2 Kings24chapter 24

Everything in this chapter follows from one battle. At Carchemish in 605 BC Nebuchadnezzar destroyed the Egyptian army and inherited the whole western corridor, and small states like Judah simply changed masters. Jehoiakim served him three years and then rebelled, which brought raiding bands from Babylon, Aram, Moab, and Ammon down on the country.

The 597 siege is one of the most precisely dated events in the Old Testament, because Babylon's own record survives. A cuneiform tablet in the Babylonian Chronicle series states that in the seventh year of Nebuchadnezzar, in the month of Kislev, he marched to the land of Hatti, besieged the city of Judah, and on the second day of the month of Adar captured the city and seized its king, appointing a king of his own choice and taking heavy tribute back to Babylon. That is the sixteenth of March, 597 BC.

The deportation is described by occupation, and the selection is deliberate: officials, mighty men of valor, craftsmen, and smiths — ten thousand in all, leaving the poorest people of the land. Removing the metalworkers meant the province could not manufacture weapons, and removing the officials and soldiers meant it could not organize. It was policy, not spite.

Renaming the new king from Mattaniah to Zedekiah was another instrument of control; an overlord who renames a vassal is asserting ownership. And Jehoiachin's later life is recorded in Babylon itself: ration tablets excavated near the Ishtar Gate list oil allotments for Yaukin, king of the land of Yahud, and for his sons — the deported king alive and maintained at the Babylonian court.