Harry M. Orlinsky
[Harry Orlinsky is a professor at the Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion in New York. He is a leading Old Testament scholar, being one of the world’s authorities in biblical philology, Septuagint, and Bible translation.]
The destruction of Solomon’s Temple and the Babylonian Exile are two events that we all take for granted. You may wonder what there is about the Destruction and the Exile that we need archaeology for. Everyone knows about these events. Everyone knows that Solomon’s Temple was destroyed and that a Babylonian Captivity followed; so that archaeology can play but a relatively minor role here.
However, when I started out as a college student in Semitics, in the late twenties and the thirties, the Destruction and the Exile had come to be increasingly regarded by serious scholars as fictitious, and my teacher at the University of Toronto, Professor Theophile J. Meek, a person of very considerable knowledge and integrity, used to gloss over this period because he did not feel entirely secure with the data for it. The evidence for the destruction of Solomon’s Temple, the evidence for the Babylonian Captivity, and the evidence for the return to Judah and its Restoration were all rather unsubstantial. Simply because the Bible related these events was hardly enough assurance for a scholar that these events had actually taken place.
If Jerusalem and the Temple were captured and severely damaged, and if the country at large was devastated by the Babylonian army, one should expect archaeologists in the course of their work to unearth physical evidence of this catastrophic event. It is true that by
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the end of the twenties, only a few Palestinian sites that were pertinent to our problem had been excavated and the reports on them published; so that the archaeological data for 586 B.C. were rather scant. Among these few sites, Beth-shemesh was the most prominent, and it contained a stratum of destruction. But according to its excavators, this level of occupation had been destroyed about 700 B.C., in the course of the Assyrian King Sennacherib’s invasion of Judah; and thus a site such as Beth-shemesh — which lay some twenty-five miles west of Jerusalem, and which would have had to be neutralized by any enemy force which wanted to make certain that it would not be attacked from the rear while it made its way east toward Jerusalem — provided no evidence of Babylonian destruction of Judah.
Just a few decades ago, in the thirties, there had developed a group of scholars in this country and in Europe — for example, Charles Cutler Torrey of Yale, Gustav Hölscher in Germany, and George A. Cooke in England, all outstanding and serious scholars — who were writing very bluntly that there never was a significant destruction of Solomon’s Temple, or of the country of Judah as a whole, in 586 B.C. Consequently, there was no great, meaningful captivity, no widespread exile to Babylonia. Hence, they concluded, there was no restoration of Judah, since there was nothing to restore, and the whole event was essentially fiction.
Scepticism Toward the Bible
This attitude of scepticism to the Bible as a historical document was prevalent during the nineteenth century and the first two decades of the twentieth, until — as a consequence of World War I — the Ottoman Turkish Empire was destroyed, and France and England took over the Near East. Until the eighteenth century, the Bible had been universally accepted as a trustworthy history book of antiquity. Indeed, the Book was regarded as being literally true — the Creation, the Flood, Noah’s Ark, the walls of Jericho, and all. But as the Age of Reason dawned, and in turn gave way to nineteenth-century philosophies of evolution and scientific materialism, the Bible, in common with all records of antiquity, Greek, Roman, and the rest, came to be very considerably discounted as reliable basis for the reconstruction of history.
The heroic doings of the patriarchs, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, as described in the book of Genesis, were discounted as mere myth. The very existence of Moses was doubted. Joshua was believed to have had little or nothing to do with the Israelite conquest of Canaan.
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David and Solomon were considered greatly overrated. And so on.
This negative attitude to the Bible was reflected in more recent times, for example, in the writings of the well-known social philosopher, Bertrand Russell, and the historiographer, R.C. Collingwood. What Russell wrote in 1944 in his popular History of Western Philosophy was (pp. 309-10):
The early history of the Israelites cannot be confirmed from any source outside the Old Testament, and it is impossible to know at what point it ceases to be purely legendary. David and Solomon may be accepted as kings who probably had a real existence, but at the earliest point at which we come to something certainly historical there are already two kingdoms of Israel and Judah. The first person mentioned, in the Old Testament of whom there is an independent record is Ahab, King of Israel, who is spoken of in an Assyrian letter of 853 B.C. …
So that, to Russell, the first reliable fact in the Bible is the reference in the First Book of Kings (Chapters 20–22) to the existence of King Ahab, for he is vouched for in an extrabiblical source.
