586–332 BCE
From the destruction of the First Temple to rebuilding under the Persians: two and a half centuries that transformed Israel's faith.
Credit: Gebhard Fugel · public domain · Wikimedia Commons
Period 5 of 10 · Old Testament
Babylon lies in Iraq and cannot be visited from Israel, but four places preserve the traces of the fall of Jerusalem and of the return: three in Jerusalem, one in the Shephelah. Add them to your itinerary in one click.
Story 1 · The fall of JerusalemLimited accessThe First Temple was destroyed here in 586 BCE; the Second was completed here around 516–515 BCE.
On site: The platform, the Dome of the Rock and, below, the Western Wall and the archaeological park.
Story 1 · The fall of JerusalemThe second city of the kingdom of Judah: its letters on potsherds, written just before the fall, echo the book of Jeremiah.
On site: The city gate, where the Lachish Letters were found, and the podium of the palace-fort.
Story 1 · The fall of JerusalemCollapsed houses and seal impressions fired by the blaze of 586 BCE; in the Persian period, Jerusalem shrank to this hill.
On site: The House of Ahiel, the Burnt Room, the House of the Bullae and the section of wall attributed to Nehemiah.
Story 1 · The fall of JerusalemObjects from the Babylonian and Persian periods, including Lachish Letters; the Dead Sea Scrolls kept here preserve Jeremiah and Ezekiel.
On site: Some of the Lachish Letters, the archaeology wing and the Shrine of the Book.
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4 stops in Israel, about 10 hours of visits in total. The tour is planned day by day, with driving times.
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Sample itinerary
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City of David⏱ 180 min
Mount Moriah⏱ 150 min
Israel Museum⏱ 180 minThe City of David in the morning (House of the Bullae, wall attributed to Nehemiah), the Temple Mount, then the Lachish Letters and the Shrine of the Book at the Israel Museum.
Tel Lachish⏱ 90 minTel Lachish and its gate, where the Lachish Letters were discovered in 1935; half a day is enough.
The period of the Babylonian Exile and the Return (586–332 BCE) marks a profound transformation of Judaism. It opens with the capture of Jerusalem by Nebuchadnezzar, the destruction of the First Temple and the deportation of part of Judah's population. It continues with the edict of Cyrus (538 BCE), the return of some of the exiles, the rebuilding of the Temple and the work of Ezra and Nehemiah under Persian rule, down to the conquest of Alexander the Great in 332 BCE. It closes the journey through the Old Testament, from the Creation to the return from exile.
Archaeological discoveries in Babylonia and in the land of Israel shed light on this pivotal era of Jewish history: destruction layers in Jerusalem and Lachish, cuneiform archives naming King Jehoiachin, tablets from a "town of Judah" in Babylonia, and coins of the Persian province of Yehud.
1
2 Kings 24–25
The fall of Jerusalem
Two captures of Jerusalem, a Temple set ablaze, and letters written just before the fall.
📍 4 places to visit
2
Ezekiel 1; Psalm 137
Exile in Babylon
Judean families settled in Babylonia, traced in the cuneiform archives.
📍 No site in Israel
3
Ezra 1–6; Nehemiah 2
The Return
Cyrus opens the way home; the Temple is rebuilt, then Nehemiah restores the walls.
📍 3 places to visit
Story 1 · 2 Kings 24–25
"When the king of Babylon's army fought against Jerusalem, and against all the cities of Judah that were left, against Lachish, and against Azekah: for these defenced cities remained of the cities of Judah."
Jeremiah 34:7 (KJV)
Story 1 · The fall of JerusalemLimited accessThe First Temple was destroyed here in 586 BCE; the Second was completed here around 516–515 BCE.
On site: The platform, the Dome of the Rock and, below, the Western Wall and the archaeological park.
Story 1 · The fall of JerusalemThe second city of the kingdom of Judah: its letters on potsherds, written just before the fall, echo the book of Jeremiah.
On site: The city gate, where the Lachish Letters were found, and the podium of the palace-fort.
Story 1 · The fall of JerusalemCity of David
Collapsed houses and seal impressions fired by the blaze of 586 BCE; in the Persian period, Jerusalem shrank to this hill.
On site: The House of Ahiel, the Burnt Room, the House of the Bullae and the section of wall attributed to Nehemiah.
