A Divided Nation
 | In response to the king’s arrogance, the ten northern tribes secede, splitting Israel in two. |
When King Solomon dies in 796 BCE, Israel is still a united country, but there is some tension between the north and the south. We have to keep in mind that the Biblical State of Israel was comprised of tribes but the king always came from the tribe of Judah (and Jerusalem sat on Judah’s tribal border) which could be viewed by the other tribes as unfair. A wise king would have to be especially aware of the sensitivities of the other tribes.
Following the death of Solomon, his son Rehoboam becomes king, and in response to the political situation, goes up north to Shechem to have himself crowned. At this time, the northern tribes send a delegation to tell the king their complaints.
Chief of these is the toll that King Solomon’s building projects—the Temple in Jerusalem, his palaces, etc.—had taken on the people in terms of taxes and forced labor. The northern tribes, in effect, ask the new king for a tax cut.
Rehoboam consults his advisors. The elders who had served under Solomon tell him to ease up on the people: “Speak to them gently, and they will be your servants forever.” (1 Kings 12:7) But the younger upstarts advise him to show the people who is boss.
Rehoboam takes the latter advice and announces, “If you think my father was tough on you, just watch me! I’m going to be even tougher.”
Big mistake.
Rehoboam forgot that even God had called the Jews stiff-necked people. Jews are stubborn. In response to Rehoboam’s arrogance, in the year 796 BCE, the northern tribes secede, creating a new kingdom called Israel. Rehoboam is left with just the southern part of the country and Jerusalem; his kingdom is called Judah. (The terminology we use today: Judea and Samaria {the capital of the northern Kingdom of Israel} has its origins in the split of the country after Solomon’s death)
At first he considers waging war on the north, but the prophet Shemaiah warns him against it, telling him that he cannot possibly win as this rending of the nation had been brought about by God. While the immediate cause of the split is the weakness and bad judgment of Rehoboam, the ultimate cause is rooted in idolatry of Solomon’s wives.
The split is clearly bad news—it is a disaster for many reasons, both spiritual and geopolitical. The once strong, unified nation is now a weak, divided nation, and it is going to fall prey to the re-emerging empires of Egypt, Assyria and later, Babylon.
THE SCHEMES OF KING JEROBOAM
The king of the northern country of Israel is Jeroboam ben Navat. He is a great man—a scholar who once stood up to King Solomon (I Kings 11:26-40)—and a great leader.
But unfortunately, the old saying—“power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely”—proves true. Pretty soon, Jeroboam is worrying less about leading the people and more about hanging on to his throne.
Jeroboam sees that the Jewish people in the north are still very strongly connected to Jerusalem. After all, that is where the Temple stands with its Holy of Holies and the Ark of the Covenant where the presence of God is most strongly felt. On the three festivals—Passover, Shavuot and Sukkot—the people continue to stream to Jerusalem. He sees that this commonality with the south could bring about a re-unification, in which case he will no longer be king.
So Jeroboam hatches a scheme. What does he do? He decides to set up an alternative place of worship in the north. He builds two other temples—one in Beit El and one in Dan (where Tel Dan stands today).
That’s bad enough in itself. But then he sets up golden calves in these temples and even uses the same language used in the Golden Calf story: “These are your gods, oh Israel, who brought you up from the land of Egypt!” (I Kings 12:28) This a blatant violation of the commandment against graven images. Furthermore, once you open the door to idolatry by introducing alternative sites and alternative modes of worship, it means trouble in the future.
Thus, a terrible period begins in Jewish history. In the next 240 years, there are 19 different kings of the northern kingdom of Israel—all bad, with some much worse than others. They are idolaters, corrupt and evil, and they lead the Jewish people into idolatry.
Some of these kings are potentially great leaders, but spiritually they are off. And one thing we know—if the Jews don’t get their act together spiritually, they’re not going to have their act together physically either. So, we see a time period of great political instability and “palace” intrigue, when kings come and go and the succession is usually very bloody.
KING AHAB AND JEZEBEL
Of all the bad kings of Israel, one who stands out on the worst list is King Ahab. Of him the Bible says:
Ahab son of Omri did what was evil in the eyes of God, more than all who had preceded him. (1 Kings 16:30)
He marries the infamous Jezebel, and built a temple to the Canaanite deity Baal, popularizing this form of idolatry among the Jewish people.
It’s important to understand when you’re reading the Books of Kings and looking at what the Jewish people were doing then, that the ancient people of the world were very religious and were always looking for ways to heighten their “spirituality.” This is why idolatry was such a powerful draw and a ever-present obstacle that stood between the Jewish people and God.
