JETS 47/1 (March 2004) 21–38

WHEN DID JERUSALEM FALL?

rodger c. young*

The Babylonian records describing the destruction of Jerusalem by the

army of Nebuchadnezzar have not been found. As a consequence, all dates

for that event must be derived from the scriptural record, as tied to the last

events prior to the destruction that are described in the Babylonian archives.

These are the Battle of Carchemish in 605 bc and the initial capture of the

city and its ruler Jehoiachin in the spring of 597 bc.

The time between the

earlier of these two events and the ﬁnal destruction of Jerusalem was less

than twenty years. Since the period is fairly well documented in the Scrip-

tures, it might be expected that it would not be difﬁcult to establish the year

in which the city was destroyed and the Babylonian Exile began.

Such, however, has not been the case. Although the Scriptures state that

the end came in the fourth month of the eleventh year of Zedekiah, scholars

are divided on whether this refers to 586 bc or 587 bc. Jeremy Hughes

listed eleven scholars who preferred the ﬁrst date and eleven who preferred

the second.

Edwin Thiele was among those preferring 586, and this seems

to be the date most widely used in the popular literature. However, to

Hughes’s list of those favoring 587 should be added the names of Donald

Wiseman and Kenneth Kitchen.

The present study offers no new insight into the Babylonian records that

established the last ﬁxed dates before the fall of Jerusalem. Neither does it

offer any signiﬁcant new exegesis of the individual texts that bear on the

problem. If the reader cares to skip the analysis and jump forward to the

conclusions at the end of the article, he will see that the deductions there

use the same principles of Nisan versus Tishri starting months and acces-

sion versus non-accession counting that were laid out by Coucke and Thiele,

and which all others since them have had to use if they were to construct a

reasonable chronology for the kings of Judah and Israel.

Edwin R. Thiele, The Mysterious Numbers of the Hebrew Kings (3d ed.; Grand Rapids: Zonder-

van, 1983) 186. To Thiele must be given the credit for establishing the basic principles that

should be understood before any chronology based on the Hebrew Scriptures can be constructed.

Thiele in turn gave credit (p. 59 n.) to the work of V. Coucke who, unknown to Thiele, had worked

out most of the same principles before him, but whose application of those principles led to some-

what different results than those derived by Thiele. The present paper addresses the problem:

chronologists can start with approximately the same principles but arrive at differing results.

Jeremy Hughes, Secrets of the Times (Shefﬁeld: Shefﬁeld Academic Press, 1990) 229 n.

NBD 217.

* Rodger Young resides at 1115 Gasswood Lane, St. Louis, MO 63132.

journal of the evangelical theological society22

The main contribution of the present paper is in a different area. It in-

troduces analytical methods from a ﬁeld that might seem to have little to do

with matters of history or biblical interpretation. What is offered here is a

means of analyzing and organizing complex sets of ideas that are related to

each other in such a way that the assumptions made for one idea have con-

sequences for the other ideas in the set. Although the application of this

methodology will be new to the reader, he will ﬁnd it is built on sound prin-

ciples of logic, and the results it produces bring forth harmony where there

had been confusion. It will also be demonstrated that this confusion arose

not so much from the data itself as it did from approaches that imposed var-

ious presuppositions on the interpretation of the data.

i. sifting out wrong presuppositions

After suitable contacts were found linking Hebrew history to the ﬁxed

dates of the Assyrian and Babylonian empires, the greatest problem re-

maining was to determine the methods used by the authors who gave us the

chronological data in the Scriptures. What did these authors mean when

they wrote, “In the Xth year of Y king of Judah, Z became king over Israel,

and he reigned W years?” Presuppositions about the method of the author

will affect the interpretation of every part of such a sentence: Was the Xth

year of king Y measured from his sole reign, or from his coregency? Was the

year measured in an accession (non-inclusive) or non-accession (inclusive)

sense? Were the years considered to start with Nisan in the spring or Tishri

in the fall? All these questions apply to the second half of this hypothetical

verse as well, along with the additional complication: Did the scribe apply

the same methods to the king of Judah in the ﬁrst part of the verse that he

applied to the king of Israel in the second part of the verse, or did he apply

the current method used in Judah to the ﬁrst half of the verse and the cur-

rent method used in Israel to the second half of the verse?