Story 1 · The fall of JerusalemIsrael Museum
Objects from the Babylonian and Persian periods, including Lachish Letters; the Dead Sea Scrolls kept here preserve Jeremiah and Ezekiel.
On site: Some of the Lachish Letters, the archaeology wing and the Shrine of the Book.
At the end of the 7th century BCE, Judah came under Babylonian rule. After a first revolt, Nebuchadnezzar II took Jerusalem in 597 BCE and deported the young King Jehoiachin together with the kingdom's elite (2 Kings 24). A Babylonian chronicle kept in the British Museum records the event: it dates the capture of the "city of Judah" to the 2nd of Adar in the king's seventh year — March 597 BCE — and mentions the appointment of a new king "of his own choice", Zedekiah. Zedekiah's own revolt led to an eighteen-month siege, then to the destruction of the city and the Temple in 587 or 586 BCE (2 Kings 25).
Excavations in Jerusalem reveal dramatic traces of this destruction: thick layers of ash, Babylonian arrowheads near the "Israelite Tower" in the Jewish Quarter, and collapsed houses in the City of David — the "House of Ahiel", the "Burnt Room" and the "House of the Bullae". In the latter, some fifty clay seal impressions were fired by the blaze, one of them bearing the name "Gemaryahu son of Shaphan", the name of a scribe of King Jehoiakim in Jeremiah 36:10.
At Lachish, the kingdom's second city, James Leslie Starkey's excavations uncovered in 1935 some twenty ostraca — letters written in ink on potsherds — from the final period before the fall. In Letter 4, an officer writes that he is watching for the fire signals of Lachish, "for we cannot see Azekah": a striking echo of the book of Jeremiah (Jeremiah 34:7).
The discovery in the City of David of bullae bearing the names of senior officials mentioned by Jeremiah, such as Jehucal son of Shelemiah and Gedaliah son of Pashhur (Jeremiah 38:1), extends this dialogue between text and field, even though the identification of these individuals remains debated.
Story 2 · Ezekiel 1; Psalm 137
"By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down, yea, we wept, when we remembered Zion."
Psalm 137:1 (KJV)
No site to visit in Israel for this story: Babylon and the Nippur region are in Iraq, and Jehoiachin's tablets are kept in Berlin. Part of the Al-Yahudu tablets was exhibited at the Bible Lands Museum in Jerusalem.
The deportees settled in Babylonia, along the rivers and canals of Mesopotamia. Cuneiform archives have preserved direct traces of them.
In Nebuchadnezzar's palace at Babylon, German archaeologists discovered in the early 20th century administrative tablets recording oil rations issued to captives and foreigners. One of them, dated 592 BCE, mentions "Ya'ukin, king of the land of Yahudu" and his sons: this is King Jehoiachin, who according to 2 Kings 25:27–30 was later released and given a place at the Babylonian king's table. The tablets are kept in the Vorderasiatisches Museum in Berlin.
Some two hundred cuneiform tablets, published from 2014 onwards, document the lives of Judean families settled in Babylonian villages, one of which was actually called Āl-Yāhūdu, "town of Judah", probably in the Nippur region. Dated from 572 to 477 BCE, they show exiles farming land, paying taxes and drawing up contracts, with names built on the divine name Yahu handed down over several generations. Their exact provenance is undocumented, as they surfaced on the antiquities market; part of the group was exhibited at the Bible Lands Museum in Jerusalem.
Deprived of the Temple, Judaism reorganised itself in exile around texts, the Sabbath and circumcision as markers of identity; many scholars believe that much of the Hebrew Bible was compiled or reworked at this time. The prophet Ezekiel, himself a deportee, received his visions "by the river of Chebar" (Ezekiel 1:1), a canal whose name also appears in cuneiform documents from the Nippur region.
Story 3 · Ezra 1–6; Nehemiah 2
"Thus saith Cyrus king of Persia, The LORD God of heaven hath given me all the kingdoms of the earth; and he hath charged me to build him an house at Jerusalem, which is in Judah."
Ezra 1:2 (KJV)
Story 1 · The fall of JerusalemLimited accessThe First Temple was destroyed here in 586 BCE; the Second was completed here around 516–515 BCE.
On site: The platform, the Dome of the Rock and, below, the Western Wall and the archaeological park.