A basic tenet of Judaism is that there is only one power in the world: God. There is no devil or other power competing with Him for control of the universe. The impure spirituality of idolatry was placed in the world by God to enable people to make the ultimate choice of living with or ignoring God. In the ancient world the attraction to idolatry was real and very powerful. This may be hard to fathom, because today we don’t have the same drive for spirituality (I will explain why this is so later). Much of the Jewish people’s drive to worship idols came out of a misguided desire to “enhance” their spiritual experience by incorporating Judaism and paganism. On a practical level it means that they were still keeping kosher and observing other Jewish laws, but they wanted “to have their cake and eat it too”—they wanted both God and the spiritual high of idolatry.
The prophet of note at this time is Elijah. During this period of the divided monarchy, the primary function of the major prophets is to get the Jews of both Judah and Israel to turn away from their idolatry and evil ways and come back to God before it is too late. Elijah yearns to have the Jewish people repent. To this end, he decides to have a “show down” with the priests of Baal and to physically demonstrate the lie of idolatry to the Jewish people.
Elijah goes up north to Mount Carmel. Today the modern city of Haifa sits on the western edge of the Carmel Mountain Range. On the eastern side of the range is a place called Mukhraka, where there is a Carmelite monastery. In front of the monastery, there stands a statue of Elijah which commemorates the site where Elijah took on the priests of Baal.
Elijah wants the Jewish people to see that idolatry is nonsense and that there’s only one God. So he challenges 450 priests of Baal to a contest. He proposes that each side offer a sacrificial bull to their deity and whichever deity sent a fire from heaven to consume the offering in full sight of the people would be accepted as the true God.
The priests of Baal really get into it. They’ve got their bull on the altar and they are beseeching Baal, shouting to the skies. But after nearly a full day of trying, nothing is happening and the animal carcass is only attracting flies. Meanwhile, Elijah mocks them:
“Shout louder! After all, he is a god, but he may be in conversation, he may be detained, or he may be on a journey, or perhaps he is asleep and will wake up.” (1 Kings 18:27)
They shout louder, but still nothing. So they start slashing their heads with knives. It’s an ancient form of worship, based on using blood to get the gods excited. Still nothing.
It’s really embarrassing now, and all the Jewish people are watching.
Toward the end of the day, Elijah finally gives order for the preparation of his own offering. He has it doused with water three times so it would be even more difficult to set aflame. He even has a water-filled ditch built around the altar. He then says one short prayer:
“Lord God of Abraham, Isaac, and of Israel, let it be known this day that you are God in Israel, and that I am your servant, and that I have done all these things at your word. Hear me, O Lord, hear me, that this people may know that you are the Lord God, and that you have turned their heart back again.” (1 Kings 18:36-37)
With that a fire comes down from the heaven consumes the sacrifice, the wood pile, the stones, the dust, and licks up the water in the ditch.
The gathered multitude responds in awe: “The Lord He is God, the Lord He is God!” (This is the very phrase we shout at the end of the Yom Kippur liturgy every year; this is where it comes from.)
The priests of Baal are put to death by the crowd. But the story does not end there.
Hearing of what had happened, Jezebel sends a message to Elijah. “Tomorrow I will kill you.” She knows that the memory of miracles does not last long. Today, the Jews are shouting “The Lord He is God,” but tomorrow is another day.
Idol worship resumes soon enough and Elijah has to flee for his life; the impact of his miracle quickly fades from the memory of most of the population and the northern kingdom sinks even further down spiritually.
Eventually, God is going to get tired of this. There is a covenant after all, and the Jews are not keeping their part of the bargain. The covenant clearly specifies that the Land of Israel, along with its bounty, is given to the Jewish people on certain conditions. When they violate those conditions, they will be expelled from the land. And this is about to happen to the northern kingdom, though not yet to the southern kingdom.
The people who are just waiting to take over are the Assyrians, inhabitants of today’s Iraq.
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Assyrian Conquest
 | The Assyrians, who conquer northern Israel, introduce a new way of dealing with vanquished nations. It’s called exile. |
At a time when the Jewish people of the northern kingdom of Israel are weakening spiritually, as well as physically and militarily, the Assyrians are growing stronger.
The Assyrians at this time occupy the territory immediately north—what is today’s Syria, Iraq, and Turkey—and they are continuing to build their empire.
If you go the British Museum in London, you can see some fascinating Assyrian artifacts from this period.
You can see there the four sided Black Obelisk of the Assyrian king Shalmaneser III. The Obelisk depicts the tribute paid by King Jehu of the northern kingdom of Israel to Shalmanaser III, king of Assyria. You can also see a relief from the walls of the magnificent palace at Nineveh, Assyria’s capital city.
That palace belonged to King Sennacherib, and the relief shows the siege of the Israelite city of Lachish; it was conquered by Sennacherib, who then boasted about it on his palace walls. The British stripped the relief from the Nineveh palace and brought to the British Museum.
