Siege of Jerusalem (587 BC)

Siege of Jerusalem
	Part of the Jewish–Babylonian War (601–586 BC)
	; The Jews are led away into prison in Babylon. The city is on fire, and the Ark is taken captive. Wood engraving after the original painting by Eduard Bendemann (1872).
Date	589–587 BC
Location	Jerusalem, Judah
Result	Babylonian victory Destruction of the First Temple; Judeans exiled to Babylon; beginning of the Babylonian captivity;
Territorial; changes	Judah is annexed as a Babylonian province
Belligerents
Kingdom of Judah	Neo-Babylonian Empire
Commanders and leaders
Zedekiah	Nebuchadnezzar II
Strength
Unknown	Unknown
Casualties and losses
Many slain, 4,200 others taken to captivity	Unknown

The siege of Jerusalem between 589–587 BC was the decisive event of the Jewish–Babylonian War, in which the second Babylonian king, Nebuchadnezzar II, besieged Jerusalem, the capital city of the Kingdom of Judah. Jerusalem fell after an 18-month siege, following which the Babylonians pillaged the city and destroyed the First Temple. After the fall of the city, many Judeans were exiled to Babylon, beginning the exilic period. Judah was subsequently annexed as a Babylonian province.

Whereas the Nebuchadnezzar Chronicle provides information about the siege of Jerusalem in 597 BC, the only known records of the siege that culminated in Jerusalem's destruction in 587 BC are found in the Hebrew Bible.[1]

Biblical narrative

Background

In 601 BC, during the fourth year of his reign, Nebuchadnezzar unsuccessfully attempted to invade Egypt and was repulsed with heavy losses. The failure led to numerous rebellions among the Kingdoms of the Levant which owed allegiance to Babylon, including the Kingdom of Judah, where King Jehoiakim stopped paying tribute to Nebuchadnezzar and took a pro-Egyptian position.

In 597 BC, Nebuchadnezzar laid siege to Jerusalem. Jehoiakim died during the siege and was succeeded by his son Jeconiah at an age of either eight or eighteen. The city fell about three months later, on 2 Adar (March 16) 597 BC. Nebuchadnezzar pillaged both Jerusalem and the Temple and carted all of his spoils to Babylon. Jeconiah and his court and other prominent citizens and craftsmen, along with a sizable portion of the Jewish population of Judah, numbering about 10,000 were deported from the land and dispersed throughout the Babylonian Empire.

Nebuchadnezzar installed Jeconiah's uncle, Zedekiah as vassal king of Judah, at the age of 21. However, despite the strong remonstrances of Jeremiah and others, Zedekiah revolted against Nebuchadnezzar by ceasing to pay tribute to him and entered an alliance with Pharaoh Hophra. Nebuchadnezzar II returned to Judah, aiming to capture Jerusalem (2 Kings 25:1).

Siege

Nebuchadnezzar camps outside Jerusalem. The citizens starve and are reduced to cannibalism. (Petrus Comestor's "Bible Historiale"), 1372

Nebuchadnezzar began a siege of Jerusalem in January 589 BC.[2][3] Many Jews fled to surrounding Moab, Ammon, Edom and other countries to seek refuge.[4] The Bible describes the city as enduring horrible deprivation during the siege (2 Kings 25:3; Lamentations 4:4, 5, 9). The city fell after a siege, which lasted either eighteen or thirty months.[5] In the eleventh year of Zedekiah's reign (2 Kings 25:2; Jeremiah 39:2), Nebuchadnezzar broke through Jerusalem's walls, conquering the city. Zedekiah and his followers attempted to escape but were captured on the plains of Jericho and taken to Riblah. There, after seeing his sons killed, Zedekiah was blinded, bound, and taken captive to Babylon (2 Kings 25:1–7; 2 Chronicles 36:12; Jeremiah 32:4–5; 34:2–3; 39:1–7; 52:4–11), where he remained a prisoner until his death.

Aftermath

Fall of Jerusalem; Solomon's Temple is on fire

After the fall of Jerusalem, the Babylonian general Nebuzaraddan was sent to complete its destruction. Jerusalem was plundered, and Solomon's Temple was destroyed. Most of the elite were taken into captivity in Babylon. The city was razed to the ground. Only a few people were permitted to remain to tend to the land (Jeremiah 52:16).