A “Fickle Dame”
Archaeology can be a disconcerting, even chastening discipline. One never knows what he will excavate and how the freshly uncovered materials will affect his or anyone else’s theories. As the late Professor Montgomery of the University of Pennsylvania put it, (p. viii of the Preface to his excellent International Critical Commentary…on the Books of Kings): “The marvelous results of modern archaeology have been recorded, however imperfectly, usually without more than reference to the authorities, who then may disagree among themselves, or whose opinions may be shattered by fresh discoveries, for Dame Archaeology has been a chastiser of theoretical reconstructions of literary and so of religious history.”
Indeed, for reasons and in a manner that I cannot discuss here, our “Fickle Dame” was responsible in great part for the attitude of scepticism, and even cynicism, toward the Bible as a historical document, as expressed by the Russells and Collingwoods. Interestingly, it has been the same “Dame,” more than any other factor, that has been responsible for the development of quite the opposite attitude toward the Bible.
The Fall of Judah
Let us get to the specific case in point. The most important
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biblical material bearing on the Fall of Judah and the Babylonian Captivity is to be found in the last chapters of the Second Book of Kings, the books of Jeremiah, Lamentations, and Ezekiel and Psalm 137.
In 2 Kings 24–25 reference is made to King Nebuchadnezzar’s invasion and conquest of Judah, the destruction and despoilation of Jerusalem and the Temple, and the exile to Babylonia of the important strata of the population (the royal household, the military, civil service, government officials, craftsmen, etc.); as put in 24:14 and 25:12, “only the poorest of the people of the land remained…The (Babylonian) captain of the guard left some of the poorest of the land as vinedressers and plowmen.” Also, the fate of the royal family in captivity and of the people of conquered Judah is briefly described. Jeremiah talks of the imminent exile, and chapter 52 parallels much of the last chapters of 2 Kings. In his book, the prophet Ezekiel tells of his experiences as a member of the Judean captivity at Tel Abib in Babylonia, beginning with the year 592 B.C. Finally, the book of Lamentations (1:1: “Alas! Lonely sits the city/ Once great with people!/ She that was great among nations/ Is become like a widow;/ The princess among states/ Is become a thrall”) and Psalm 137 (v. 1, “By the streams of Babylon/ There we sat and wept/ As we recalled Zion”) are traditionally regarded as compositions that resulted directly from the great national catastrophe of 586 B.C.
Ezekiel begins his story as follows (1:1–3):
In the thirtieth year, in the fourth month, on the fifth day of the month, when I was in the community of exiles by the Chebar Canal, the heavens opened and I saw visions of God. On the fifth day of the month — it was the fifth year of the exile of King Jehoiachin — the word of the Lord came to Ezekiel son of Buzi the priest, in the land of the Chaldeans at the Chebar Canal, and the hand of the Lord came upon him there.
Jehoiachin “King” in Babylon?
But objection was raised to the reliability of this passage: how could one accept as authentic a statement purported to have been made by a member (Ezekiel) of a defeated, captive community (Tel Abib), in exile in the land of its conqueror (Babylonia), in which chronological reference is made to the deposed and exiled King (“in the fifth year of the exile of King Jehoiachin”), on whose throne, back home in Jerusalem, the conqueror had set some one (Zedekiah) who would faithfully serve the foreign (Babylonian) master? This
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kind of recognition of the deposed king, and the more than merely implied rejection of the Nebuchadnezzar-appointed subservient king, would surely have been regarded as sedition, justifying even the death penalty. The Babylonian overlord would hardly have permitted such blatant treachery. Clearly, the critics said, the superscription and the chronological framework of the book of Ezekiel are not original, but rather the work of an editor of a later period who probably lived in another country, say, Judah; these passages simply could not be used as evidence for the great events of 586 B.C.
The Problem of the Persians
Again, on two occasions Ezekiel refers to the Persians: 27:10 “([Proclaim a dirge over Tyre [Phoenicia]. Say to Tyre…:] Persia, Lud, and Put were your warriors in your army…”); and similarly in 38:5, in connection with Gog of the land of Magog. Elsewhere in the Bible, Persia and the Persians are mentioned only in such later books as Esther, Daniel, Ezra, Nehemiah, and Chronicles.
