The Oxford History of the Biblical World (63 page)

(Lam. 4.22)

Were it not for the oracle of Obadiah, the smallest of the prophetic books, the role of Judah’s southern neighbor in her misfortune would still be clouded. At the time of the Babylonian hegemony over the west, there had flared up centuries-long strife between Judah and Edom over the southern Negeb desert down to the Red Sea port of Elath (modern Eilat), whose trade routes were its chief asset. Illustrative of the tension of this period is a memorandum, recovered at Arad, addressed to the commander of the outpost there and ordering him to transfer troops to reinforce another position, “otherwise Edom will arrive there.” Judah regarded Edom as close kin—the Genesis narratives depict Jacob and Esau, the traditional ancestors of Israel and
Edom, as rival twin brothers—and so when Edom did not support the rebellion against Nebuchadrezzar, but rather took advantage of Judah’s downfall, the reaction was one of anger over familial betrayal and a call for revenge:

For the slaughter and violence done to your brother Jacob,
shame shall cover you,
and you shall be cut off forever….

You should not have rejoiced over the people of Judah
on the day of their ruin….

You should not have entered the gate of my people
on the day of their calamity….

You should not have looted his goods….

You should not have stood at the crossings
to cut off his fugitives;

you should not have handed over his survivors
on the day of distress.

(Obad. 10, 12–14)

There is an epilogue to the history of the Judean monarchy, not only in the two surviving kings who lived out their lives in Babylon, but also in the organization of the “poorest people of the land [who had been left] to be vinedressers and tillers of the soil” (2 Kings 25.12). The Babylonian monarchs, unlike their Assyrian predecessors, did not make use of population exchange as a tool of imperial rule. To administer those Judeans still on the land (their number cannot be determined), a native Judean, Gedaliah son of Ahikam, from a prominent Jerusalem family and formerly in the royal service, was appointed governor of Judah, with headquarters in the city of Mizpah, just north of Jerusalem. Refugees drifted back, and so did some of the fighting forces who had been in hiding. The prophet Jeremiah was released by his captors, and he, too, joined the coterie at Mizpah as a close adviser of Gedaliah. But the road to recovery was short-lived, no more than a few months. After the fall harvest was in, a small band of conspirators led by Ishmael son of Nethaniah, a member of the royal family, with the backing of King Baalis of Ammon (whose name can be restored to its original form
Baal-yisha,
from a seal impression recently discovered in Jordan), murdered Gedaliah and his entire entourage. They probably acted more out of rancor against the perceived collaborator than as rebels against Babylonia. The frightened survivors of the massacre hurriedly departed for Egypt, Jeremiah among them. Whether the Babylonians retaliated is unknown; the only record from the period tells of a further deportation from Judah five years later. The day of Gedaliah’s death (the third of Tishri [October]) entered the cultic calendar of the Judeans as a day of fasting, together with the day of the Temple’s destruction (the ninth of Ab [August]). These two days marked the tragic endpoints of Judah’s national existence.

It is often suggested that after the Gedaliah debacle the administration of Judah was transferred to Samaria, and that this political arrangement was subsequently carried over into the Persian period. This would explain, in part, the tensions between Judah and Samaria over the appointment of a native governor in Jerusalem in the mid-fifth century
BCE
. It is also argued that parts of southern Judah and the Negeb were taken over by Edomites who had begun their push northward toward the end of the Judean monarchy. At a number of sites, such as Khirbet Qitmit in the Negeb
and En Haseva in the Arabah Valley, impressive Edomite remains vouch for their foothold in the region. But there is a total documentary blackout for the half century of Babylonian rule, and reading back from the Persian period, when our sources resume, is full of pitfalls. Nevertheless, a few notes on life under the Babylonians can be appended to the sorry tale of opportunity given and lost. From the archaeological perspective, numerous sites, especially north of Jerusalem, bear evidence of continuous settlement during the sixth century, with Israelite culture remaining intact until the Persian period. Judah was neither totally devastated nor depopulated, as some biblical writers would have us believe. The rural population held on, eking out a living for several generations until their fortunes took another turn. For all we know, they may have adopted the viewpoint, reported of them by Ezekiel, of considering themselves the rightful heirs of the property left behind by their exiled brethren and neighbors (Ezek. 33.23–24). They were on the scene fifty years later when the early returnees from Babylon to Jerusalem arrived, and they were powerful enough to frighten those who came with royal authorization to restore the Temple. Even in this matter, the populace in Judah saw themselves as the legitimate successors of the exiles; it was they, after all, who had continued to make pilgrimage, “bringing grain offerings and incense to present at the [ruins of the] temple of the L
ORD
” (Jer. 41.4–5). Jeremiah may have disparaged their fathers by labeling them “bad figs” (24.8), but those who had remained in the land rejected the claim that only those who had suffered in exile could take part in the promised renewal.

