The Babylonian Exile
The Temple's destruction, the transfer of leadership to Babylon, and the
Persian return to Israel reflect the larger political conflicts of the ancient
world.
By Jeffrey A. Spitzer
From the
destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple and the cessation of the Davidic
monarchy in 586 B.C.E. through the decree permitting the exiled Judeans to
return to Judah in 538, Israelite history was played out on the international
stage. At the same time, Israelite prophets began to see these international
events as part of the plans of a just and merciful universal God. At the
beginning of this period, Judean society reflected world events in its own
internal conflict between pro-Babylonian and anti-Babylonian factions. By the
end of this period, the groundwork had been laid for a new conflict between the
returnees from the Babylonian exile and those who remained in the land.
The Destruction of Jerusalem
The sovereignty of the Judean kingdom in the land of Israel
came to an abrupt end with the destruction of Jerusalem and the exile of the
leading citizens to Babylon in 586 B.C.E. Nebuchadnezzar II, the crown prince
of Babylon, had defeated Pharoah Neco and the Egyptians at the battle of
Carchemish in 605, and attempted to conquer Egypt. After he failed to extend
his power, Egypt apparently continued to foment rebellion against Babylon in
the kingdom of Judah and its neighbors.
The prophet Jeremiah, who stood against Jehoiahkin’s
pro-Egyptian stance, saw Nebuchadnezzar as the agent of God:
"Behold, I will send … Nebuchadnezzar the king
of Babylon, my servant, and will bring [him] against this land, and against its
inhabitants, and against all these surrounding nations, and will utterly
destroy them, and make them a horror, a thing to be hissed, an everlasting
ruin. And this whole land shall be a ruin, and a waste; and these nations shall
serve the king of Babylon seventy years" (Jeremiah 25:9,11).
Nebuchadnezaar Returns
Nebuchadnezzar, now the king, returned to Judah in 597, and,
according to the Babylonian Chronicles, "captured the city [Jerusalem] and
seized its king [Jehoiakhin]. He appointed in it a king of his liking
[Zedekiah], took heavy booty from it and sent it to Babylon." According to
II Kings 24:14, Nebuchadnezzar also exiled the king Jehoiakhin, his family and
"all the princes, and all the mighty men of valor, ten thousand captives,
and all the craftsmen and smiths; none remained, save the poorest sort of the
people of the land." Zedekiah ruled for eleven years, during which
Jeremiah continued to criticize efforts to break free from the Babylonian yoke
(Jeremiah 28).
Some time around 590, King Zedekiah, encouraged by
Nebuchadnezzar's absence from the region, and probably bolstered by Pharoah
Psammetichus II, rebelled against Babylon (II Kings 24:20), so that, in 588,
"Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon came, he, and all his army, against
Jerusalem, and camped against it; and they built a siege wall around against
it" (II Kings 25:1). After a two-year siege, Jerusalem ran out of food,
the walls were breached, and Zedekiah's family was killed, and he himself was
blinded, bound, and sent to Babylon (II Kings 25:7).
The Extent of the Destruction
The physical destruction wrought by the Babylonian troops
was tremendous. The Temple, the palace, and all of the houses of Jerusalem were
burnt, the walls of the city were torn down, and the remaining treasures from
the Temple were taken to Babylon (II Kings 25:8-17).
Archaeological evidence shows that the destruction extended
beyond Jerusalem to as far as Ein Gedi in the east, Arad in the south, and
Lachish in the west. These cities, as well as Ramat Rachel, Bet Shemesh, and
Bet Tzur were reduced to subsistence level villages. The population was
diminished through military action and forced relocation; II Kings and Jeremiah
differ on the numbers, but they both present a sense of economic and political
disruption.
Other evidence, however, argues against seeing the
destruction of 586 as a major upheaval. While the book of Kings says "only
the poorest people of the land" remained (II Kings 25:12), even according
to the larger report, the 10,000 people deported would have been a small
portion of the population as a whole, albeit a wealthy and socially significant
one. Unlike the Assyrians before them, the Babylonians did not settle new
people in the destroyed areas; the Babylonian chief Nevuzaradan apparently
redistributed some of the land of those exiled (Jeremiah 39:10) to those who
remained. Enough people remained to maintain the harvest.
