The Babylonian Exile

The story

The small kingdom crushed between giants

After the division of the two kingdoms we spoke of, the kingdom of Judah, with Jerusalem as its capital, remained for centuries a small country among great powers. After the fall of the kingdom of Israel in the north, conquered by the Assyrians in 722 BC, Judah survived, but its position was dangerous: to the south lay Egypt, to the north and east the great empires of Mesopotamia. In the 6th century BC the dominant power was Babylon, and its king was Nebuchadnezzar II.

Three deportations

The account historians reconstruct, putting together the Bible and the Babylonian documents, speaks of several stages. In 597 BC Nebuchadnezzar besieged Jerusalem and took it. He carried off to Babylon King Jehoiachin, his court and many others, about seven thousand people according to one estimate, among them the prophet Ezekiel. In his place he put on the throne Zedekiah, another member of the royal family.

But Zedekiah rebelled. Nebuchadnezzar came back and, after a new siege, the city fell. The most common dates are 587 or 586 BC, depending on the calculations. This time the Babylonians destroyed Jerusalem and the Temple, the one that according to the Bible had been built by Solomon. Zedekiah was blinded and taken in chains to Babylon. Other inhabitants were deported, and another deportation took place in 582 BC. Judah became a Babylonian province, called Yehud. According to some estimates the population of the country fell from about one hundred and ten thousand people to a number between fifteen and forty thousand. The numbers given by the Bible are inconsistent, and so historians use them with caution.

Life in exile

The exiles were settled in farming communities in Mesopotamia, for example at Tel-abib, near Nippur. They had to live far from their homeland, however, without the Temple, which was the centre of worship. How do you practise a religion without its temple? The exiles began to meet in homes, to keep the Sabbath, to practise circumcision, to read and to remember the laws and the psalms.

In these years some of the most moving writings of Jewish tradition were born. Psalm 137 begins with words describing the exiles sitting “by the rivers of Babylon”, weeping at the memory of Zion. The Book of Lamentations mourns the destruction of the city. Ezekiel is one of the great prophets of this period. Scholars think that in that time the Torah, that is, the first books of the Bible with the laws, became more and more central to the life of the people. The historian Yehezkel Kaufmann called the exile “the watershed” of the religion of Israel.

The exiles also met the Aramaic language and script, widespread in Mesopotamia. The alphabet of Aramaic origin ended up replacing the old Hebrew script and gave their shape to the letters that Jews still use today.

The return

The Babylonian empire did not last long. In 539 BC the Persian king Cyrus the Great conquered Babylon. According to the Bible he issued a decree allowing the exiles to return to their homeland and rebuild the Temple. But scholars debate whether that decree really existed in the form described, because the famous Cyrus Cylinder, a Persian document, does not name Judah. It is certain, however, that after 539 many Jews returned. Led by Zerubbabel and the priest Joshua, they rebuilt the Temple, the Second Temple, completed around 516 BC. Not everyone returned, though: part of the people stayed in Mesopotamia.

One date, two versions

For the fall of Jerusalem two dates are found, 587 and 586 BC. Historians debate them, and depending on how the years of the kings are counted you arrive at one or the other. This is why, when we talk about such ancient things, the date is almost always an “about”.