The possibilities are multiplicative. The ﬁrst step toward a solution must

be to eliminate as many alternatives as possible, thereby reducing the num-

ber of combinations to something manageable. Examples of this would be to

show that no coregency was possible because king X killed his predecessor,

or to demonstrate that the use of non-accession years is inconsistent with

some synchronism.

Having done the preliminary reduction of the number of possible presup-

positions, there will remain some that need constant re-examination, given

the well-demonstrated fact that the two kingdoms changed their reckoning

methods at least once during their existence. The usual situation is that an

initial sifting can reduce the questions that must be asked regarding a par-

ticular writer or a particular period of the monarchies to just three, which

are: (1) Does this writer start the year in Tishri or Nisan? (2) Does he use

accession or non-accession years? and (3) Does he apply the same method to

the other kingdom (whether it be Israel or Babylon)? With these three ques-

tions there will generally be eight possible combinations.

One Line Long

when did jerusalem fall? 23

A major problem in previous studies has been the failure to explore all

eight or more possibilities before launching on the construction of a chronol-

ogy. This factor may be demonstrated by a phenomenon that is seen repeat-

edly: A scholar makes a presupposition that one out of the eight possibilities

is correct and he then constructs a chronology that ﬁts some of the data but

not all. To explain the data that does not ﬁt his schema, he feels justiﬁed in

saying that this part of the data is in error. The real error may not be with

the data, however. It may just as well be with the suppositions used (the hy-

potheses) that were imposed in interpreting the data. In scientiﬁc studies,

when a hypothesis contradicts the data, it is customary to reject the hypoth-

esis, not the data.

The practice of stating all hypotheses (presuppositions) used in a scholar’s

approach has not been sufﬁciently followed in most studies of this nature.

An example was Edwin Thiele’s assumption that Solomon died in the last

half of the year that began in Nisan of 931 bc, and not in the ﬁrst half of

that year. This was assumed in Thiele’s writing

but never explicitly stated,

so we are justiﬁed in asking why the assumption was not stated so it could

be examined. The other problem is the failure of authors to consider all the

possibilities. In the case of Thiele, his failure to consider that Solomon may

have died in the ﬁrst half of the year which began in Nisan of 931, which is

entirely possible based on the text of 1 and 2 Kings, led to an error of one

year in Thiele’s dates for all Judean kings from Solomon through Ahaziah.

There is a method employed in Systems Analysis that addresses both

these problems—the failure to state all assumptions explicitly, and the fail-

ure to consider all possible combinations of assumptions. Called Decision

Analysis, it is based on building tables called Decision Tables that show, in

the top part, all possible combinations of assumptions. The bottom part shows

the consequences of the assumptions. When the consequences in the bottom

part conﬂict with the data, then we may assume that either (a) the assump-

tions in the top part of the table are to be rejected, or (b) the data is in error.

Consequence (b) should be the last resort.

The present work employs Decision Tables as a kind of sieve. Lest some

misunderstand, it should be plainly stated that the tables do not sift the

data. They sift out wrong sets of hypotheses, using the data to do the sifting.

When used properly, these tables also force all presuppositions to be stated

explicitly. They then show which sets of presuppositions satisfy the data and

which do not. A possible outcome is that no set of reasonable presuppositions

satisﬁes all the data; this is the outcome that should generally be expected

by those who maintain that the authors of Scripture lived many years after

Thiele, Mysterious Numbers 80.

Rodger Young, “When Did Solomon Die?” JETS 46 (2003) 589–603. In the second edition of

Mysterious Numbers, Thiele’s error ended with Jehoshaphat and did not extend to Jehoram and

Ahaziah. The third edition adjusted the beginning of Jehoshaphat’s coregency so that it would co-

incide with Asa’s thirty-ninth year, but this led to ending the reign of Ahaziah one year after his

successor, Athaliah, usurped the ofﬁce—an error which is glossed over in Thiele’s text.

journal of the evangelical theological society24

the events described, and these authors were not able to write down accu-

rately things as they actually happened.