The Jew Gedaliah was made governor of the remnant of Judah, the Yehud Province, with a Chaldean guard stationed at Mizpah (2 Kings 25:22–24; Jeremiah 40:6–8). The Bible reports that, on hearing this news, Jews who had fled to Moab, Ammon, Edom, and in other countries returned to Judah (Jeremiah 40:11–12). Gedaliah was assassinated by Ishmael son of Nethaniah two months later, and the population that had remained and those who had returned then fled to Egypt for safety (2 Kings 25:25–26, Jeremiah 43:5–7). In Egypt, they settled in Migdol (it is uncertain where the Bible is referring to here, probably somewhere in the Nile Delta), Tahpanhes, Memphis (called Noph), and Pathros in the vicinity of Thebes (Jeremiah 44:1).

Chronological notes

There has been some debate as to when Nebuchadnezzar's second siege of Jerusalem took place. There is no dispute that Jerusalem fell the second time in the summer month of Tammuz (Jeremiah 52:6), but William F. Albright dated the end of Zedekiah's reign and the fall of Jerusalem to 587 BC whereas Edwin R. Thiele offered 586 BC.[6] In 2004, Rodger Young published an analysis in which he identified 587 BC for the end of the siege, based on details from the Bible and neo-Babylonian sources for related events.[7]

586 BC

Thiele's reckoning is based on the presentation of Zedekiah's reign on an accession basis, which he asserts was occasionally used for the kings of Judah. In that case, the year that Zedekiah came to the throne would be his zeroth year; his first full year would be 597/596 BC, and his eleventh year, the year that Jerusalem fell, would be 587/586 BC. Since Judah's regnal years were counted from Tishri in autumn, that would place the end of his reign and the capture of Jerusalem in the summer of 586 BC.[6][8]

587 BC

The Nebuchadnezzar Chronicle (BM 21946), published in 1956, indicates that Nebuchadnezzar captured Jerusalem the first time putting an end to the reign of Jehoaichin, on 2 Adar (16 March) 597 BC, in Nebuchadnezzar's seventh year.[9] Jeremiah 52:28–29 gives the relative periods for the end of the two sieges as Nebuchadnezzar's seventh and eighteenth years, respectively. (The same events are described at 2 Kings 24:12 and 2 Kings 25:8 as occurring in Nebuchadnezzar's eighth and nineteenth years, including his accession year.) Identification of Nebuchadnezzar's eighteenth year for the end of the siege places the event in the summer of 587 BC, which is consistent with all three relevant biblical sources—Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and 2 Kings.[7][10]

References

Lester L. Grabbe (2001). Did Moses Speak Attic?: Jewish Historiography and Scripture in the Hellenistic Period. A&C Black. p. 216. ISBN 1841271551. It is so easy to forget that 587 BCE is exclusively a biblical date.
Young, Rodger C. (March 2004). "When Did Jerusalem Fall?" (PDF). Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society: 29. The first date is taken from Ezek 24:1, where it is said that the final siege of Jerusalem began in the tenth month of the “ninth year.” ... The tenth month of that year corresponds roughly to January 589 BC.
Malamat, Abraham (1968). "The Last Kings of Judah and the Fall of Jerusalem: An Historical – Chronological Study". Israel Exploration Journal. 18 (3): 137–56. JSTOR 27925138. The discrepancy between the length of the siege according to the regnal years of Zedekiah (years 9–11), on the one hand, and its length according to Jehoiachin's exile (years 9–12), on the other, can be cancelled out only by supposing the former to have been reckoned on a Tishri basis, and the latter on a Nisan basis. The difference of one year between the two is accounted for by the fact that the termination of the siege fell in the summer, between Nisan and Tishri, already in the 12th year according to the reckoning in Ezekiel, but still in Zedekiah's 11th year which was to end only in Tishri.
Jeremiah 40:11–12
Malamat, Abraham (1968). "The Last Kings of Judah and the Fall of Jerusalem: An Historical – Chronological Study". Israel Exploration Journal. 18 (3): 137–156. JSTOR 27925138. The discrepancy between the length of the siege according to the regnal years of Zedekiah (years 9–11), on the one hand, and its length according to Jehoiachin's exile (years 9–12), on the other, can be cancelled out only by supposing the former to have been reckoned on a Tishri basis, and the latter on a Nisan basis. The difference of one year between the two is accounted for by the fact that the termination of the siege fell in the summer, between Nisan and Tishri, already in the 12th year according to the reckoning in Ezekiel, but still in Zedekiah's 11th year which was to end only in Tishri.
Edwin Thiele, The Mysterious Numbers of the Hebrew Kings, (1st ed.; New York: Macmillan, 1951; 2d ed.; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1965; 3rd ed.; Grand Rapids: Zondervan/Kregel, 1983). ISBN 0-8254-3825-X, ISBN 9780825438257.
Young, Rodger C. (March 2004). "When Did Jerusalem Fall?" (PDF). Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society: 21–38. The conclusions from the analysis are as follows. (1) Jerusalem fell in the fourth month (Tammuz) of 587 BC. All sources which bear on the question—Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and 2 Kings—are consistent in dating the event in that year.
Leslie McFall, "A Translation Guide to the Chronological Data in Kings and Chronicles," Bibliotheca Sacra 148 (1991) 45.
D. J. Wiseman, Chronicles of Chaldean Kings in the British Museum (London: Trustees of the British Museum, 1956) 73.
Young, Robb Andrew (2012). Hezekiah in History and Tradition. pp. 18–21. Simply put, the erroneous date of 586 B.C.E. stems from the biblical dating of the breaking down of the walls of Jerusalem and the exile of its populace "on the seventh day of the fifth month, which was the nineteenth year of king Nebuchadnezzar." ... The correct date of 587 B.C.E. for the Babylonian conquest of Jerusalem may be further substantiated by examination of the end of the exile of Jehoiachin.

