586 BC or 607 BC? When did the Babylonians conquer Jerusalem, and why?
It’s 586 BC, and things are getting really intense in Jerusalem. The city’s under siege by the Babylonian army led by King Nebuchadnezzar. Inside those walls, tension’s high, people are scrambling, and fear’s spreading like wildfire.
The Babylonians, they mean business. They’ve been at this siege for a while, slowly tightening the noose around Jerusalem. Supplies are running low, morale’s dropping, and desperation’s setting in. But the people, they’re holding out hope, trusting in their defences, maybe even thinking, “God will save us.”
But alas, the walls crumble. The Babylonians breach the city. Chaos erupts. It’s a scene of devastation as the Babylonian soldiers storm in, swords flashing, buildings burning, screams filling the air. The Temple, the heart and soul of Jerusalem, is ransacked, pillaged, and set ablaze. It’s a gut-wrenching sight, the sacred torn apart.
And then comes the aftermath. Jerusalem lies in ruins. The once bustling streets are now deserted, littered with rubble and ashes. Survivors are either killed or dragged off into exile in Babylon, leaving behind a ghost town, a painful reminder of what happens when a city falls.
And so, Jerusalem, the jewel of Judah, is no more — at least for now. Its destruction in 586 BC marks a dark chapter in its history, a stark warning of the consequences of disobedience, and a tragic tale of a city brought to its knees by the ravages of war.
The JW stance on 607 BC, and why?
The Witnesses believe that the actual date of the razing of Jerusalem and its temple is important because not only did it mark a turning point in the history of the Judahites, but it also helped to mark and understand the fulfilment of what they regard as one of the most important prophecies of the scripture. And based on what they understand from the scripture, the secular date of 587/586 BC doesn’t just cut it. So, let’s see how they arrived at their date.
“This whole country will become a desolate wasteland, and these nations will serve the king of Babylon seventy years.”. These are the words of Jeremiah, Yahweh’s prophet as recorded in Jeremiah 25:11. Not only Judah, Jeremiah says, but the surrounding Kingdoms shall be crushed and made subject to Nebuchadnezzar the Great. This verse is key, according to the witnesses, because determining when the seventy years began would be to place the date for the Babylonian conquest of Jerusalem.
Now, the seventy years, they say citing Ezra, was for the Holy land to enjoy its sabbath rest, a practice ordained by Yahweh as recorded in Leviticus 26:34–35. Following, as they believe, the Ezra, the seventy years came to an end when Cyrus, King of Persia, in his first year, decreed that the Jews could return to their homeland. The first year of Cyrus is reckoned to be 537 BC by modern historians. Using this date and counting backward seventy years, the Witnesses arrive at a date of 607 BC, being faithful to the bible’s own testimony as they see it. Using this and other biblical texts as they see fit, they arrive at 1914 as the date of the establishment of God’s kingdom, the prophecy I alluded to earlier.
However this sort of reasoning has a few problems; for one, the witnesses can no more prove that the Jews returned in 537 BC from the bible than you or I can. Their use of 537 BC is based on the fact that it is “widely regarded as the first year of Cyrus the Great”, by secular historians, the very same people whose wide regard for 586/587 BC as the date for Jerusalem’s destruction is, well, disregarded because they are “uninspired”. You wouldn’t be wrong to think that the reason one date is accepted and the other isn’t is because the troublesome date doesn’t fit into how the witnesses interpret the seventy years of Jeremiah.
And this brings us to yet another problem; servitude to Babylon is not identical to the destruction of Judah. These are two points that are easily conflated but are actually distinct. Jeremiah himself made it clear when he said: “Now I will give all your countries into the hands of my servant Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon; I will make even the wild animals subject to him. All nations will serve him and his son and his grandson until the time for his land comes;”(Jer 27:6–7). In the same chapter, he also said: ““If, however, any nation or kingdom will not serve Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon or bow its neck under his yoke, I will punish that nation with the sword, famine, and plague, declares the Lord, until I destroy it by his hand.”(Jer 27:6–7) and four verses later, “But if any nation will bow its neck under the yoke of the king of Babylon and serve him, I will let that nation remain in its own land to till it and to live there….”.
In fact, the whole chapter makes it clear that the Kings of Edom, Ammon, Moab, and Judah will serve the King of Babylon but destruction will only come upon those who resist him. In fact, it is an attempt to get the King of Judah, Zedekiah, and the people of Judah to willingly submit to the overlordship of Babylon and resist other prophets calling for Judah to rebel. So from this, you can see that reckoning the start of seventy years of Jeremiah to the conquest and destruction of Jerusalem is to say what the bible doesn’t say, irrespective of whose evidence you are using.
