Siege of Jerusalem (587 BCE)

Between 589 and 587 BCE the armies of the Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar II besieged Jerusalem, capital of the small kingdom of Judah, after its king Zedekiah rebelled. When the city fell, it was burned, its temple, traditionally attributed to Solomon, was destroyed, the monarchy ended and many Judeans were deported to Babylonia. The disaster became a turning point in Jewish history and in the shaping of the Hebrew Bible.

Judah had survived the Assyrian conquests of the late eighth century BCE, when the northern kingdom of Israel was destroyed, by accepting Assyrian overlordship. As Assyria collapsed in the late seventh century, Judah was caught between Egypt and the rising power of Babylonia. After Nebuchadnezzar beat the Egyptians at Carchemish in 605 BCE, he overran the Levant, and Judah became a Babylonian vassal.

A failed Babylonian invasion of Egypt in 601 BCE encouraged revolts. Judah's king Jehoiakim stopped paying tribute. In 597 BCE Nebuchadnezzar besieged Jerusalem; Jehoiakim died during the siege, and his son Jeconiah surrendered the city in March. A Babylonian chronicle records the capture. The king, his court and skilled workers were taken to Babylon, about 10,000 people according to the Book of Kings, and Jeconiah's uncle Zedekiah was placed on the throne.

Zedekiah in turn withheld tribute and allied himself with the pharaoh Apries, against the warnings of the prophet Jeremiah. The Babylonian army returned and, by the biblical dating, began the siege in January 589 BCE. No Babylonian record of this second siege survives, so the account comes from the Hebrew Bible. It describes severe famine inside the walls and refugees fleeing to Moab, Ammon and Edom. According to Jeremiah, the fortified towns of Lachish and Azekah were the last to hold out outside the capital. The siege lasted either 18 or 30 months.

In the summer month of Tammuz the walls were breached. Zedekiah fled but, according to the Bible, was caught near Jericho and taken to Riblah, where he watched his sons executed before being blinded and carried off to Babylon. The biblical account says a Babylonian commander, Nebuzaradan, then burned the city and the temple and pulled down the walls. Scholars disagree whether this happened in 587 or 586 BCE, depending on how the reigns of the kings of Judah are counted; a 2004 study argued for 587.

Archaeology bears out the destruction. Excavations in the City of David have uncovered houses with charred beams, burnt layers and a type of bronze arrowhead also found where the Babylonians and Medes sacked Assyrian cities. Most towns around Jerusalem and along Judah's western frontier were also destroyed, while the area of Benjamin to the north largely escaped.

Judah became a Babylonian province governed from Mizpah by a Judean, Gedaliah, who was soon murdered; many survivors then fled to Egypt. One estimate suggests Judah's population fell from about 110,000 to between 15,000 and 40,000. In Babylonia the deportees, the start of the Babylonian captivity, lived as ordinary subjects and kept their identity. After Cyrus the Great conquered Babylon in 539 BCE, exiles were allowed to return, and a Second Temple was completed by 516 BCE.

The catastrophe reshaped Judean religion, encouraging the belief that national disaster followed collective sin and that repentance could bring restoration. Its memory coloured later Jewish responses to the Roman destruction of Jerusalem in 70 CE.

Our 700 BCE map shows Judah while it was still an Assyrian vassal, and our 500 BCE map shows the region within the Persian Empire after the exiles began to return.