The destruction of the First Temple unfolded in two distinct waves. Looking back, it is hard not to wonder whether the lessons of the first wave might have prevented what followed in the second – the massacre, the devastating famine, the widespread destruction, and the great fire that ultimately consumed Jerusalem.
Where did it all begin? Was it with Babylon’s decisive victory at the Battle of Carchemish, where it wiped the Assyrian Empire from the map and sent the forces of Pharaoh Necho II of Egypt retreating in defeat? Or perhaps the story began even earlier, with the death of King Josiah at Megiddo, or with the ambitions of King Jehoiakim, who owed his throne to the very Egyptian ruler whose campaign had claimed Josiah’s life.
If the politics of today’s Middle East seem tangled with competing interests and shifting alliances, the ancient Near East was no less complex.
The collapse of the Assyrian Empire – which, little more than a century earlier, had conquered the Kingdom of Israel and scattered the Ten Lost Tribes into history – left a power vacuum across the region. And as has happened many times throughout history, the disappearance of a dominant empire then encouraged many rulers, both great and small, to dream of renewed independence or territorial expansion.
Such ambitions, however, were soon overshadowed by the larger kingdom responsible for Assyria’s downfall: the Neo-Babylonian Empire, taking its first steps as the new regional superpower.
Babylon’s revolt against Assyria was spectacularly successful. Within fewer than four years, the Assyrians had lost both of their capitals – Nineveh and Harran – and found themselves desperately in need of allies. That role fell to Pharaoh Necho II of Egypt.
In 609 BCE, as Harran stood on the brink of falling to the Babylonians, Necho marched north with his army to assist the Assyrians in retaking the city. But the route from Egypt to Harran passed dangerously close to the Kingdom of Judah, which had only recently freed itself from Assyrian domination. The Book of Kings tells us that King Josiah went to meet Necho at Megiddo. We don’t know exactly what his objective was, but one leading theory is this: Josiah had no intention of exchanging one imperial overlord for another. Hoping to stop the Egyptian advance, he decided to confront Necho’s forces at Megiddo.
If that was the plan, it ended in disaster.
The Judean force could not stop the Egyptian army, and Josiah died, very likely killed in the Battle of Megiddo. The Egyptians then marched on Jerusalem, deposed Judah’s lawful king, Josiah’s son Jehoahaz, and installed his brother Jehoiakim in his place, expecting that either loyalty or fear would ensure Judah’s alignment with Egyptian interests.
After this brief delay, the Egyptian army continued northeast in a belated attempt to rescue its Assyrian allies. But Harran had already fallen, and all efforts to recapture it failed. Then, in 605 BCE, at the Battle of Carchemish, with the Assyrian Empire effectively gone, the Egyptian army was decisively defeated by the Babylonians and forced to retreat home. Along with the sting of defeat came a growing desire for revenge against Babylon.
Meanwhile, in Jerusalem, King Jehoiakim began entertaining thoughts of rebellion against Babylon. The prophet Jeremiah pleaded with him to abandon the plan, warning that revolt, combined with the people’s spiritual decline, would bring about the destruction of both the city and the Temple. His prophecies went unheeded. Jehoiakim publicly burned Jeremiah’s scrolls and threatened anyone who dared listen to the prophet’s warnings.
Thus began the first chapter in Jerusalem’s struggle for survival.
Babylon’s relatively new king, Nebuchadnezzar II, son of Nabopolassar, was a ruler of extraordinary ambition. His relentless military campaigns to expand the young empire were matched only by his determination to transform Babylon into one of the wonders of the ancient world. He could not afford to leave pockets of rebellion smoldering on the empire’s frontiers. Marching on Jerusalem, he sought not only to restore order but also to send a clear message to Egypt and to any other kingdom tempted by dreams of independence.
What followed was the first Babylonian siege of Jerusalem. Egypt offered no assistance. Jehoiakim died during the crisis, and after only three months on the throne, his successor, Jehoiachin, surrendered. He was taken captive to Babylon together with much of Judah’s military leadership and the city’s elite, in what later Jewish tradition would call the “Exile of the Craftsmen and the Smiths” (Galut He-Ḥarash VeHa-Masger).
Why this name? According to one interpretation, the Babylonians were remarkably pragmatic. They understood something that even modern military leaders have at times overlooked: an army cannot function, or pose a serious threat, without the skilled workers who build and maintain its equipment. Alongside Judah’s soldiers and members of the royal family, Nebuchadnezzar therefore deported the kingdom’s craftsmen and metalworkers. Another tradition, however, understands the phrase metaphorically, suggesting that those exiled were Judah’s intellectual and spiritual elite, the people whose knowledge and leadership shaped society.
Before returning to Babylon, Nebuchadnezzar once again installed a new king in Judah. Mattaniah, a son of Josiah and uncle of the exiled Jehoiachin, was placed on the throne and given a new name: Zedekiah. Identified with the pro-Babylonian faction at the Judean court, he owed his crown to Nebuchadnezzar and immediately swore allegiance to the Babylonian king.
The Babylonians then returned home with their captives to Babylon, which had by then become one of the most magnificent cities of the ancient world.
