORD would punish the king of Babylon and his nation (Jeremiah 25:11-12). The LORD's word to the exiles promised that when "Babylon's seventy years are complete" He would "restore you to this place" (Jeremiah 29:10). Daniel understood from the word of the LORD to Jeremiah "that the desolation of Jerusalem would last seventy years" (Daniel 9:2), and in Zechariah the angel of the LORD asks how long mercy will be withheld from Jerusalem after "these seventy years" (Zechariah 1:12). The people had fasted and mourned in the fifth and seventh months "for these seventy years" (Zechariah 7:5).

Interpreters differ over when the seventy years began and ended, and over whether the number is exact or a round figure for a lifetime. Some count from the destruction of Jerusalem in 586 BC to the completion of the rebuilt temple under Zerubbabel (Ezra 6:15), others from the year of Daniel's own captivity. Ross E. Winkle, in a 1987 study in Andrews University Seminary Studies, holds that the seventy years "seem best interpreted as a literal period of time", running from 609 BC to the fall of Babylon in October 539 BC.

The Book of Lamentations opens in grief over the city: "How lonely lies the city, once so full of people" (Lamentations 1:1). In Isaiah the LORD calls Cyrus "My shepherd" and "His anointed", and says of Jerusalem, "She will be rebuilt" (Isaiah 44:28; 45:1).

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The return

The last Babylonian king was Nabonidus (556-539 BC). His eldest son, Belshazzar, king of Babylon from 553 to 539 BC, held the kingship while his father was away at Tayma. At Belshazzar's feast, Daniel relates, a hand wrote on the wall "MENE, MENE, TEKEL, PARSIN", and "That very night Belshazzar king of the Chaldeans was slain" (Daniel 5:1-5, 25-30). The fall of Babylon to Cyrus came in October 539 BC. On the Cyrus Cylinder Cyrus says, "I gathered all their inhabitants and returned to them their dwellings". In the first year of Cyrus king of Persia, "to fulfill the word of the LORD spoken through Jeremiah", the edict of Cyrus declared that the LORD had appointed him to build a house for Him at Jerusalem and invited any of His people to go up and build it (Ezra 1:1-3; 2 Chronicles 36:22-23).

Cyrus also gave back 5,400 gold and silver articles that Nebuchadnezzar had taken from the house of the LORD, having them counted out to Sheshbazzar the prince of Judah, who brought them up from Babylon to Jerusalem (Ezra 1:7-11). The whole assembly of those "who came up from the captivity" to Jerusalem and Judah, each to his own town, numbered 42,360, besides 7,337 servants and 200 singers (Ezra 2:1, 64-65). They came up with Zerubbabel and the priest Jeshua, who began to build the altar of the God of Israel (Ezra 2:2; 3:2). The temple was completed on the third day of the month of Adar, in the sixth year of King Darius, in March 515 BC, and the people of Israel celebrated its dedication with joy (Ezra 6:15-17).

Not every exile went back: a community of exiles remained in Babylonia, and it was the home of Ezra. Esther 2:5-6 introduces Mordecai, a Jew of the tribe of Benjamin at the citadel of Susa, and links him to those "taken captive with Jeconiah king of Judah". Ezra himself came up from Babylon to Jerusalem in the seventh year of King Artaxerxes, a journey of four months (Ezra 7:6-9), and in the king's twentieth year Nehemiah asked to be sent to Judah to rebuild the city where his fathers were buried (Nehemiah 2:1-5).

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Later history

The community in Babylonia was still there after the Achaemenid Persian period. Jacob Neusner, writing in the Encyclopaedia Judaica, holds that the first rabbinical academies there were founded in Parthian territory as a direct outcome of the Bar Kokhba revolt.