Babylonian power was overthrown by the Persians, led by Cyrus(not Darius the Mede, sorry Daniel, but you have some historicity questions to answer as well) in 539 BC, and thus the servitude of the nations to Babylon came to an end.
How do we know it is 586 BC?
Historians acknowledge that the second siege of Jerusalem by King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon began in 589 BC and ended in 586 BC with the destruction of Jerusalem and the defeat of the Jews. The date of 586 BC is not cast in stone, however. Some historians put it in 587 BC. None, however, put it in 607 BC like the Witnesses do. Why? And how do we know that modern historians, not witnesses, have the right to it?
Synchronising the dates and data from astronomical observations made by the Babylonians themselves, tens of thousands of dated business and legal documents, tablets actually, from that time, the book of Chronicles itself, while written late in the Persian period, appears to draw upon older material, the Adda-guppi stelae, the royal canon of Ptolemy, and classical sources, all of which, even accounting for possible errors, are in solid agreement that the destruction of Jerusalem took place in 587/586 BC. You can find more details here: When was ancient Jerusalem destroyed by Doug Mason (pdf file), Wikipedia also provides a good overview of the dating here, and its references contain even more detail.
Why the two dates, though? It has to do with how the Jewish and Babylonian calendars worked, the difference between the Jewish religious, and the Jewish secular calendar, especially when trying to synchronise their dates with those of our modern Gregorian calendar. You can find the details in these answers from the Christian Stack exchange, but one thing is clear: neither date represents a disruption in what is known about the chronology of events and the lives of individuals in that period.
Why was the Kingdom of Judah destroyed? Sin or politics?
The Book of Second Chronicles would have us believe that Judah’s subjection to Babylon and its eventual destruction were a result of its sinfulness. 2 Chronicles 36:14–16 says:
“In those days, all the princes of Judah, the priests, and the people added infidelity to infidelity, practicing all the abominations of the nations and polluting the LORD’s temple, which he had consecrated in Jerusalem.
Early and often did the LORD, the God of their fathers, send his messengers to them, for he had compassion on his people and his dwelling place. But they mocked the messengers of God, despised his warnings, and scoffed at his prophets until the anger of the LORD against his people was so inflamed that there was no remedy.
Their enemies burned the house of God, tore down the walls of Jerusalem, set all its palaces afire, and destroyed all its precious objects. Those who escaped the sword were carried captive to Babylon, where they became servants of the king of the Chaldeans and his sons until the kingdom of the Persians came to power.”
However, the Book of Chronicles, while utilising older material, was written in the Persian Period. Essentially, it is revisionist history. Judah’s vassalage didn’t begin with the bad kings. Neither did it cease when good kings reigned. Judah, for all of its existence, was always in the shadow of bigger states, be it Israel, Egypt, Assyria, or Babylon. Hezekiah, for instance, was a vassal of the Assyrians and it was his refusal to pay tribute after the death of Sargon (not only him though, quite a few other states thought they could throw off Assyrian yoke because there was an interregnum on the throne in Nineveh. They were all badly mistaken) which led Sennacherib to devastate Judah.
During the civil wars of Assyria, another good king sought to use the chance to not only throw off the yoke of the Assyrians but to establish Judah as a power in the region. That King, Josiah, died opposing the Pharaoh Necho and soon, the civil wars ended with Babylon seizing the reins the Assyrians once held. The destruction of Jerusalem in 587/586 BC wasn’t the first Babylonian attack on the city, Nebuchadnessar attacked earlier and removed the previous king Jehoiachin, replacing him with an uncle, Zedekiah, whom Jeremiah pleaded not to revolt.
Zedekiah chose to listen to other prophets at his court. And he wasn’t alone, other kings in the Levant saw Babylon’s failed invasion of Egypt (one actually prophesied to succeed by Jeremiah and Ezekiel; Jer 46:14 and Ezek 29:10. Might explain Zedekiah’s slowness to trust Jerry, you might say.) as a sign of Nebuchadnezzar’s weakness, a chance at independence. However, Nebuchadnezzar soon made them realise that comparing themselves to Egypt was a delusion, a delusion Judah paid dearly for.
Merely politics, you might say.