Decision Tables, then, offer a completely neutral way of sifting through

the presuppositions that are brought into chronological studies and showing

which do not ﬁt the data. If one or more of the sets of presuppositions ﬁts

the data, then any such set of presuppositions should be further investi-

gated to see whether it ﬁts all the other data for the period or author being

studied. If none of the presuppositions ﬁts the data, then (assuming the pre-

suppositions are reasonable and complete to start with) we are justiﬁed in

questioning or emending the data. But the data should not be rejected un-

less the researcher has demonstrated that no other reasonable combination

of assumptions can offer a solution, and it is in this area that there has been

great neglect in the past. The data should not be declared in error if the

painstaking work of exploring all alternative sets of hypotheses has not

been done.

ii. chronology arithmetic

Since the ancient Near East did not follow the later Roman custom of

starting the year on the ﬁrst of January, there is often some awkwardness

in expressing the year in a which a biblical event happened. This is espe-

cially obvious when one desires to construct a time line showing, for exam-

ple, the reign lengths of several kings. The common method of displaying

such time lines for the kings of Judah and Israel has been to construct what

might be called a ladder chart. This chart will generally show two ladders

side by side, but with their rungs displaced. The rungs represent the start

of the year in each kingdom: Tishri in the fall for Judah, and Nisan in the

spring for Israel. A third ladder, showing years starting January 1 accord-

ing to the modern calendar, is often added.

In the ﬁnal edition of his monumental study on the chronology of the

Hebrew kings, Edwin Thiele abandoned the ladder charts of his previous

editions, replacing them with horizontal charts which might be called brick

walls. The design principles are the same. Although these diagrams have

their place, it can be difﬁcult to determine exact dates from them. For the

present study, it was found more convenient to show reign lengths and over-

lapping time periods by the use of simple formulas. The symbolism of these

formulas is similar to that used by previous authors, but it will be made

somewhat more formal by stating the following principles:

(1) When a text expresses a year based on the Nisan calendar, the year

will be represented as the bc year in which Nisan 1 of that year

occurs, followed by a small “n.” Thus 931n refers to the year that be-

gan in Nisan of 931 bc and ended the day before Nisan 1 of 930 bc.

(2) Similarly for a Tishri year: 931t refers to the year that began on

Tishri 1 of 931 bc and ended the day before Tishri 1 of 930 bc.

(3) Frequently, we need to deal with the overlap of a Nisan year from

Israel or Babylon with a Tishri year from Judah. The overlap of 931n

when did jerusalem fall? 25

and 931t may be written as 931t/930n, which means the six-month pe-

riod starting with Tishri 1, 931 bc, and ending the day before Nisan

1, 930 bc.

(4) For reign lengths, if we know that a certain king started in 925t and

reigned ten years, we can express his ﬁnal year as 925t – 10 = 915t.

If we start with a Tishri year, we shall always end up with a Tishri

year. This assumes that we know the scribe used accession reckon-

ing. If we know that he used non-accession years, we would calculate

the last of the king’s “ten” years as follows: 925t – 9 (acc) = 916t,

where the optional “acc” in parentheses shows that we have not made

a typographical error, but have converted the number to its accession

equivalent to do the subtraction.

With these conventions, we shall be able to avoid ladder charts and brick

walls. The proper use of “chronology arithmetic” will also make visible any

of the half-year or full-year inaccuracies that can be hidden in the custom-

ary diagrams.

iii. the chronology of ezekiel

The three biblical sources used in calculating the date of the fall of Je-

rusalem are the last two chapters of 2 Kings and the books of Ezekiel and

Jeremiah.

We shall examine each of these sources in turn, without making

any assumption that the counting methods used in one source must neces-

sarily be used in the other sources.