Story 1 · The fall of JerusalemCity of David
Collapsed houses and seal impressions fired by the blaze of 586 BCE; in the Persian period, Jerusalem shrank to this hill.
On site: The House of Ahiel, the Burnt Room, the House of the Bullae and the section of wall attributed to Nehemiah.
Story 1 · The fall of JerusalemIsrael Museum
Objects from the Babylonian and Persian periods, including Lachish Letters; the Dead Sea Scrolls kept here preserve Jeremiah and Ezekiel.
On site: Some of the Lachish Letters, the archaeology wing and the Shrine of the Book.
In 539 BCE Cyrus the Great, king of Persia, took Babylon. The book of Ezra credits him with an edict allowing the Judeans to return to Jerusalem and rebuild the Temple.
Found at Babylon in 1879 and kept in the British Museum, this clay cylinder written in Akkadian proclaims the Persian king's policy: Cyrus presents himself as chosen by the god Marduk and claims to have returned divine statues to their sanctuaries and brought displaced peoples home. It mentions neither the Judeans nor Jerusalem, but it illustrates the policy of religious tolerance within which the return from exile described in Ezra 1:1–4 took place.
The exiles returned in waves: under Sheshbazzar and Zerubbabel, then with Ezra and Nehemiah in the 5th century. The Temple, rebuilt more modestly at the urging of the prophets Haggai and Zechariah, was completed around 516–515 BCE (Ezra 6:15). Excavations show a gradual and limited reoccupation of Jerusalem in the Persian period: the city then shrank essentially to the hill of the City of David. Seal impressions and small silver coins bearing the Aramaic inscription "Yehud" bear witness to the revival of the province under Persian administration, one of whose administrative centres was at Ramat Rahel, south of Jerusalem.
Nehemiah, cupbearer to King Artaxerxes I, obtained permission around 445 BCE to rebuild the walls of Jerusalem. Eilat Mazar proposed identifying a section of his wall in the City of David; other archaeologists date these remains to the Hasmonean period. Far away, the Aramaic papyri of Elephantine in Egypt also illuminate the era: this Judean military colony wrote around 407 BCE to Bagohi, governor of Judah, seeking permission to rebuild its temple of Yahu, and a letter of 419 BCE deals with the Festival of Unleavened Bread.
The period ends in 332 BCE, when Alexander the Great conquered the region, opening the Hellenistic age and the next chapter of the Second Temple period. For the centuries before the exile, see Judges and Kings.
The main sites of the exile are in Iraq and Iran. In Israel, besides the four places presented at the top of this page, other sites preserve the memory of this period:
After the kingdom of Judah rebelled against Babylon, Nebuchadnezzar II took Jerusalem a first time in 597 BCE and deported King Jehoiachin and the elite; then, after a further revolt by King Zedekiah, he destroyed the city and the Temple in 587/586 BCE. Part of the population was deported to Babylonia.
About fifty years separate the destruction of the Temple (586) from the edict of Cyrus (538). Jeremiah speaks of seventy years (Jeremiah 25:11–12), a figure often related to the interval between the destruction of the First Temple and the completion of the Second, around 516 BCE. Many exiles, however, chose to remain in Babylonia.
Yes: a Babylonian chronicle describes the capture of Jerusalem in 597 BCE, the ration tablets from Babylon mention King Jehoiachin, and the Al-Yahudu tablets document Judean families living in Babylonia. In Judah, the destruction layers of Jerusalem and Lachish bear witness to the conquest.
No. It describes in general terms the restoration of sanctuaries and the return of peoples displaced by Babylon. It names neither Jerusalem nor the Judeans, but it illuminates the Persian policy that makes the edict reported at the beginning of the book of Ezra plausible.
Some twenty ostraca — letters written in ink on potsherds — found in 1935 in the gate of Lachish. Written by Judean officers shortly before the fall of the kingdom, they mention watching for fire signals and echo Jeremiah 34:7.
The work, begun after the return under Cyrus and then interrupted, resumed under Darius I at the urging of the prophets Haggai and Zechariah; the Temple was completed around 516–515 BCE (Ezra 6:15). It was later entirely rebuilt and enlarged by Herod the Great.
In the City of David (the destruction layers of 586 BCE), in the Jewish Quarter of Jerusalem, at Tel Lachish and Ramat Rahel, and at the Israel Museum and the Bible Lands Museum in Jerusalem.