Some Locals Leaders Remain
Although the Babylonians exiled much of the leadership, some
of the local leaders remained. The Babylonians appointed Gedaliah the son of
Ahikam to serve in some administrative role over the people (II Kings 25:22);
Ahikam had earlier demonstrated his sympathy to Jeremiah, and presumably to
Jeremiah's pro-Babylonian politics when he saved the prophet from a death
sentence pronounced by the priests and prophets after his "Temple
Sermon" in the year 609 (Jeremiah 26:24). Gedaliah probably was appointed
because he shared his father's pro-Babylonian sentiments.
From his capital of Mitzpah, north of Jerusalem, Gedaliah
continued or at least supported the redistribution of land to the poor and
those who had fled (Jeremiah 40:9-11). Jeremiah's report that they
"gathered a great abundance of wine and summer fruits" (v. 12) may be
historical, but also represents the prophet's not-so-subtle claim that
Gedaliah's efforts met with God's favor. Furthermore, the presence of wine and
fruit in the harvest indicates that delicate agricultural resources like
vineyards and orchards had not been destroyed by the Babylonians.
Gedaliah is Assassinated
Although Gedaliah seems to have had the support of the
people, there were those who opposed him. Ishmael the son of Netaniah, who was
serving as a military commander under Gedaliah, assassinated Gedaliah (II Kings
25:25). Biblical texts are unclear about the date (either in the fall of 586 or
585), but in any case, his tenure was very short. The reasons for the
assassination are not described in the Bible. Ishmael, who claimed to be
descended from David's son Elishama, may have had royal pretensions of his own,
or perhaps he sought vengeance against the representative of Babylon for the
butchering of Zedekiah's family.
Following the assassination of Gedaliah, little is known
about the Judeans who remained in the land. Much of the landed elite had been
relocated to Babylonia; others, in the wake of the assassination, fled to
Egypt, Jeremiah among them.
Although II Kings and the book of Ezra describe the total
cessation of worship at Jerusalem, other evidence seems to imply that aspects
of the cult remained in place. After the assassination of Gedaliah, "some
men from Shechem, from Shiloh, and from Samaria, eighty men, having their
beards shaven, and their clothes torn, and having cut themselves, came with
offerings and incense in their hand, to bring them to the house of the
Lord" (Jeremiah 41:5).
Cyrus and Restoration
Around 556, an Aramean named Nabonidus seized the Babylonian
throne, and proceeded to alienate many of the Babylonians by elevating his own
favorite deity, the moon god, Sin. Soon after, a Persian named Cyrus took over
the Median empire in Ecbatana. By 547,
Cyrus campaigned in Asia Minor and laid siege to the King Croesus of Lydia in
his capital of Sardis. Nabonidus continued to lose support within his shrinking
Babylonian empire, and in 539, Cyrus conquered Babylon itself, claiming the
assistance of the Babylonian god Marduk, probably after receiving real support
from the traditional priests of Marduk in the city.
Also among Cyrus' supporters
were Jews like the prophet whose stirring poetry is preserved in the book of
Isaiah (chapters 40-55, called Second Isaiah).
Indeed, Cyrus adopted a general policy of restoration. The
Cyrus Cylinder, perhaps the single most significant piece of primary evidence
for the period, preserves a cuneiform record of the basic activities and
policies of the founder of the Persian empire. It includes a significant notice
that Cyrus (speaking in first person), restored the traditional worship to the
cities of Ashur, Susa, Agade, Eshnunna and a few others
"I returned to these cities… the sanctuaries of
which had been ruins for a long time, the images which used to live therein and
established for them permanent sanctuaries. I also gathered all their former inhabitants
and returned their habitations."
Notably, Jerusalem is not on the list of restored cities and
temples. The book of Ezra, however, does preserve an edict purporting to be
from Cyrus authorized the rebuilding of Temple and the restoration of the temple
vessels. An embellished form of the edict is found in the first chapter of Ezra
in which Cyrus sounds like Second Isaiah, attributing his rise to the Lord God
of heaven, using the particular name of the God of Israel. Later, during the
reign of Darius, a copy of Cyrus' edict was found (Ezra 6:3-5); this version is
somewhat more reasonable, including dimensions for the temple which was to be
rebuilt and none of the language that describes Cyrus as an adherent of the God
of Israel.
Although the Second Temple was not built for many decades,
some of the exiled Jews did return from Babylon. Upon their return, conflicts
developed between the community of the returnees and that of those who were
left in Judah. The exilic experience had apparently been a fertile one for
religious developments, and the two communities had diverged in ways that would
have a formative impact on the shape of all later Judaism.
Jeffrey A. Spitzer is
a contributing editor to MyJewishLearning.com and served as the founding editor
of the Jewish Texts section.