Ezekiel was carried captive to Babylon with king Jehoiachin. The prophet

showed a genuine concern to date the signiﬁcant events he lived through,

and he measured these dates in terms of the captivity (tWlg;l}) of Jehoiachin.

The time that Jehoiachin was initially taken captive can be dated exactly,

from the Babylonian Chronicle, to Adar 2, 597 bc.

Adar was the month be-

fore Nisan, so by Nisan reckoning the ﬁnal year of Jehoiachin would be 598n.

By Tishri reckoning it would be 598t. There is, however, a question about

whether Ezekiel reckoned the beginning of the captivity to be measured

from Adar 597, when Jehoiachin was made a prisoner, or from some time a

month or so later, after Nisan 1, when he may have begun the trip to Baby-

lon, in which case the years of captivity would start with 597n for Nisan

reckoning, but still 598t for Tishri reckoning. We shall not make any pre-

suppositions about this, but shall put it into a decision table along with two

other possible hypotheses: whether Ezekiel used Tishri or Nisan years, and

whether the city fell in 587 bc or 586 bc. These hypotheses will be tested by

An example of such an inaccuracy is the contradiction between the brick wall diagram in

Mysterious Numbers 101, which has both Ahaziah and Athaliah starting in 841t, as contrasted

with Thiele’s statement on page 104 that Athaliah ended a six-year (accession) reign in 835n/835t.

This would place her starting year as 836t + 6 = 842t.

The verses relating to this issue in the last chapter of 2 Chronicles are consistent with the

last chapters of 2 Kings and will not be treated separately.

Thiele, Mysterious Numbers 186.

journal of the evangelical theological society26

the data found in Ezek 40:1, which synchronizes the twenty-ﬁfth year of

captivity with the fourteenth year after the city was conquered. In this

verse, the Hebrew preposition l}, representing “of ” in the phrase “of the cap-

tivity,” implies non-accession reckoning.

That rh"a", representing the “after”

in “after the city was taken,” implies accession reckoning can be shown by

comparing the “after” of Gen 9:28 with Gen 7:11, 8:13, and 9:29.

To use these tables, start at the top of one of the columns (also called

rules) numbered 1 through 8. Read down through the three assumptions in

the left part of the table. The values for those assumptions will be in the top

part of the column, and their consequences will be in the lower part, below

Young, “When Did Solomon Die?” 602.

Table 1a. Options for Ezek 40:1 assuming Tishri years

Possible interpretation of

dates in Ezek 40:1 1234

Does Ezekiel use Tishri or

Nisan years?

TTTT

Captivity started before or

after Nisan 1, 597?

before before after after

City fell in (bc) 587 586 587 586

A. 25th year of captivity

(implies non-acc. reckoning)

598t – 24

= 574t

598t – 24

= 574t

598t – 24

= 574t

598t – 24

= 574t

B. 14 years after city fell

(implies acc. reckoning)

588t – 14

= 574t

587t – 14

= 573t

588t – 14

= 574t

587t – 14

= 573t

C. Overlap of A and B 574t none 574t none

Table 1b. Options for Ezek 40:1 assuming Nisan years

Possible interpretation of

dates in Ezek 40:1 5678

Does Ezekiel use Tishri or

Nisan years?

NNNN

Captivity started before or

after Nisan 1, 597?

before before after after

City fell in (bc) 587 586 587 586

A. 25th year of captivity

(implies non-acc. reckoning)

598n – 24

= 574n

598n – 24

= 574n

597n – 24

= 573n

597n – 24

= 573n

B. 14 years after city fell

(implies acc. reckoning)

587n – 14

= 573n

586n – 14

= 572n

587n – 14

= 573n

586n – 14

= 572n

C. Overlap of A and B none none 573n none

when did jerusalem fall? 27

the heavy line. For the present table, row C must show an overlap if the

assumptions in the column are to be tentatively accepted.