The exile represented the first foreign experience for vast numbers of Judeans. It saw the creation of countless emigré communities scattered throughout the Near East, safe havens where some semblance of their former lives might be maintained. The half century of Babylonian rule remains a virtual dark age due to the paucity of contemporary documentation. Still, a partial sketch can be made of life outside Judah by comparing the relatively well-known beginning and end stages of the exile, especially as reflected in prophetic texts.

Jehoiachin, the royal household, and Jerusalem’s elite who had surrendered in 597
BCE
were transferred to the city of Babylon, where they became state pensioners. Cuneiform documents from Nebuchadrezzar’s thirteenth year (592) record that “Jehoiachin, king of the land of Judah,” and his five sons, together with other foreign dignitaries confined to Babylon, received food rations. Other Judeans besides the former king were on the same roster; Nebuchadrezzar’s bookkeeper noted that among the artisans transferred from Jerusalem (whom the Bible leaves unnamed) were Gaddiel, Qoniah, Semachiah, and Shelemiah the gardener. They were just a few of the many skilled workers from conquered countries employed to Babylon’s advantage.

At some point, Jehoiachin fell on bad times and was imprisoned, a punishment often meted out to those guilty of treason. It was not until 562, in an act of amnesty upon the accession of Amel-marduk (the biblical Evil-merodach), son of Nebuchadrezzar, that Jehoiachin was pardoned and his pension restored. Yet despite such vicissitudes in the king’s fortunes, the exiles continued to hold him in high respect; they numbered their years in Babylonia from the start of Jehoiachin’s exile, and some may even have entertained the hope for an eventual restoration of the monarchy
upon their return to Judah. Such an eventuality must have seemed more palpable when Zerubbabel, a grandson of Jehoiachin, was appointed by the Persian authorities as governor of Judah in the first repatriation in 538
BCE
.

The main body of exiles, perhaps numbering in the tens of thousands, were settled in the border area between Assyria and Babylonia that had been heavily damaged during the wars between the two powers, in towns whose names suggest that it was official policy to reclaim wastelands, such as Tel-abib (“Mound of the Flood”; Ezek. 3.15) and Tel-harsha (“Mound of Potsherds”) and Tel-melah (“Mound of Salt”; Ezra 2.59). These communities of Judeans seem to have been self-governing units; the elders of Judah and the heads of families took over communal duties with the blessing of the Babylonian authorities. Not only Judeans, but also deportees from Tyre, Ashkelon, Gaza, and other cities are known to have maintained a semblance of their former national identities in communities that were organized along ethnic lines. In this respect, Babylonia contrasts sharply with Assyria, where the forced mingling of exiles had been the rule. Generations later, when return to Judah was an option, the list of Judeans who made the trek home (a copy of the register is preserved in Ezra 2) shows that the exiles had held on to genealogical records as well as oral family traditions, so that even the various orders of liturgical personnel could take up their positions when given the chance. Thus Jeremiah’s picture of a comfortable exile, described in his letter to those who were clamoring for a quick return home, was not mere wishful thinking:

Build houses and live in them; plant gardens and eat what they produce. Take wives and have sons and daughters… multiply there, and do not decrease. But seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the L
ORD
on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare. (Jer. 29.5–7)