Now Ezekiel was supposed to be active in Babylonia from about 592 to about 570 B.C. But in the late twenties and early thirties, scholars were confronted by the fact that the Persians were not mentioned in any known Babylonian or other texts prior to about 560 B.C.; the Persians had simply not been significant enough before then to merit recorded mention. How then could Ezekiel know of them and mention them? Clearly, some scholars maintained, these passages are not Ezekiel’s, but were composed after his time, perhaps by a person who added the superscription and chronological data mentioned above.
Jehoiachin Set Above Other Kings?
Finally, we are told in the last section in the Second Book of Kings (25:27–30; preserved also in Jeremiah 52:31–34) that
In the thirty-seventh year of the exile of King Jehoiachin of Judah, in the twelfth month, on the twenty-seventh day of the month, King Evil-merodach of Babylon, in his coronation year, released (lit., “lifted the head of”) King Jehoiachin of Judah from prison. He treated him kindly and set his throne above those of the other kings who were with him in Babylon. His prison garb was changed, and for the rest of his life he always ate his meals at the king’s table (lit., “before him”). And his regular rations were provided for him by the king — a portion for each day — for the rest of his life.
This statement was hardly the kind that a critical scholar could
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accept at its face value. What power did a captive king from such a petty kingdom as Judah wield as to merit or justify elevation above all other kings? There could be little doubt that the Judean writer wished to glorify his king and people, and so concocted this tale.
By the same token, the statement in 2 Kings 24:16 (cf. v. 14) that King Nebuchadnezzar’s army carried off to Babylonia (along with “…Jehoiachin…the queen mother, the king’s wives, his chamberlains, his officials, the nobles of the land…and all the soldiers, seven thousand”) “artisans and smiths,” was not taken seriously by some scholars. After all, with its wealth of craftsmen and its tradition of fine craftsmanship, Babylonia hardly had need of the Israelite guilds whose members were relatively few in number and the quality of whose work was not exactly world-famous.
Early Persians Found
But unpredictable “Dame Archaeology” began to enter into the picture, and the study of the Bible was never again to be the same.
In 1930, a Jewish archaeologist at Princeton University and a specialist in Old Persian, Ernst Herzfeld, published an Old Persian text in which a great-uncle of Cyrus I refers to himself as “king of kings”; and a year later, Ernst Weidner of Berlin published an even older text, an Assyrian inscription of King Ashurbanipal (spelled Osnappar or Asenappar in Ezra 4:10), about 640 B.C., in which the grandfather of Cyrus I is mentioned. And thus Torrey’s rejection of the “Persian” passages in Ezekiel, based as it was on argument from silence, itself had to be rejected: for if Persia and the Persians had become conquerors of importance already two generations before Ezekiel embarked on his exilic career, this prophet was certainly in a position to refer to them when and in the manner that he did.
Jehoiachin Still King While in Captivity
The clarification of the chronological reference to King Jehoiachin in exile came a year later. In 1928, W.F. Albright (then Director of the all-important Jerusalem part of the American Schools of Oriental Research) excavated at Tell Beit Mirsim (about twenty-eight miles southwest of Jerusalem) a jar handle stamped with a seal whose inscription read: “(Belonging) to Eliakim, steward of Yaukin.” Two years later, two additional products of the same stamp were discovered, one at Beth-shemesh (about twenty-five miles west of Jerusalem) and the other at Tell Beit Mirsim. The important
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implications of this find for our problem at once struck Dr. Albright, and he published a brilliant article on “The Seal of Eliakim and the Latest Preexilic History of Judah, with some Observations on Ezekiel” (in Journal of Biblical Literature, Volume 51, 1932, pp. 77-106).
As summarized later by Albright himself (“King Joiachin in Exile,” in Biblical Archaeologist, Volume 5, No. 4, December 1942, pp. 49-55):
Immediately after the find, the eminent Palestinian archaeologist. Father L.H. Vincent, identified the name “Yaukin” as an abbreviated form of “Joiachin” …All three stamps were made from the same original seal, indicating that Yaukin was a person of very high importance, probably king, since seals bearing a formula of this type have been proved to belong to kings of Judah and surrounding lands. It was possible to demonstrate…that Eliakim had been steward of the crown property of King Joiachin while the latter was a captive in Babylonia…
Seal of Eliakim found at Beth-shemesh in 1930.