No scenario (set of hypotheses) works which assumes that the city fell in

586 bc. Scenarios which work assuming the city fell in 587 bc are Rules

(columns) 1 and 3 (Tishri years, captivity began before or after Nisan 1, 597)

and Rule 7 (Nisan years, the captivity beginning after Nisan 1, 597).

The next step is to examine the three remaining scenarios in the light of

Ezek 33:21. Ezekiel received news of the fall of the city in the twelfth year

of exile, in the tenth month. Is this information in harmony with each of the

three rules?

Rule 1. The twelfth year of captivity was 598t – 11 (acc) = 587t. The

tenth month of 587t (month numbers are always measured from Nisan) was

Tebeth (approximately January) 586, which was six months after the fall of

the city in the fourth month (Tammuz/July) of 587, according to the hypoth-

eses of Rule 1. This was a reasonable time for the news to reach Babylon.

Rule 3. The twelfth year of captivity was again 587t, which yields the

same six months until January 586 as for Rule 1.

Rule 7. The twelfth year of captivity was 597n – 11 (acc) = 586n. The

tenth month of that year would be January, 585. According to the 587 bc

date for the fall of the city under Rule 7, this would be eighteen months

before the news reached the exiles in Babylon, which is not reasonable. We

therefore reject the hypotheses of Rule 7, and with them the last chance for

the idea that Ezekiel used Nisan reckoning for the years of captivity.

So the starting place for all of Ezekiel’s references to the years of the

captivity must be taken as 598t, and he used Tishri years. The synchronisms

from Ezekiel, a contemporary of the events described, establish that Jeru-

salem fell in the summer of 587 bc. The following paragraph will demon-

strate that the remaining chronological data in Ezekiel is consistent with

these conclusions.

In a companion article,

it was shown that the Talmud recorded the tra-

dition that the sixteenth Jubilee year was in the eighteenth year of Josiah

(b. Meg. 14b), and the seventeenth and last Jubilee was announced on the

Day of Atonement speciﬁed in Ezek 40:1 (b. Arak. 12a). The eighteenth of

Josiah, as measured from his starting year of 641t (see later in this article),

began in Tishri of 623 bc. Forty-nine years later

was Tishri, 574, the date

Thiele assumed that Ezekiel used Nisan years, that the captivity was measured from Nisan

of 597, and that the city fell in 586 bc (Mysterious Numbers 187). This corresponds to Rule 8 of

Table 1b. He was not careful to state either when the “fourteen years after” or the “twenty-ﬁfth

year of ” ended; if he had written this out carefully in some fashion similar to that of the chronol-

ogy arithmetic used in this article he would have seen that for his hypotheses these two synchro-

nisms contradict each other.

Young, “When Did Solomon Die?” 600.

The Jubilee cycle was forty-nine years, not ﬁfty years as is often assumed, because the ﬁftieth

or Jubilee year was counted as the ﬁrst year of the next cycle. This kept the seven-year sabbath

cycles in phase with the Jubilees. The cycle length was taken as forty-nine years in the apocalyptic

Book of Jubilees, which is usually dated to the second century bc. The Samaritans observed the

Jubilees as a forty-nine year cycle—see A. Neubauer, Chronique Samairitaine (1873) 3, 8 ff., cited

in Encyclopedia Judaica (Jerusalem: Keter, 1972) 14.579.

journal of the evangelical theological society28

we have established above for Ezek 40:1, showing that this date is in agree-

ment with the Talmud’s remembrance of when the seventeenth Jubilee was

announced. Consistent with this is the phrase “thirtieth year” in Ezek 1:1,

meaning the thirtieth year from the beginning of the sixteenth Jubilee cycle

that was announced in Tishri of 623 bc. The date is 623t – 29 (acc) = 594t,

which is the ﬁfth year of the exile of Jehoiachin, as speciﬁed in Ezek 1:2.