DATING SYSTEM
The dates that you will find inscribed in the British Museum (and in other history books and other museums housing Middle Eastern artifacts) do not agree with Jewish dating that we are following in this series. This is because this series relies on the traditional Jewish dating system for ancient history—that is for the dates “before the common era,”—BCE. The Jewish dating system and the Christian dating system vary by as much as 164 years for the Assyrian, Babylonian and Persian periods, but by the time we get to the Roman period (i.e. the Christian year 1) the discrepancy disappears. (1)Why?
While it is beyond the scope of this book to present a detailed explanation of the various chronologies of the ancient world, we will explain briefly the dominant dating systems used by modern historians.
The Jewish dating system is taken primarily from a book called Seder Olam Rabba, dating back to the 2nd century CE and attributed to Rabbi Yosef ben Halafta. The sources for the dates in Halafta’s book come from rabbinic traditions recorded in the Talmud as well as numerous chronologies written in the Hebrew Bible (Tanach).
It is also essential to remember that traditional Jewish chronologies, (since the beginning of the Jewish calendar almost 6,000 years ago) have always been based on absolute and highly accurate astronomical phenomenon: the movement of the moon around the earth (months) and the earth around sun (years). A combination of an unbroken tradition of the Hebrew Bible and an accurate, astronomical, time-based system, gives traditional Jewish chronology a high degree of accuracy, especially when it comes to the major events of Jewish history.
Contrary to what you might think, the chronology used by modern historians is far from exact. It was not until the 20th century that the entire world recognized one universal calendar system—the Christian calendar (also known as the Gregorian calendar). If we go back in time however, the calendar situation is far more chaotic. Accurate historical records were almost unheard of and every empire used its own calendar system which was often based on totally different criteria. With no unbroken historical traditional and no universally accepted standard for how to calculate time, there is no non-Jewish equivalent to Seder Olam Rabba nor for the Jewish calendrical calculation system passed down from antiquity.
So how do we get the chronology that historians use today?
Historians in the late 19th and early 20th centuries worked backward and pieced it together. This was done primarily through comparing what little historical records survived from ancient Rome, Greece, Mesopotamia and Egypt, together with archaeological finds, various scientific dating methods and major astronomical phenomenon such as a solar eclipse.
Because there are margins of error in virtually all of these methods and much is open to interpretation, significant debates erupted between different scholars which continue to this day. Therefore, the chronologies used by modern historian are by no means 100% accurate and you will often find disagreements amongst various scholars as to the exact dates of major ancient events and dynasties.
Because this series is written from the traditional Jewish perspective, and because Jewish chronology makes a stronger case for historical accuracy, we have chosen to use the traditional Jewish dates.
Today there are a number of renowned scholars also challenging the modern chronology and even attempting to reconcile it with the Jewish chronology. Amongst them is British scholar Peter James who writes:
By re-dating the beginning of the Iron Age in Palestine from the early 12th century BCE to the late 10th, a completely new interpretation of the archaeology of Israel can be offered: One which is in perfect harmony with the biblical record. (Centuries in Darkness by Peter James; Rutgers University Press, 1993, p. 318.)
With that in mind, we can continue the story.
NORTHERN KINGDOM FALLS
In 6th century BCE, Assyrian king Tiglathpileser III strengthens Assyria and establishes it as a great empire to be reckoned with. (Eventually, Assyria will even challenge the mighty Egypt.) He also introduces a very interesting way of dealing with conquered peoples. It’s called exile . To pacify the lands they invade, the Assyrians take the indigenous people, move them someplace else, and bring others to take their place. By the time the exiles figure out where they are, decades pass and they don’t remember to rebel any more.
Starting around 575 BCE, as a way of pacifying the northern kingdom, Tiglathpileser takes over the lands belonging to the tribes of Zebulun and Naphtali, and exiles them.
Then, Shalmanaser V, another Assyrian emperor, takes over the lands belonging to the tribes of Reuben, Gad and Manasseh, and exiles them.
Finally in 556 BCE Sargan II, one of the great emperors of Assyria, completes the job, and the whole northern part of the country ceases to exist as a Jewish state.
In the ninth year of [the reign] of Hoshea, the King of Assyria took Samaria and exiled the Israelites to Assyria, and he settled them in Halah at the [River] Habor, at the River Gozan, and in the cities of Media. And so it was that the Israelites sinned against the Lord their God ... they worshipped other gods and followed the customs of the nations ... God had issued warnings in Israel and Judah through the hand of all the prophets of any vision saying “Repent from your evil ways and observe My commandments and decrees…” But they did not listen and they stiffened their neck…Then God became very angry with Israel and removed them from His Presence; none remained except the tribe of Judah alone (2 Kings 17:6-18)
The important and obvious lesson to be learned from this quote is that why the superficial reason for the fall of the Northern Kingdom was linked to the geopolitical realities of the ancient Near East, the real cause was violation of the Torah.