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Now Jehoiachin was a young man of about eighteen when he succeeded his murdered father Jehoiakim as king of Judah (597 B.C.), and he sat on the throne a bare three months before succumbing to the Babylonian invaders and going off into captivity. His uncle Zedekiah, put on the throne by the alien conquerors, was hardly recognized by the native population as their king. So that while Zedekiah was accepted perforce as king in fact, it was Jehoiachin whom many of the people, if not the majority, continued to regard as their king by right.
During the three months that he reigned, Jehoiachin was cooped up behind the walls of Jerusalem, besieged and blockaded as the city was by the superior Babylonian army; he and his compatriots were unable to go out or come in. It could therefore not have been he who sent out his official jars, with his royal seal stamped on their handles, to such places as Beth-shemesh and Tell Beit Mirsim for the collection of taxes; this was done by his successor Zedekiah, under Babylonian control. And if Babylonia and its subject Judean king “recognized” exiled Jehoiachin — through the use of his royal stamp — in Judah proper, where an attempt at revolt and liberation would start first, surely it was possible, and legal, for Ezekiel to make use of the year of the exile — not of the accession — of King Jehoiachin. Indeed, any one composing chronological data in postexilic times, after Babylonia had gone the way of all governmental flesh, would automatically have chosen the accession year of the king for his chronological framework. And so Torrey’s approach to the chronological data in Ezekiel was repudiated by the extrabiblical data uncovered by archaeology.
Evidence of 586 B.C. Destruction Found
After this, other discoveries were made. Probably the most sensational — and unexpected — discovery came out of the dig at Tell ed-Duweir, Biblical Lachish (about twenty-five miles southwest of Jerusalem and eight miles northwest of Tell Beit Mirsim). In 1934, while clearing the pre-Persian level of the site, the director of the British (Wellcome-Marston-Mond) Expedition, J.L. Starkey, came upon a room that had experienced terrible destruction by fire; that whole level constituted burnt debris about a meter thick. A number of ostraca (sherds used as writing material) were found in this room — eighteen were found in January, 1935, and three more a little later — several of which were meaningful as well as legible. These Lachish Ostraca at once became a prime source of information about the invading army of Nebuchadnezzar, driving down as it did along the
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edge of the hill country of Judah and neutralizing its fortified towns before proceeding to the heart of the country, the political and cultural center, Jerusalem. The ostraca were written only a few months before the capital city fell to the Babylonians. The last part of Ostracon IV reads:
And let (my lord) know that we are watching for the signals of Lachish, according to all the signs which my lord has given, for we cannot see Azekah.
Not only Lachish, but Beth-shemesh too became prime evidence of Babylonian devastation of Judah in 586. For with the improved knowledge of pottery and other archaeological materials, it became evident that what had previously been considered the 700 B.C. level of (Assyrian) destruction was really the 586 level of (Babylonian) destruction. Indeed, since the early thirties, about a score of the many sites that have been excavated in Palestine-Israel exhibit clear evidence of widespread destruction precisely at the 586 level; such places — in addition to Lachish and Beth-shemesh — as Beth-zur, Bethel, Ras el-Kharrubeh (the Anathoth of Jeremiah), Gibeon, and Tell en-Nasbeh (probably Mizpah) come readily to mind. As put to me by one archaeologist: “The devastation was so complete that town after town was never reinhabited, and it was centuries before the country recovered.”
Dig Your Nearest Museum First
The climax for our problem — if our problem required any after the excavation of Lachish and its Ostraca — occurred at the height of Nazi prestige and World War II. In the middle thirties, the Hitler regime had consolidated its hold on Germany enough to devote part of its organized efforts to prepare the basis for the worldwide and permanent destruction of the prestige and reputation that the Jewish people had built up in the course of its almost four-thousand year career of recorded history; the Nazis knew full well that to destroy the Jewish people without also defaming its name would not constitute real extermination. Thus early in 1936, the Reich Institute for the History of the New Germany announced that compulsory courses in scientific anti-Semitism would henceforth be taught in all German schools.
And so, well-oiled wheels were set in motion to gather from all over Germany, and from areas already or yet to be conquered, every bit of data pertaining to the career of the Jewish people since it appeared on the stage of human history; these data were to be assembled, classified, studied, and published to prove the infamous
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and degenerative character of this people. The operation grew into the “Institut zur Erforschung der Judenfrage” (1941) under Alfred Rosenberg.