This concludes the study of synchronisms in Ezekiel. It has been shown

that the chronology of Ezekiel is internally consistent, and it is consistent

with two references external to the Bible which are independent of each

other, namely the Talmud and the Babylonian Tablets in the British Mu-

seum that provide the date when Jehoiachin was taken captive. The data

itself, as taken from Ezekiel and tied to the anchor-date for Jehoiachin de-

duced from the Babylonian Tablets, has driven all the conclusions estab-

lished to this point, namely that Ezekiel used Tishri years for reckoning and

that Jerusalem fell in 587 bc.

The harmony of this scheme with all the

other chronological data in Ezekiel is shown in Table 2.

In contrast to this method of letting the data test our hypotheses is any approach that starts

with presuppositions that the data is not allowed to contradict. A fairly recent example of such an

approach is Jeremy Hughes’s study of OT chronology (Hughes, Secrets). Hughes’s central thesis

was that the numbers given in Kings and Chronicles resulted from an artiﬁcial imposition of cer-

tain numerical schemes into the text. In Hughes’s view, the chronological data of the Masoretic

Table 2. All synchronisms in Ezekiel, showing that his use of Tishri

years and his measuring from the beginning of captivity in 598t is in

harmony with dates for all events internal to or external to Ezekiel

Ezekiel chapter

& verse First event Synchronized with

Overlap of

columns 2 and 3

1:1–2 5th year of exile = 598t –

4 (acc) = 594t; 4th month

is Tammuz/July 593 bc

30th year of a Jubilee

cycle announced in 623t,

18th of Josiah, according

to Talmud; 623t – 29

(acc) = 594t

Tammuz/July

593 bc

24:1–2 9th year = 598t – 8 (acc)

= 590t; 10th month =

Tebeth/January 589 bc

Beginning of siege of

Jerusalem—see also

Jer 39:1

Tebeth/January

589 bc

33:21 12th year = 598t – 11

(acc) = 587t; 10th month

= Tebeth/January

586 bc

Man arrives reporting

destruction of Jerusalem

six months earlier

Tebeth/January

586 bc

40:1 25th year = 598t – 24

(acc) = 574t; “beginning

of year” (rosh

hashanah), 10th day =

Day of Atonement,

Tishri/October 574 bc

14th year after city fell;

588t – 14 = 574t; also

acc. to Talmud

beginning of 17th

Jubilee; seen to be 623t –

49 = 574t compared to

18th of Josiah (623t)

Day of

Atonement,

Tishri/October

574 bc

when did jerusalem fall? 29

iv. the chronology of 2 kings 24 and 25

We can establish the kind of dating used in the last two chapters of 2

Kings by looking at a pair of crucial synchronisms in 2 Kings 25. These two

synchronisms will be measured against two dates derived from the Ezekiel

data. The ﬁrst date is taken from Ezek 24:1, where it is said that the ﬁnal

siege of Jerusalem began in the tenth month of the “ninth year.” Here, as

everywhere else in Ezekiel, years are measured from the 598t ofﬁcial begin-

ning date for the captivity of Jehoiachin, and the years are Tishri years,

yielding 598t – 8 (acc) = 590t for the year the siege began. The tenth month

of that year corresponds roughly to January 589 bc. The second date from

Ezekiel is the familiar 587n/587t for the fall of Jerusalem, as derived from

Ezek 40:1.

Now compare these ﬁxed dates with the dates for the same events as

given in 2 Kings 25. We are not bringing any presuppositions to the Kings

data regarding whether the author there used Nisan or Tishri years, acces-

sion or non-accession reckoning. If the data is found to be internally consis-

tent in 2 Kings, and if it harmonizes with the data given by Jeremiah and

Ezekiel, it will not be because any author, ancient or modern, imposed his

scheme on the data and was clever enough to make that scheme harmonize

in all biblical books involved. If harmony is demonstrated without altering

the received text, it will only be because the original data is authentic in all

the biblical authors concerned, and because the Masoretic and prior scribal

traditions correctly transmitted to us the authentic synchronisms and reign

lengths.