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[1] Lester L. Grabbe (2001). Did Moses Speak Attic?: Jewish Historiography and Scripture in the Hellenistic Period. A&C Black. p. 216. ISBN 1841271551. It is so easy to forget that 587 BCE is exclusively a biblical date.

[2] Young, Rodger C. (March 2004). "When Did Jerusalem Fall?" (PDF). Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society: 29. The first date is taken from Ezek 24:1, where it is said that the final siege of Jerusalem began in the tenth month of the “ninth year.” ... The tenth month of that year corresponds roughly to January 589 BC.

[3] Malamat, Abraham (1968). "The Last Kings of Judah and the Fall of Jerusalem: An Historical – Chronological Study". Israel Exploration Journal. 18 (3): 137–56. JSTOR 27925138. The discrepancy between the length of the siege according to the regnal years of Zedekiah (years 9–11), on the one hand, and its length according to Jehoiachin's exile (years 9–12), on the other, can be cancelled out only by supposing the former to have been reckoned on a Tishri basis, and the latter on a Nisan basis. The difference of one year between the two is accounted for by the fact that the termination of the siege fell in the summer, between Nisan and Tishri, already in the 12th year according to the reckoning in Ezekiel, but still in Zedekiah's 11th year which was to end only in Tishri.

[4] Jeremiah 40:11–12

[5] Malamat, Abraham (1968). "The Last Kings of Judah and the Fall of Jerusalem: An Historical – Chronological Study". Israel Exploration Journal. 18 (3): 137–156. JSTOR 27925138. The discrepancy between the length of the siege according to the regnal years of Zedekiah (years 9–11), on the one hand, and its length according to Jehoiachin's exile (years 9–12), on the other, can be cancelled out only by supposing the former to have been reckoned on a Tishri basis, and the latter on a Nisan basis. The difference of one year between the two is accounted for by the fact that the termination of the siege fell in the summer, between Nisan and Tishri, already in the 12th year according to the reckoning in Ezekiel, but still in Zedekiah's 11th year which was to end only in Tishri.

[Thiele-6] Edwin Thiele, The Mysterious Numbers of the Hebrew Kings, (1st ed.; New York: Macmillan, 1951; 2d ed.; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1965; 3rd ed.; Grand Rapids: Zondervan/Kregel, 1983). ISBN 0-8254-3825-X, ISBN 9780825438257.

[Young-7] Young, Rodger C. (March 2004). "When Did Jerusalem Fall?" (PDF). Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society: 21–38. The conclusions from the analysis are as follows. (1) Jerusalem fell in the fourth month (Tammuz) of 587 BC. All sources which bear on the question—Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and 2 Kings—are consistent in dating the event in that year.

[8] Leslie McFall, "A Translation Guide to the Chronological Data in Kings and Chronicles," Bibliotheca Sacra 148 (1991) 45.

[9] D. J. Wiseman, Chronicles of Chaldean Kings in the British Museum (London: Trustees of the British Museum, 1956) 73.

[10] Young, Robb Andrew (2012). Hezekiah in History and Tradition. pp. 18–21. Simply put, the erroneous date of 586 B.C.E. stems from the biblical dating of the breaking down of the walls of Jerusalem and the exile of its populace "on the seventh day of the fifth month, which was the nineteenth year of king Nebuchadnezzar." ... The correct date of 587 B.C.E. for the Babylonian conquest of Jerusalem may be further substantiated by examination of the end of the exile of Jehoiachin.