With the Jews driven out, who takes their place?
The Assyrians bring in a bunch of people from someplace else, who—because they are now living in Shomron or Samaria—come to be known as Samaritans.
The Samaritans are people who more or less adopt Judaism, but not properly or for the right reasons. Because their conversion is not complete or sincere, they are never accepted by the Jewish people, and they’re very resentful.
Indeed, the Samaritans have a long history of animosity towards the Jews, and while many people are familiar with the story of the “good Samaritan” from the Christian gospels, in Jewish consciousness (and history) the Samaritans are rarely considered good.
Today there are only about 600 Samaritans left, their cult site is in Mount Grizim, which is right next to the city of Shechem, called Nablus in Arabic.
THE LOST TRIBES
Meanwhile the Jewish people of the north have settled in various locations throughout the Assyrian empire. What happens to those ten tribes? They assimilate and are known today as the ten lost tribes.
There are numerous people throughout the world, especially in the Middle East and Asia who claim to be descended from the ten lost tribes. Today there are a number of people who have dedicated much time and effort to locating the lost tribes of Israel. One such person is Dr. Tutor Parfitt of London University. He has made it his specialty to track and trace different exotic peoples who claim to be of Jewish origin. He has written a book called “The Thirteenth Gate,” and he’s researched the people who claim to have Jewish connections. (2)
It’s amazing how many people, many of whom know nothing about Judaism, claim to be descended from Jews. For example, many of the Pathans, Muslim fundamentalists who reside in northern Afghanistan and Pakistan, claim to be descended from the ten lost tribes.
There is a Midrash that says the ten lost tribes live “over the River Sambatyon,” which is a mystical river that flows all week with sand and stones but “rests” on Shabbat.
We have a concept that at the end of days, all the lost Jews will come back. The great sage, the Vilna Gaon, taught that converts are lost Jewish souls who are trying to find their way back to the Jewish people.
But for now, the ten tribes are gone.
With the Jewish people dispersed from the northern kingdom of Israel, the Assyrians set their sights on the southern kingdom. But this one will not prove so easy.
1)The classic example is the date given for the destruction of the 1st Temple by the Babylonians. Traditional Jewish chronology gives the date as Jewish year 3338 equal to 422 BCE while secular histories give the date as 586BCE-a difference of 164 years. The source of this discrepancy is the based on conflicting opinions as to the number of kings who reigned during the Babylonian-Persian period. For a much more detailed discussion of this topic see: Jewish History in Conflict (get rest of citation)
2) Tudor Parfitt, The Thirteenth Gate-Travels among the Lost Tribes of Israel. (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson) 1987.
2) Tudor Parfitt, The Thirteenth Gate-Travels among the Lost Tribes of Israel. (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson) 1987.
| #21 of 70 in the Aish.com Jewish History Series | |
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The End of Israel
 | Judah lasts another of 134 years before it, too, falls bringing to an end the kingdom of Israel. |
The southern kingdom of Israel—called Judah—lasts almost 134 years longer than the northern kingdom. This is largely because it is nowhere near as unstable or corrupted by idolatry.
In the north there was a king every dozen years on the average, but in the south the average reign lasts about twice that long.
Unlike the kings of the northern kingdom, some of the kings of the southern kingdom are actually very righteous. And the one king that stands out above the rest is Hezekiah (who, incidentally, is married to the daughter of prophet Isaiah). He is the 14th king after King David, and he rules from 590 to 561 BCE. The Bible says about him:
And he did what was right in the eyes of the Lord, like all that his father David had done. And he trusted in the God of Israel. There was none like him among all the kings of Judah who were after him, nor were there before him. (2 Kings 18:3-5)
Now that’s pretty high praise.
It is during Hezekiah’s reign that the northern kingdom is destroyed by the Assyrians and the ten tribes exiled. So Hezekiah fortifies Jerusalem in expectation of the Assyrian invasion of Israel. And some of his handiwork we can see today.
FORTIFICATION OF JERUSALEM
By the time of Hezekiah’s time, the city of Jerusalem is no longer confined to the original “city of David.” A considerable amount of the population now lives in a new neighborhood on the western side of the Temple Mount. But this part of the city is defenseless, so Hezekiah encloses it with a wall, which has been excavated by archeologists and can be seen today—it’s called the Broad Wall.
Another thing that Hezekiah does is enlarge the water supply system to the city (which, as we saw in Part 18 depends on the Gihon Spring outside the city walls). To do so Hezekiah organizes two teams of diggers to dig a tunnel from Gihon to a reservoir within the city. One team starts on one end, one on the other, and they meet somewhere in between. Considering the limited technology of the day, the tunnel they dig is an amazing piece of work—533 meters long.