Raised under the influence of his father, who had dared to rebel against the mighty Assyrian Empire and elevate Babylon to unprecedented heights, Nebuchadnezzar regarded himself as the earthly representative of the god Marduk. In keeping with the power of his kingdom, Babylon was adorned with monumental gates and towering walls faced with brilliant blue glazed bricks, decorated with striking reliefs in yellow and ochre. The royal palace, described by Nebuchadnezzar himself as “an object of wonder, a glittering palace, my royal residence,” was guarded by colossal lion sculptures, while its famed Hanging Gardens made the king’s summer palace the envy of the ancient world.
About three years after Babylon’s decisive victory over Judah, Zedekiah was summoned to Babylon to renew his oath of loyalty and bow before Nebuchadnezzar.
At that point, one might have expected Judah to have understood the lesson. Jeremiah’s dire prophecies had begun to come true; surely the prophet who had spoken such unwelcome truths would now receive the respect he deserved, or at the very least gain the attentive ear of both king and people.
But as we all know, there would still be a second round.
Soon after returning from Babylon, Zedekiah began entertaining new plans for revolt. He stopped paying Judah’s regular tribute to Babylon and even hosted a summit in Jerusalem of neighboring rulers who were plotting a coordinated rebellion against the empire.
At the same time, Jeremiah’s appeals grew ever more urgent. He implored the people to save themselves, both spiritually and practically, from the destruction drawing near. Instead of heeding his warnings, Zedekiah had the prophet imprisoned in a cistern within the royal palace complex.
As was to be expected, Nebuchadnezzar returned to Jerusalem.
In 586 BCE, the Babylonians laid siege to the city for a second time. Unlike the first siege, however, this one did not end after three months with a surrender.
For nearly three years, some thirty months, Jerusalem’s walls held. Inside them, the city endured a slow and harrowing death as famine tightened its grip. The descriptions preserved in the ancient sources remain difficult to read even more than 2,500 years later.
The famine spared no one. Rich and poor, young and old, soldiers and civilians alike all suffered its relentless toll. No one escaped the physical and spiritual devastation, or the unbearable sight of children and mothers wasting away from hunger.
Then, on the Seventeenth of Tammuz, Jerusalem’s walls were finally breached. Where starvation had not already claimed its victims, Babylonian swords completed the destruction.
The massacre that befell the beautiful and sacred city was horrific.
In the case of the Second Temple period, one may debate whether Titus truly ordered the complete destruction of Jerusalem and the burning of the Temple. Here, however, Nebuzaradan, commander of Nebuchadnezzar’s army – who was given the grim title Rav HaTabachim (“Chief of the Executioners”) in the Bible – left no room for interpretation. The city was to be destroyed completely.
And on the Ninth of Av, 586 BCE – a date that, whether through chilling coincidence or divine design, would witness a similar catastrophe centuries later – the flames were set alight. Their primary target was the Temple: the spiritual and religious center of the Jewish people for generations, ever since it had been built by King Solomon. The fire burned with such intensity that later archaeological evidence revealed that nearby stone pavements, some 6 inches thick, had actually melted. The Temple priests perished along with it.
The few survivors, those who had endured the famine, the massacre, and the great fire, were exiled to Babylon. This deportation was a deliberate policy of the Babylonian Empire, which used the sons and daughters of conquered peoples to strengthen its own capital, develop its institutions, and transform Babylon into a city more advanced, prosperous, and powerful than any empire that had preceded it.
Jerusalem had, for the time being, disappeared from the map. The future of the people who had lived there, the people for whom it had been both the capital as well as the spiritual and cultural heart, seemed destined to vanish as well.
But then something unexpected happened. A small “glitch” in the course of history, if you will. The exiled people refused to forget their homeland.
By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down,
yea, we wept when we remembered Zion.
Upon the willows in the midst thereof
we hung up our harps.
For there they that led us captive asked of us words of song,
and our tormentors demanded of us mirth:
“Sing us one of the songs of Zion.”
How shall we sing the song of the Lord
upon foreign soil?
If I forget thee, O Jerusalem,
let my right hand forget its skill.
Let my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth,
if I do not remember thee;
if I do not set Jerusalem
above my highest joy.
(Psalms 137)
Seventy years after Jerusalem was almost completely destroyed, groups of Judean exiles began returning to the ruined city and rebuilding it. The Temple was first reconstructed by the returning Babylonian exiles following the declaration of Cyrus, and was later rebuilt and greatly expanded by King Herod, becoming one of the most magnificent structures in the ancient world.
And then it was destroyed again. And once again, the people went into exile.
Yet Jerusalem never truly fell. It was rebuilt time and again. Throughout two thousand years of exile, the Jewish people never forgot it. Jerusalem – whether built or destroyed, flourishing or under foreign rule – remained the greatest aspiration of a people who had witnessed its devastation and rebuilt it so many times.
To this day, the words from the Book of Psalms that express the sorrow of the mourning Babylonian exiles are recited by Jews around the world at moments of joy:
If I forget thee, O Jerusalem,
let my right hand forget its skill.
Let my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth,
if I do not remember thee;
if I do not set Jerusalem
above my highest joy.