Now let us go back a bit. In 1905, a German expedition excavating the ancient site of Babylon uncovered near the Ishtar Gate and the magnificent palace of the Royal House (“The House at which Men Marvel”) a structure with fourteen vaulted rooms, in which were found some 300 cuneiform tablets. These tablets were sent to the Kaiser Friedrich Museum in Berlin for proper disposition. But something went wrong; a funny thing happened in the Museum on the way to the cataloguer, and this horde of texts got misplaced, and for three decades they lay there, unknown and unread, as lifeless and lost in the dust of the Museum as they had been in the dust of Babylon for the two and a half millenia preceding.
In the course of the intensive search for documents relating to the Jews, Ernst F. Weidner of the Museum was informed that a batch of cuneiform tablets had been discovered in the basement of the Museum. Our lost find had been found — to prove once again that it is always worthwhile to dig your nearest museum first, before embarking on a dig many thousands of miles away.
Contents of Tablets Exciting
When Weidner began to decipher the tablets, he became very excited. One of the things he did was to send off a letter to Albright at the Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, telling him something of the sensational contents of a number of the tablets. But then World War II broke out, and virtually all academic contact was broken between Berlin and Baltimore. Naturally, Albright was not at liberty to divulge publicly the contents of Weidner’s letter to him.
In 1941 and 1942 rumors spread in this country that Weidner’s article had appeared, but no one had seen it directly. Then one fine day late in 1942, as I was sitting and working at my desk in the library of the Johns Hopkins, the librarian came over to ask me to help her catalogue a book that had come in to the Classics Department. I looked at the volume and became very excited. I rushed put with the as yet uncatalogued book to tell Albright about the utterly unexpected arrival of the volume. I burst into his office — I hope I did not forget to knock on the door first — and exclaimed “Here it is! Here it is!” After I calmed down, I told him that it was volume II of the Festschrift for the French scholar, Rene Dussaud (Mélanges Syriens offerts á M. René Dussaud; Paris, 1939), and that Weidner’s article was in the volume. Albright then proceeded to write
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a popular article on “King Joiachin in Exile” for the very next issue of The Biblical Archaeologist (December, 1942).
So far as I know, this was apparently the only copy of the Dussaud volume that was to be found in the United States until after the war was ended. It was, I believe, sent out by someone in Switzerland. Photostatic copies of the article were sent to scholars who requested it. I even sent out a microfilm of the article to Professor Sukenik at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem; but it was returned to me after the war, with the explanation: “Flammable.” I suppose that the censors were right: this microfilm might have ignited something terrible in the midst of the otherwise calm events of World War II. The reader may find this letter of explanation to the censors of interest:
Harry M. Orlinsky
2518 Brookfield Avenue
Baltimore, Maryland
June 15, 1944
TO THE AMERICAN AND PALESTINIAN CENSORS:
The enclosed is a reproduction of an exceedingly important article. It deals with a Babylonian tablet which helps to prove that the Biblical account of the circumstances surrounding the Babylonian Exile is correct. The article appeared in a volume published in Paris late in 1939. It so happens that only one copy of this volume reached the U.S.A., at the Johns Hopkins University. Since no copy reached the Near East, Prof. E.L. Sukenik of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, Palestine, wrote me on April 18, 1944, via Clipper Air Mail, asking that a reproduction of the article be made, if at all possible, and sent to the Hebrew University. To make sure that a copy gets there, I am sending out now d microfilm reproduction of the article, and a few weeks later I shall send out a photostatic reproduction.
Respectfully submitted,
(signed) Harry M. Orlinsky
The Johns Hopkins University
Babylonians Considered Jehoiachin King Even Though Critics Did Not
In his article, “Joiachin, König von Juda, in babylonischen
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Keilschrifttexten” (pp. 923-935), Weidner reproduced, transliterated, translated, and discussed the relevant passages of those of the nearly 300 tablets that were pertinent to the Judean Exile. One of the tablets (written in 592 B.C.) contains the decree of King Nebuchadnezzar that daily rations of oil and grain be given to “Yaukin, king of the land of Yahud,” his five sons, and other Judeans. This fact indicates that although conquered and in captivity, King Jehoiachin and his entourage were free to move about in Babylon. As to why he came to be imprisoned (later to be pardoned, in 561, by Nebuchadnezzar’s son and successor, Evil-merodach), we know nothing definite. It may be that a planned revolt in Judah that was to be coordinated with an attempt by the Judean king to escape, brought about his incarceration. In any case, it would seem that even the Babylonian government itself regarded Jehoiachin as Judah’s legal king, perhaps keeping him for possible restoration on the throne in Jerusalem if that should serve Babylon’s
Tablet found at Babylon listing rations given to “Yaukin, king of the land of Yahud.”