Today you can go to the Arab village of Silwan, just outside the walls of Jerusalem’s Old City, and walk through this tunnel (the water now is only up to your knees), and you can see the tool marks of the ancient diggers. You can also see where the two sets of marks meet. There used to be an ancient plaque there, but unfortunately it was removed by the Ottomans when they conquered Israel and it’s now in a museum in Istanbul, Turkey.
The city is fortified just in the nick of time before the Assyrians, led by Sennacherib, come to lay siege to the city. This is in the year 547 BCE.
We mentioned earlier (in Part 21) that many of the treasures of the Middle East now sit in the British Museum. One of those items is a six-sided clay prism describing Sennacherib’s military campaign. One inscription on the tablet reads: “Hezekiah, King of Judah, I locked in Jerusalem like a bird in a cage.” Noticeably absent is the description of Jerusalem falling, because it didn’t fall.
The Bible tells us what happened.
The mighty Assyrian army besieges the city and things look pretty grim, but Isaiah the prophet assures the people that the city will not fall. True to Isaiah’s prediction, a plague hits the Assyrian camp and their army is decimated overnight.
Sennacherib packs up and runs back home to Assyria where he’s murdered not soon after by his children.
One can understand Sennacherib, the blood-thirsty emperor of Assyria, having bad children. But unfortunately, the saintly king Hezekiah did not fare much better in the off-spring department.
BAD SEED
The son of Hezekiah, Manasseh, takes the throne after his father dies. He is as bad as his father was good. Of him the Bible says:
He did what was evil in the eyes of the Lord ... He erected altars to Baal ... He passed his son through fire, practiced astrology and read omens, and performed necromancy and conjured spirits. He was profuse in doing what was evil in the eyes of the Lord, to anger Him.” (2 Kings 21:2-6)
Manasseh is so bad that he even has the prophet Isaiah—his own grandfather—put to death. The ultimate downfall of Jerusalem is largely blamed on the evil behavior of Manasseh.
Because Manasseh, King of Judah has committed these abominations…and he caused even Judah to sin with his idols…I will wipe out Jerusalem as one would wipes a plate thoroughly, and then turn it upside down. ( II Kings 21: 11-14)
So it’s not surprising that the kingdom goes into a spiritual decline during his reign.
The next king—Amon—is as bad as Manasseh. But then comes Josiah, who truly loves God and brings about a round of impressive religious reforms. Unfortunately when he dies, these reforms die with him and the spiritual decline continues.
(There is a tradition that Josiah anticipated this and knew that the southern kingdom would soon be invaded and fall as had the northern, so he decided to hide the Ark of the Covenant so that it won’t fall into enemy hands. In future installments, we will discuss where it might be today. (1))
In the meanwhile, the Assyrian empire—which had been such a great threat to Israel—had been overrun by a new world power called Babylon. And it is the Babylonians who now invade.
THE BABYLONIANS ARE COMING The Babylonians march on Judah as part of their campaign to stake claim to the former Assyrian empire. The year is 434 BCE (or 11 years before the destruction of the Temple).
The Babylonian aim is to impose their rule and make what remains of Israel a vassal state. In this they largely succeed, they pillage Jerusalem taking into captivity 10,000 of the best and brightest Jews. They also remove the king, Yehoiyachin, and take him to Babylon.
At the time the exile of the 10,000 best and brightest seemed like a terrible disaster. It turns out not to be so. In fact it turns out to be a blessing in disguise as we shall see later on.
The Babylonians appoint their own puppet king from among the Jews—Zedekiah. This turns out to be a big mistake. Zedekiah is a weak ruler but one who foolishly ambitious, and eventually he decides to rebel against his Babylonian overlords. No sooner that he does that than the Babylonian emperor Nebuchadnezzar orders a siege of Jerusalem.
Make no mistake about it. This is not happening because Jews rebelled against Babylon. This is happening because Israel rebelled against God. When the Jews have a good relationship with God—as in the days of King Hezekiah—they are invincible. Sometimes they don’t even need to fight, as when God sends a plague to vanquish their enemies. But if they betray God, no matter how mighty the Israelite army, it will not withstand the enemy.
But as always, God gives the Jews plenty of time to mend their ways as the Babylonians lay siege to Jerusalem. The prophet Jeremiah is calling on all to repent but his message—which he relentlessly repeats for forty years—goes unheeded. Instead, he is beaten and thrown into prison!
Years earlier Jeremiah had written the Book of Lamentations, which predicted in great detail the destruction of the Temple and of Jerusalem, but the King at that time (Yehoiakim) had prevented the scroll from being read to the people attention. (2)
Today we read the Book of Lamentations every year on the 9th of Av, the horrible day when these predications came true.