Let us construct a decision table which shows the various options that

might be employed in 2 Kings 25. The options are Nisan or Tishri years, and

accession or non-accession years for synchronisms. The texts to be used are

2 Kgs 25:1, which says that the ﬁnal siege of Jerusalem began in the ninth

year, tenth month of Zedekiah, and 2 Kgs 25:2–3, which says that the city

text is incongruous with whatever the “real” chronology was for the period, and he attempted to

reconstruct this “real” chronology by imposing patterns on the biblical text that were ﬁrst laid out

by Julius Wellhausen before the advent of modern archaeology. Wellhausen thought that the 480

years of 1 Kgs 6:1 measuring the time from the exodus to the start of Solomon’s Temple was an

artiﬁcial number. He then tried to ﬁt reign lengths from the foundation of the Temple to the de-

struction of Jerusalem into a 430-year period by not allowing any coregencies for the kings of

Judah, even though more modern research has shown the actual time lapse to be 380 years. To

these artiﬁcial 430 years he added a supposed ﬁfty years of Babylonian captivity to come up with

another 480-year ﬁgure, thus proving to his own satisfaction that all Judean reign lengths were

artiﬁcially manipulated to ﬁt into a 480-year pattern. It is somewhat surprising that Hughes (Se-

crets 48) accepts this presupposition of Wellhausen, and with it the discarding of all coregencies,

even those that are explicitly mentioned in Scripture such as that of David with Solomon and Uz-

ziah with Jotham. It should be expected that anyone so heavily laden with the necessity of main-

taining ideas brought forth by Julius Wellhausen some 125 years ago would not be very diligent

in making sense of the biblical data as it exists. Although each of us has our own philosophical

presuppositions, we need to be careful about forcing preconceived prejudices on the data; by doing

so we end up producing our own brand of biblical numerology.

journal of the evangelical theological society30

fell in his eleventh year, fourth month. The different ways these events

might be measured will be checked against the dates derived above from

Ezekiel for the two events, which are 590t/589n and 587n/587t, respectively.

Unfortunately there is one other complication, which increases the number

of possibilities from four to eight. That complication is whether the source

used in 2 Kings considered the reign of Zedekiah to start in Adar or Nisan

of 597. Normally we would assume that the reign of Jehoiachin ended when

he was captured on Adar 2, 597, and Zedekiah’s reign would begin then,

making Zedekiah’s ﬁrst ofﬁcial year 598n instead of the 597n for Nisan

reckoning if he began in Nisan of 597. The main reason we need to consider

the possibility of starting Zedekiah in Nisan is because it was advocated by

Thiele, even though part of his justiﬁcation was a wrong interpretation of

Ezek 40:1. The table then will have three variables in the top part, making

for eight columns that we shall split into two tables.

The only sets of conditions which allow an overlap in both Row C and Row

D are the sets speciﬁed by Rules 2 and 6. Both these rules use Tishri reck-

oning, so that the question whether Zedekiah began in Adar or Nisan of

597 will not affect the numbering of years in 2 Kings. The conclusion is that

Table 3a. Determining reckoning method used in

2 Kgs 25:1–2; Zedekiah starts Adar 597

Table to determine

measuring method of author

in 2 Kings 25 1234

Did Zedekiah start in Adar or

Nisan of 597?

Adar Adar Adar Adar

Did author use Tishri or

Nisan years?

TTNN

Did he use accession or non-

accession counting?

acc. non-acc. acc. non-acc.

A. 9th year of Zedekiah, from

2 Kgs 25:1

598t – 9

= 589t

598t – 8

= 590t

598n – 9

= 589n

598n – 8

= 590n

B. 11th year of Zedekiah,

from 2 Kgs 25:2–3

598t – 11

= 587t

598t – 10

= 588t

598n – 11

= 587n

598n – 10

= 588n

C. Overlap of A with 590t/

589n, the time for the start of

the siege from Ezek 24:1

none 590t/

589n

none 590t/

589n

D. Overlap of B with 587n/

587t, date of fall of Jerusalem

derived from Ezek 40:1

none 587n/

587t

587n/

587t

none

A reader familiar with Decision Analysis might observe that there is a way to simplify the

tables, but it is easier to present all eight columns than it is to explain the simpliﬁcation.

when did jerusalem fall? 31

2 Kgs 25:1–2 uses Tishri years and non-accession counting for the reign of

Zedekiah, and his ﬁrst ofﬁcial year was 598t. Let us apply this information

to the other synchronisms in the ﬁnal two chapters of 2 Kings to see if these

texts are consistent with this method.

