was clearly such a religious transition in Judah at the time of Josiah. For three hundred years, the people of Jerusalem had found spiritual sustenance in the other religious symbols of Canaan, but now they seemed so flawed that they appeared evil. Instead of looking through the matzevot to the mysterious reality they symbolized, Josiah and Hilkiah could see only an obscenity. There was a strain that would also become apparent in the later monotheistic traditions. This denial expressed itself with particular ferocity in the northern territories, the lands that had once been the Kingdom of Israel. Assyria was now in decline and no longer in control of its province of Samerina. Josiah’s campaign there was probably part of a reconquista, another attempt to restore the United Kingdom of David. But here his reformation became savage and brutal. Josiah demolished the ancient altar at Bethel, which the “apostate” Jeroboam had made the royal shrine of Israel. In revenge, Josiah broke up its stones and beat them to powder. Then he desecrated the bamah by digging up corpses in a nearby cemetery and burning the bones on the site of the altar. He repeated this act in all the old cultic places of Israel and murdered their priests, burning their bones too upon their own altars. This cruelty and fanatical intolerance is a far cry from the courtesy shown by Abraham to other religious traditions. There is also no sign here of that absolute respect for the sacred rights of others, which the prophets had insisted was the litmus test of true religiosity. This is the spirit that the Deuteronomist historians would praise in Joshua, when he had—so they claimed—ruthlessly slaughtered the Israelites’ predecessors in Canaan in the name of his god. Sadly, this spirit would henceforth become a part of the spiritual climate of Jerusalem.
For Josiah’s reform was also a campaign for Zion. He was attempting to implement the Deuteronomic ideal by making Jerusalem the one and only shrine of Yahweh in the whole of Israel and Judah. All other holy places were to be destroyed and desecrated to preserve this central sanctity. Josiah’s particular vehemence at Bethel was inspired partly by the fact that this royal temple had dared to challenge Jerusalem. Northern priests were killed, but the priests of the country shrines of Judah were simply taken from their destroyed bamoth and moved to Jerusalem, where they took their places in the lower echelons of the Zion priesthood. The exaltation of Jerusalem had inspired destruction, death, desecration, and dispossession. Where the prophets had preached mercy and compassion as an essential concomitant to the cult, Josiah’s reform saw the honor and integrity of the holy city as paramount.
The reform did not last, even though the spirit that it had unleashed would remain. In 609, Josiah made a bid for total political independence, when he attacked Pharaoh Necho II, who was trying to establish an Egyptian presence in the country. The Judaean and Egyptian armies fought at Megiddo, and Josiah was killed at the first encounter. Necho immediately tightened his grip on Judah by deposing Josiah’s son Jehoahaz, the choice of the Judaean aristocracy, in favor of his brother Jehoiakim. But the Egyptians did not retain control of Jerusalem. In 605, Nebuchadnezzar, King of Babylon, defeated Assyria and Egypt, and Babylon became the greatest power in the Near East. Like the other states in the area, Judah became a vassal of Babylon, and at first it seemed that it could prosper under this new empire. Jehoiakim was confident enough to build himself a splendid palace in the Mishneh suburb. Yet it was not long before a fatal chauvinism returned to Jerusalem. The king switched allegiance to Egypt, which was attempting a comeback, and thus defied the might of Babylon. Prophets assured the people in the old way that Yahweh’s presence on Zion would protect Jerusalem against Nebuchadnezzar, as it had done against Sennacherib. The opposition to this suicidal tendency was led by Jeremiah, the son of Josiah’s colleague Hilkiah. He warned the people that, on the contrary, Yahweh would destroy Jerusalem as he had once destroyed Shiloh, and for this blasphemy he faced the death penalty. Jeremiah was acquitted but still continued to wander through the streets of Jerusalem warning of the impending catastrophe. They were treating Zion as a fetish, he proclaimed, when they repetitively chanted the slogan “This is the Temple of Yahweh!” like a magic spell.40 But Yahweh would protect them only if they turned away from alien gods and observed the laws of compassion, treating one another fairly and refusing to exploit the stranger, the orphan, and the widow.
Before Nebuchadnezzar arrived to punish his contumacious vassal, Jehoiakim died and was replaced by his son Jehoiachin. Jerusalem was besieged almost immediately by the Babylonian army and three months later capitulated in 597 BCE. Since the city had surrendered, there were no mass executions and the city was not destroyed. Nebuchadnezzar contented himself with plundering the Temple and deporting the Judaean leadership to Babylon. The Deuteronomist tells us that only the poorest people were left behind. The king and his bureaucracy were taken, together with ten thousand members of the aristocracy and the military and all blacksmiths and metalworkers.41 These were standard procedures in ancient empires to prevent further rebellion and the manufacture of weapons. 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
