Greetings Bible Adventurists,
I can’t believe we are already in mid-summer and approaching the exile in our readings. We know this exile is coming and is temporary from Jeremiah’s prophecy (25:11-12) “11 And this whole land shall be a desolation and an astonishment, and these nations shall serve the king of Babylon seventy years.12 ‘Then it will come to pass, when seventy years are completed, that I will punish the king of Babylon and that nation, the land of the Chaldeans, for their iniquity,’ says the Lord; ‘and I will make it a perpetual desolation. “
I always find it interesting that this prophesy is elaborated on in 2 Chronicles 36:21 that the 70-year exile was “21 to fulfill the word of the Lord by the mouth of Jeremiah, until the land had enjoyed her Sabbaths. As long as she lay desolate she kept Sabbath, to fulfill seventy years.” Sabbath for the land was specified in Leviticus 25 as every seventh year plus a jubilee year every 50th year. If you count all the Sabbath years that should have occurred between the founding of Israel as a nation state (Saul made king) and the exile (depending on your start and end dates) it adds up to Jeremiah’s 70 years.
Because the exile didn’t all happen as one event, its tough to pick a start date, so I thought I would try to lay out a timeline of the exiles and political happenings around the collapse of Israel as a nation-state as best as I can figure out. After David’s military dominance of the region, the Assyrians came into power and took control of the area we today call Syria, Turkey, and northern Iraq from the Mediterranean Sea to modern Iran.
740 BC Assyrian King Tiglath-Pileser III attacks northern Israel and takes about half the territory and those Jews are taken into exile.
722 BC Shalmaneser attacks Israel again and captures the rest of the area of the northern tribes down through Samaria but doesn’t get into Judah.
701 BC Sennacherib attacks into Judah and takes several cities (and deports as many as 200,000 Jews) but is famously defeated at Jerusalem overnight by God after Hezekiah’s prayer in 2 Kings 19:35.
673-663 BC The Assyrians concur Egypt and make it a vassal state.
612 BC Unrest in Assyria leads to revolution and civil war, resulting in Babylon’s independence.
610 BC Egypt sends its army to join Assyria’s remnant army in the fight against Babylon. Josiah tries to stop this reinforcement of Assyria and is killed by Pharaoh Necho at Megiddo. Necho then makes Jerusalem (and the remnant of Judah) a vassal state by replacing Josiah’s son Jehoahaz with Jehoiakim. I think this was retribution for Josiah’s military resistance and to give Egypt a buffer zone from Babylon.
609 BC Babylonian king Nabopolassar (with his son Nebuchadnezzar) defeats Assyria.
607 BC Babylon attacks Egypt.
605 BC Egypt is defeated at the Battle of Carchemish. Nebuchadnezzar comes through Jerusalem on his way home and takes about 4500 of the most influential Jewish leaders and heirs to power into exile. This includes Daniel. (Exile 1).
597 BC Jehoiakim dies and his son Jehoiachin takes the throne. Nebuchadnezzar returns, besieges Jerusalem, and takes new king Jehoiachin and everyone with skills into exile. That’s about 10,000 people and included Ezekiel. Zedekiah is made king. (Exile 2).
587 BC Nebuchadnezzar comes back to Jerusalem after Zedekiah stops paying tribute. Nebuchadnezzar destroys Jerusalem including the Temple. The rest of the Jews are taken into exile or flee to nearby countries like Egypt (self-exiled, this may include Jeremiah). Gedaliah is made governor of Judah, which now is just a few scattered homesteaders. (Exile 3).
OK, so that’s a lot of geeky political history, but it helps me to understand the events in our readings. I hope it makes things less muddy for you, too.
I also found this article to be an interesting, but unsubstantiated and perhaps conspiratorial idea about Hezekiah asking for the shadow to go backwards on the sundial (2 Kings 20:11). The author proposes that all ancient calendars were 360 days in a year (that’s how Egyptian mathematicians came up with 360 degrees in a circle). Then just before 700BC (Hezekiah’s time) the calendars were all adjusted to 365 days. The author figures out that a 10-degree regression of the shadow meant 20 minutes were added to each day resulting in an extra 5 days a year. It’s on the internet so it has to be true.
https://thescripturalcalendar.com/364-d ... calendars/
Thanks for reading along with me. I hope you are enjoying the adventure.
Tom