Yet, incredibly, the people who remained behind had still not learned their lesson. Nebuchadnezzar placed Zedekiah, another of Josiah’s sons and the uncle of Jehoiachin, on the throne, and in about the eighth year of his reign he also rebelled against Babylon. This time there was no mercy. Jerusalem was besieged by the Babylonian army for eighteen months until the wall was breached in August 586 BCE. The king and his army tried to escape but were captured near Jericho, and Zedekiah had to watch his sons being executed before he was blinded and carried off to Babylon in chains. Then the Babylonian commander began systematically to destroy the city, burning down the Temple of Solomon, the royal palace, and all the houses of Jerusalem. All the precious Temple furnishings were taken off to Babylon, though, curiously, there is no mention of the Ark of the Covenant, which disappeared forever: subsequently there would be much speculation about its fate.42 In the ancient world, the destruction of a royal temple was tantamount to the destruction of the state, which could not survive without a “center” linking it to heaven. Yahweh had been defeated by Marduk, god of Babylon, and the Kingdom of Judah was no more. A further 823 people were deported in three stages, leaving behind only the laborers, villagers, and plowmen.
Jeremiah was not among the deportees, possibly because of his pro-Babylonian stance. Once disaster had struck, Jeremiah, prophet of doom, became the comforter of his people. It was perfectly possible to serve Yahweh in an alien land, he wrote to the exiles: they should settle down, plant gardens, build houses, and make a contribution to the life of their new country.43 No one would miss the Ark: its day was over. There would be “no thought for it, no regret for it, no making of another.”44 One day, the exiles would return to buy land “in the district around Jerusalem, in the towns of Judah, the highlands, the lowlands, and the Negev.”45
The destruction of the Temple should have meant the end of Yahweh. He had failed to protect his city; he had shown that he was not the secure fortress of Zion. Jerusalem had indeed been reduced to a desert wasteland. The forces of chaos had triumphed and the promise of the Zion cult had been an illusion. Yet even in ruins, the city of Jerusalem would prove to be a religious symbol that could generate hope for the future.
THE DESTRUCTION of Jerusalem and its Temple was in some profound sense the end of the world. Yahweh had deserted his city and Jerusalem had become a desert wasteland, like the formless chaos that had preceded creation. The destruction was an act of de-creation, like the Flood that had overwhelmed the world at the time of Noah. As Jeremiah had predicted, the desolate landscape, from which even the birds had fled, seemed to presage the overturning of cosmic order: the sun and the moon gave no light, the mountains quaked, and no people could be seen on earth at all.1 Poets recalled with horror the memory of the Babylonian troops rushing through the Temple courts and the sickening sound of their axes hacking away at the cedar panels.2 They longed for vengeance and dreamed of smashing the heads of Babylonian babies against a rock.3 The people of Judah had become a laughingstock: no wonder the gentile nations asked derisively, “Where is their god?”4 Without a temple, there was no possibility of making contact with the sacred in the ancient world. Yahweh had disappeared, Jerusalem was a heap of rubble, and the people of God were scattered in alien territory.
When a city had been destroyed in the Near East, it was customary for the survivors to sit among the ruins to sing dirges, similar to those sung at the funeral of a beloved relative. The Judahites and Israelites who had been left behind seem to have mourned their city twice a year: on the ninth day of the month of Av, the anniversary of the destruction, and at Sukkoth, the anniversary of the Temple’s dedication. On one occasion, we know of eighty pilgrims coming from the northern towns of Shechem, Shiloh, and Samaria to the ruined city, with shaven heads and torn garments.5 The Book of Lamentations may have preserved some of these dirges, chanted by the elders who sat upon the ground in the usual posture of mourning, clad in sackcloth and with ashes sprinkled on their foreheads. The poems give us a poignant picture of the desolation of the site. Instead of a populous city, its streets thronged with worshippers, there remained only empty squares, crumbling walls, and ruined gates haunted by jackals. But the lamentations also painfully evoke the psychological effects of catastrophe, which can make the survivors abhorrent to themselves. Those who had died in 586 were the lucky ones: now people reared in luxury clawed at rubbish heaps for food, tender-hearted women had killed and boiled their own babies, and beautiful young men wandered through the ruined streets with blackened faces and skeletal bodies.6 Above all, there was a crippling sense of shame. Jerusalem, the holy city, had become unclean. People who used to admire her now eyed her with contempt, “while she herself groans and turns her face away,” her garments covered in menstrual blood.7 Even in their evocation of despair, however, the lamentations had gone beyond the point of blaming the Babylonians. The authors knew that Yahweh had destroyed the city because of the sins of the people of Israel.
Jerusalem was no longer habitable, and the country south of the city had been too badly damaged for settlement. In the extreme south of the former Kingdom of Judah, the land was overrun by Edomites, who laid the foundations of the future Kingdom of Idumea. Most of the Judahites who had stayed behind in 586 either migrated to Samerina or settled to the north of Jerusalem at Mizpah, Gibeon, or Bethel. The Babylonians had installed Gedaliah, a grandson of King Josiah’s secretary, as governor of the region, and from his residence at Mizpah he tried to establish some measure of normality. The Babylonians also attempted to build up the country by giving the lands of the deportees to those who had stayed, people who had previously been among the poorest and most exploited sector of Judah. Yet this bid for the loyalty of the former Kingdom of Judah failed. In 582, officers of the old Judaean army who had fled to the Transjordan returned, and their leader, Ishmael, a member of the House of David, murdered Gedaliah and many of his entourage. The coup failed, because Ishmael failed to win the grassroots support of the people, and he escaped to Ammon. Many of the more politically active people also emigrated to Egypt to escape the wrath of Babylon. We hear nothing more about the fortunes of Jerusalem and Judah for another fifty years.
Despite the pain of their uprooting, the deportees had an easier time. They were not persecuted in Babylon, and King Jehoiachin lived at the court and retained his royal title.8 The exiles were settled in some of the most attractive and important districts in and around Babylon, near the “great canal” of the Chebar, which brought the waters of the Euphrates to the city. They probably translated the Babylonian place-names into Hebrew: some, for example, lived in a neighborhood called Tel Aviv, Springtime Hill. The exiles followed Jeremiah’s advice and became well integrated into Babylonian society. They were allowed to meet freely, buy land, and establish businesses. Many quickly became prosperous and respected merchants; some gained office at court. They may have been joined by descendants of the Israelites who had been deported to Babylonia in 722, since a number of the deportees mentioned in the Bible were members of the ten northern tribes.9
Babylon was both a shock and a challenge: the magnificent city was more sophisticated and cosmopolitan than any of the towns they had seen back home. With its fifty-five temples, Babylon had a religious world far more complex than the old paganism of Canaan. Yet some of its myths would seem strangely familiar. Yahweh had been defeated by Marduk, and now that they were living in his territory it would have seemed natural to many of the deportees to adopt the local faith. Others probably worshipped Babylonian deities as well as Yahweh and gave their children such names as Shameshledin