This is the Jewish date that continues to live in infamy. The 9th of Av—Tisha B’Av is the catastrophic day in Jewish history when the spies sent by Moses to look over the land of Israel came back advising the Israelites not to enter, and God doomed that generation to 40 years of wandering in the desert; when the First Temple was destroyed by the Babylonians; when the Second Temple was destroyed by the Romans; when the Jews of Spain were given an ultimatum by the Inquisition—leave, convert or die; when World War I, the prelude to the Holocaust, began; and when many other calamities were visited upon the Jewish people.
THE SIEGE OF JERUSALEM
The siege lasts two years. There is clear archeological evidence for this event, which you can see for yourself in the Old City of Jerusalem.
Near Hezekiah’s Broad Wall, you can visit the Israelite Tower Museum. It’s about 60 feet under ground and you can see there the remains of a three-door gate in the northern defensive wall of the city. (Archeologists call it the “E Gate.”) At this site, archeologists digging in the early 1970s found clear evidence of the Babylonian siege.
Among the things they found there were Israelite and Babylonian arrowheads. How did they know? The arrowheads have names on them, because in ancient times, arrowheads were very valuable. They also found a layer of charred earth attesting to the burning of the city as is related in the Book of Kings (see 2 Kings 25:9). Other fascinating evidence was also found in area “G” of David’s City including a clay seal inscribed with the name of Gemariah son of Shaphan, a scribe mentioned in the book of Jeremiah (see: Jeremiah 36:10)
After two years of siege the Jews can’t hold out anymore. They have been starved into submission.
The tongue of the suckling infant cleaves to its palate for thirst; young children beg for bread, no one extends it to them. Those who once feasted extravagantly lie destitute in the streets; those who were brought up in scarlet clothing wallow in garbage ... Their appearance has become blacker than soot, they are not recognized in the streets; their skin has shriveled on their bones, it became dry as wood ... Hands of compassionate women have boiled their own children; they became their food when the daughter of my people was shattered ... (Lamentations 4:4-5,8-10)
On the 9th of Tevet, Babylonians breach the walls of the city. They pour in and carry out a mass slaughter. A month later the Temple Mount falls into their hands
During the mayhem, Zedekiah tries to flee to the Dead Sea through a secret tunnel that leads out of Jerusalem. But he gets caught and it’s very interesting how.
According to a Midrash quoted by Rashi, Nebuzardan, Nebuchadnezzar’s captain, is out hunting while his men are pillaging the city. He sees a deer and he begins following it. The deer just happens to run above the tunnel. (This, of course, is God’s way of assuring that Zedekiah is not going to escape punishment.) When Zedekiah comes out of the tunnel, there is the deer standing there, and there’s Nebuzardan right behind the deer. This is how he gets caught.
Zedekiah meets a horrible fate along with the rest of the Israelites, as the Bible relates:
And they ... put out the eyes of Zedekiah, and bound him with fetters of bronze, and carried him to Babylon. And in the fifth month, on the seventh day of the month, which is the nineteenth year of king Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon, came Nebuzaradan, captain of the guard, a servant of the king of Babylon, to Jerusalem. And he burned the house of the Lord [the Temple], and the king’s house, and all the houses of Jerusalem, and every great man’s house burned he with fire. (2 Kings 7-9)
With the destruction of the Temple—on the 9th of Av of the year 422 BCE—the special connection that the Jewish people had with God is severed. As with the fall of Israel in the North, the superficial cause for the destruction of Jerusalem was the revolt against Babylon, but the Torah makes it clear that the real cause was the immoral behavior of the Jews.(3)
Here is when it all comes crashing down. Besides the horrific physical destruction, there is also the great spiritual ego-deflation of the Jewish people.
Where previously the Babylonians had been satisfied in making Israel into a vassal state, this time their punishment is much worse. They decide to carry on the Assyrian policy of exile and remove the Jews from the Promised Land.
1)See: Talmud-Yoma 52b for a description of Josiah hiding the Ark
2) Jeremiah 36
3) see: Talmud Yoma 9b.
2) Jeremiah 36
3) see: Talmud Yoma 9b.
| #22 of 70 in the Aish.com Jewish History Series | |
| << Previous Part 21: Assyrian Conquest | Next >> Part 23: Babylonian Exile |
Babylonian Exile
 | The Babylonians think God has abandoned the Jews and celebrate. But they have a surprise coming. |
By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down, we also wept, when we remembered Zion. We hung our lyres on the willows in its midst. For there those who carried us away captive required of us a song; and those who tormented us required of us mirth, saying, Sing us one of the songs of Zion. How shall we sing the Lord’s song in a foreign land? If I forget you, O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget her cunning. If I do not remember you, let my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth; if I do not set Jerusalem above my highest joy. (Psalms 137:1-6)
The destruction of the Temple and the exile to Babylon represents a tremendous shock to the Jewish people. It may be hard to imagine today what it must have meant back then, because we really have no basis of comparison.