Yet at the same time, the maintenance of ethnic identity by the exiled Judeans was tempered by their contact with Babylonian society. Language, for example, was always a ready vehicle for assimilation. Aramaic, the lingua franca of the Near East, replaced Hebrew in daily discourse and commerce; and though Hebrew seems to have remained the preferred literary vehicle, parts of Ezra-Nehemiah and of the late biblical book of Daniel are written in Aramaic. Babylonian month-names, in their Aramaic renditions, replaced the common Hebrew ones, and epigraphic finds indicate that the Hebrew script, which had been in use during the period of the monarchy, gave way to Aramaic script. Later tradition credits Ezra the scribe with transcribing the five books of Moses into the new script, at the same time preserving the original Hebrew text. Furthermore, the Judean onomasticon underwent a profound change, and in just one generation, Babylonian personal names, some including the names of Babylonian deities, were adopted by the exiles; even among the family of the Davidides, one finds names like Zerubbabel (“seed of Babylon”) and Shenazzar (“the god Sin protects”). For sure, fashions did change in another generation or two, when Hebrew names were again given to children as national feelings revived, as can be seen in the female name Yehoyishma (“the Lord will hear”), bestowed by a father with the Babylonian name Shawash-shar-usur (“the god Shamash protects the king”). But a divide had been crossed. A telling measure of the cultural changes that the exile engendered can be seen in the description of the New Year’s convocation held in
Jerusalem a century and a half after its start: Ezra read aloud from the scroll of the Torah in Hebrew to the assembled crowd, and was assisted by Levites who translated the text into Aramaic “so that the people understood the reading” (Neh. 8.1–8).

Perhaps the greatest issue facing the exiles was the lack of organized public worship. Because Israelite ritual law prohibited sacrifice outside the borders of the Promised Land, as all other lands were considered “unclean” (defiled by idolatry), the exiles could not reestablish communion with their God through traditional means. A psalm of lament recalls their plight:

By the rivers of Babylon—
there we sat down and there we wept
when we remembered Zion.

On the willows there
we hung up our harps.

For there our captors
asked us for songs,

and our tormentors asked for mirth, saying,
“Sing us one of the songs of Zion!”

How could we sing the L
ORD
’S song
in a foreign land?

(Ps. 137.1–4)

The solution reportedly contrived by the Syrian army commander Naaman sometime in the late ninth century when he adopted the God of Israel as his god—he constructed an altar to the Lord in Damascus on soil brought from the land of Israel (2 Kings 5.15–19)—was an impractical answer for the multitudes living in Babylonia. Besides, prophets such as Jeremiah and Ezekiel taught that the Lord’s distancing himself from his people by the destruction of the Temple was part and parcel of their punishment. Only a contrite heart could win them forgiveness. Under these circumstances certain ritual acts, whose observance was not restricted to the national home, properly acquired new significance. The weekly Sabbath rest and the covenant of circumcision developed into clear ethnic markers of the exiles. It is just possible that an institution that might be termed a “protosynagogue” took its first steps. At public gatherings on fast days, the exiles lamented the loss of their former homeland and prayed for a speedy return. On such occasions the teachings of prophets and the reading of sacred texts from preexilic times may also have filled the spiritual void.

We can experience a fair measure of the spiritual climate among the exiles by turning to the book of Ezekiel, the collected oracles of a prophet who was among those deported with Jehoiachin. In exile, Ezekiel ministered to the Judeans living in Tel-abib, a town in southern Babylonia on the Chebar canal (which ran through Nippur), for close to thirty years. He was visited regularly by the elders of Judah, who came to hear his pronouncements on matters concerning national destiny. From the start the fate of Jerusalem was uppermost in their minds. Ezekiel assured his listeners that the city was doomed: he had seen its people’s errant ways and insisted on the justice of the punishment awaiting them. Many of his listeners still held to the view that their suffering was the consequence of inherited guilt, the sins of the fathers being visited on the children and grandchildren. But the prophet countered
with a lesson in the doctrine of individual responsibility—“It is only the person who sins that shall die” (Ezek. 18.4)—urging each one to consider their ways “with a new heart and a new spirit” (18.31). And as sure as he was of the punishment, so he was of the restoration. Once the news of the city’s fall reached the exiles, Ezekiel turned his attention to the future. Though Israel remained undeserving of God’s mercy, he envisioned the revival of the dry bones of both houses of Israel, forcefully repatriated to the land of Israel in a new Exodus. The prophet’s Utopian program for rebuilding Jerusalem and the Temple remained an unrealized dream; at the same time, it most certainly contributed to keeping the hope of redemption alive.