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purpose. However, if the Babylonian government at home referred to Jehoiachin as “king of the land of Judah,” then his contemporary and fellow-exile, Ezekiel, could readily describe events in relation to the year of Jehoiachin’s exile — as Albright had argued brilliantly a decade earlier on the basis of the seal impression on the broken jar-handles from Tell Beit Mirsim and Beth-shemesh.
Furthermore, mention is made in these tablets of sailors, musicians, gardeners, horse- and monkey-trainers, shipworkers, carpenters, and other craftsmen, from such varied and even distant places as Ashkelon (Philistia), Tyre, Byblos, Elam, Persia, Media, Judah, Egypt, Asia Minor, and Aegean Greece. Nebuchadnezzar, it is now known even more than before, initiated a vast building campaign in his capital city. The legendary “Hanging Gardens of Babylon” (really terraced or rooftop gardens that looked “hanging” from a distance) constituted one of the products of this campaign. For this, the king needed urgently craftsmen of all kinds, and he paid above average wages to attract them. Small wonder that he made it a point to have craftsmen of conquered countries (among them, e.g., “the artisans and smiths” of 2 Kings 24:16) brought to Babylon as forced labor.
Bible an Unusually Reliable Historical Document
It is not very often that archaeology can demonstrate a specific statement or event in the Bible in the manner that we have demonstrated in this article. For the most part by far, archaeological discoveries in Israel and elsewhere in Bible lands do not bear directly on the Bible. However, it has become virtually impossible to look upon a factual statement in the Bible as unreliable simply because there is lacking an extra-Biblical datum to authenticate it; archaeology since World War I has seen to that.
To be sure, as I wrote in my Ancient Israel in 1954 (pp. 7-9), “Modern historians do not…accept every part of the Bible equally as literal fact. Yet they have come to accept much of the Biblical data as constituting unusually reliable historical documents of antiquity, documents which take on new meaning and pertinence when they are analyzed in the light of newly discovered extra-Biblical sources…
“This radical re-evaluation of the significance of the Bible has been necessitated by the archaeological discoveries of the past three decades…The material, social, and religious configurations, of the Sumerian, Egyptian, Babylonian, Hurrian, Assyrian, Canaanite, Hitite, and Aramaen societies can be delineated to an increasingly
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satisfactory degree. It is now possible to see the entire ancient Near East from a thoroughly new perspective, and so it has become necessary to re-examine the Biblical record in the light of our broadened understanding…” The foregoing statements of 21 years ago are even more pertinent today.
(An abridgement of Chapter 7 of Essays in Biblical Culture by Harry M. Orlinsky, KTAV Publishing House, Inc., New York, 1974.)
Editorial Note
In addition to the evidence presented in Prof. Orlinsky’s excellent article, we also have Nebuchadnezzar’s own record of the fall of Jerusalem. First published by Donald J. Wiseman of the British Museum in 1956, the Babylonian Chronicle for Nebuchadnezzar’s seventh year tells of his defeat of the capital of Judah:
Year 7, month Kislimu: The king of Akkad moved his army into Hatti land, laid siege to the city of Judah and the king took the city on the second day of the month Addaru. He appointed in it a (new) king of his liking, took heavy booty from it and brought it to Babylon.
(Ancient Near Eastern Texts Relating to the Old Testament, p. 564.)
The king of Akkad was Nebuchadnezzar himself, Hatti land was Palestine, the city of Judah was Jerusalem, and the second day of the month Addaru was March 16, 597 B.C. The new king that Nebuchadnezzar appointed was none other than the Zedekiah of 2 Kings 24:17.
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Babylonian Chronicle telling of Nebuchadnezzar’s defeat of Jerusalem in 597 B.C.
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