In those days normative Judaism meant living with the constant presence of God, which was always accessible at the Temple. Miracles occurred there daily and could be witnessed by anyone. For example, whichever way the wind was blowing, the smoke of the sacrifices always went straight to heaven. Feeling spiritual today is nothing compared what it was like to feel spiritual in the Temple. With such intense spirituality it was clear that God was with the Jewish people.
The same thing could be said for the land. One miracle that the land exhibited was that every six years there was a bumper crop so that the Jews could take the seventh year—the sabbatical year—off from labor. It was amazing.
Now all of that is gone. The land, the Temple, God’s presence. No wonder they wept by the rivers of Babylon. However, even in exile God is looking after the Jewish people, even if His presence now is concealed. We see this with the preparation God lays for the exile. In the previous chapter we noted that when the Babylonians first attacked Israel, they took away 10,000 of the best and the brightest with them. That seemed like a disaster at the time, but now that all the Jews are coming to Babylon it turns out to be a blessing. Why? Because when the Jews arrive in Babylon, there is a Jewish infrastructure in place. Yeshivas have been established, there is a kosher butcher and a mikveh. Jewish life can continue and as a result we see hardly any assimilation during the Babylonian exile.(1)
Let’s jump ahead in time, 2,500 years to the Jewish migration to America. How different was that? Starting at around 1882, millions of Jews fleeing from persecution in Czarist Russia start coming to the New World. But they don’t find yeshivas and synagogues there. And what’s the consequence? We get the single greatest mass assimilation of Jews in Jewish history.
Therefore, this turn of events in Babylon turns out to be a tremendously positive thing. It’s a great example of God putting the cure before the disease, which we see over and over in Jewish history.
SURVIVING EXILE
God has made a promise to the Jewish people at the time of Mount Sinai that they will be an “eternal nation” and He is going to keep it:
“Thus, even while they [the Jewish people] are in the land of their enemies, I will not reject or obliterate them, lest I break my covenant with them by destroying them. For I am the Lord their God; I will remember them because of the covenant I made with their original ancestors whom I brought out from the land of Egypt, in the sight of the nations, so that I might be their God.”(Leviticus 26:44)
In all of human history, exiles of an entire people out of their country have been very rare. It’s a highly unusual phenomenon to take a whole people and throw them out of their country. Multiple exiles are unheard of, since, after the first one, the people generally disappear—they simply become assimilated among other peoples. As a matter of fact, in human history, multiple exiles and dispersions are unique only to the Jewish people.(2)
And yet the Jews survive despite exile, because God has promised that they will be an “eternal nation.”
LIFE IN EXILE
While the Babylonians could be very cruel in their wars and conquests, their attitude toward the exiled Jewish community is “live and let live.” And life in Babylonian turns out not to be too awful.(3)
They even appoint a community leader who is the representative to the Babylonian authorities for the Jewish community, beginning not long after the exiled King of Judah, Jehoiachin (2 Kings 25:27). He is given the title of Resh Galusa in Aramaic. (4)
(Aramaic was the international language of the ancient Near East. It is a Semitic language, and it is closely related to Hebrew. It is the language in which most of the Talmud is written. The Jews of Babylon speak Aramaic and even when they return to the land of Israel, they continue to speak Aramaic.)
This word Resh Galusa means in Hebrew Rosh Galut, and in English, “Head of the Diaspora.” (Diaspora, incidentally, is a Greek word, meaning “dispersion.”) The Resh Galusa is a person who is a direct descendant of the House of King David. Even though he’s not a king in the land of Israel, he’s recognized as not only being the representative of the Jewish community in Babylon but also having noble status. As we shall see, over the next 1,500 years, 43 people will hold that title. They will all trace their ancestry back to Zerubavel son of Shaltiel son of King Yehoyachin (second to last of Judah) and all the way back to King David. This is a noble line that’s always preserved in Jewish history.(5)
In Israel there was a similar, but even more prestigious position to theResh Galusa in Babylon—the Nasi —the president of the Jewish supreme court, the Sanhedrin. The position can be traced back to the sages who led the Jewish people after Moses, but the titled is specifically associated with the leaders of the Sanhedrin during the Second Temple period and after its destruction. From the time of the Second Temple onward (similar to the Resh Galusa in Babylon) the position will be hereditary and held by the decedents of Hillel until 429 CE, when it is finally abolished by the Byzantines.(6)
The oldest Diaspora community in the world is the Babylonian community. There’s no question that Jews have lived in Babylon way before the Iraqis. And when the Jews came back to the land of Israel in the late 1940s and early 1950s, there were many so-called “Bavli” Jews coming in from Iraq who could trace their ancestry all the way back to this time of the Babylonian exile.
Why they stayed there so long is because the Babylonians and later the Persians and the Ottomans made life in that part of the world relatively easy. (For example, when the Jews were expelled from Spain, Sultan Bazid welcomed them with open arms.)
This is not to say, however, that all was peaches and cream. The Book of Daniel tells the story of Jewish young men who refuse to eat non-kosher food or to bow to idols, and who are thrown into a fiery furnace by Nebuchadnezzar. They miraculously survive, causing Nebuchadnezzar to issue an edict forbidding anyone to blaspheme the God of Israel.
WRITING ON THE WALL
The last king of Babylon is Belshazzar. Like many of the other neighboring kings, Belshazzar is well versed in Jewish prophecy. Why? Because in the polytheistic world, the God of Israel had a reputation. He had to be reckoned with and therefore the rulers kept up with Jewish beliefs and took Jewish prophets, such as Jeremiah, and their prophecies seriously.
Belshazzar is aware of what the prophet Jeremiah had prophesied at the time when Nebuchadnezzar conquered Israel:
“And this whole land [of Israel] shall be a ruin, and a waste, and these nations [the tribes of Israel] shall serve the king of Babylon seventy years. And it shall come to pass, when the seventy years are fulfilled, that I will punish the king of Babylon ...” (Jeremiah 25:11-12)
Naturally, this is something Belshazzar is worried about and so he keeps a count. But he miscalculates by one year.(7) When the year 371 BCE arrives, Belshazzar thinks the prophecy will not come through—God has abandoned the Jews and will not restore them to Israel as promised in Jeremiah prophecy:
“or thus said the Lord, “After seventy years for Babylonia have been completed, I will attend to you, and I will fulfill for you My favorable promise—to return you to this place.” (Jeremiah 29:10)
In celebration, Belshazzar throws a huge feast and brings out for all to see the Temple vessels that Nebuchadnezzar had stolen from Jerusalem. He orders his consorts and concubines to drink from Temple cups and to praise “the gods of gold and silver, copper, iron, wood and stone.” (Daniel 5:1-5)
At that moment, a large unattached hand appears and starts to write on the wall. Belshazzar is shaken to the core, but no one can tell him what the strange message on the wall means.
Finally, the queen recommends that a man be sent for who has a reputation for “extraordinary spirit, intelligence and understanding.” This man, of whom it is said that “the spirit of God is in him,” is the prophet Daniel.
Daniel has no trouble reading the writing on the wall. It says:
“God has numbered the days of your kingdom and brought it to an end ... your kingdom has been divided and given to the Medes and Persians.” (Daniel 5:25-28)
That very night invading hoards of Persians and Medes attack. The king and all his party are killed. Only Nebuchadnezzar’s grand-daughter, Vashti, survives. She will come to marry the King of Persia, Achashverosh, and unwittingly start in motion one of the great sagas of Jewish history which happens in the days of the Persian Empire.
1) see Talmud: Gittin 88a; Sanhedrin 38a.
2) Nor only is the concept of multiple exiles and dispersion unique in history, the very survival of the Jews is a singular event. No other nation has ever survived without a homeland, yet from the Destruction of the Second Temple in 70CE until the rebirth of the modern State of Israel in the 20th century, the Jewsih people survived in Diaspora without a state.
3) See Talmud-Pessachim 87b-88a: Ulla said: “[They were exiled to Babylon] so that they should vbe able to eat an abundance od dates and engross themselves in Torah study.”
4) See: Talmud-Sanhedrin 5a.
2) Nor only is the concept of multiple exiles and dispersion unique in history, the very survival of the Jews is a singular event. No other nation has ever survived without a homeland, yet from the Destruction of the Second Temple in 70CE until the rebirth of the modern State of Israel in the 20th century, the Jewsih people survived in Diaspora without a state.
3) See Talmud-Pessachim 87b-88a: Ulla said: “[They were exiled to Babylon] so that they should vbe able to eat an abundance od dates and engross themselves in Torah study.”
4) See: Talmud-Sanhedrin 5a.
5) see I Chronicles 3:16-19; Seder Olam Zuta
6) see Talmud-Pesachim 66a; Yad-Sanhedrin 1:3.
7) For a detailed discussion of the different Kings of Babylon and Belshazzar’s error see: Talmud-Megillah 11b-12a; Otzer Ha’Iggeres p. 149.
6) see Talmud-Pesachim 66a; Yad-Sanhedrin 1:3.
7) For a detailed discussion of the different Kings of Babylon and Belshazzar’s error see: Talmud-Megillah 11b-12a; Otzer Ha’Iggeres p. 149.
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