In 2 Kgs 25:8, the ﬁfth month of 587 bc is said to be in the nineteenth

year of Nebuchadnezzar. Nebuchadnezzar’s accession year was 605n,

606t for Tishri reckoning, and the ﬁfth month of 587 bc can only be in his

nineteenth year if the nineteen years represent a non-accession span of

time. Are Tishri or Nisan years employed? Either one works with non-ac-

cession counting. By Tishri years, Nebuchadnezzar’s nineteenth year was

606t – 18 (acc) = 588t, and by Nisan years it was 605n – 18 (acc) = 587n,

both of which contain the ﬁfth month of 587 bc. To resolve this issue of

Nisan versus Tishri we examine 2 Kgs 24:12, where it is stated that Jehoi-

achin was taken captive in the eighth year of the reign of Nebuchadnez-

zar.

The Judean king was captured in Adar, the month before Nisan, 597

bc. By Nisan/non-accession reckoning, the eighth year of Nebuchadnezzar’s

Thiele, Mysterious Numbers 185.

The phrase “took him captive” (/tao jQ:Yiw') referring to the capture of Jehoiachin in Nebuchad-

nezzar’s eighth year, is more literally translated simply “and took him.” This cannot refer to any

departure for Babylon after Nisan 1 of 597, because that would be in the ninth (non-accession)

year of Nebuchadnezzar by either Tishri or Nisan reckoning.

Table 3b. Determining reckoning method used in 2 Kgs 25:1–2;

Zedekiah starts Nisan 597

Table to determine

measuring method of author

in 2 Kings 25 5678

Did Zedekiah start in Adar or

Nisan of 597?

Nisan Nisan Nisan Nisan

Did author use Tishri or

Nisan years?

TTNN

Did he use accession or non-

accession counting?

acc. non-acc. acc. non-acc.

A. 9th year of Zedekiah, from

2 Kgs 25:1

598t – 9

= 589t

598t – 8

= 590t

597n – 9

= 588n

597n – 8

= 589n

B. 11th year of Zedekiah,

from 2 Kgs 25:2–3

598t – 11

= 587t

598t – 10

= 588t

597n – 11

= 586n

597n – 10

= 587n

C. Overlap of A with 590t/

589n, the time for the start of

the siege from Ezek 24:1

none 590t/

589n

none none

D. Overlap of B with 587n/

587t, date of fall of Jerusalem

derived from Ezek 40:1

none 587n/

587t

none 587n/

587t

journal of the evangelical theological society32

reign would be 605n – 7 (acc) = 598n, which contains Adar of 597. By Tishri/

non-accession reckoning, Nebuchadnezzar’s eighth year was 606t – 7 (acc) =

599t, which is too early to contain Adar 597. We conclude that, for Nebu-

chadnezzar, the texts of 2 Kings 24 and 25 use Nisan years and non-accession

reckoning.

The ﬁnal synchronism in these chapters is 2 Kgs 25:27, which says that

Jehoiachin, in the thirty-seventh year of his captivity, was released from

prison by Evil-Merodach in the twelfth month of the year that he became

king. The Babylonian Tablets establish this date as April 2, 561, shortly

before Evil-Merodach’s ﬁrst full year that began in Nisan of 561. The thirty-

seventh year of Jehoiachin’s exile was 598t – 36 (acc) = 562t, which is con-

sistent with the date given in the Babylonian Tablets.

The practice of imposing the counting method used for the kings of Judah on the reign

lengths of another kingdom while recognizing the starting month of the other kingdom is identi-

cal to what Thiele assumed happened during the early years of the divided monarchy (Mysterious

Numbers 25).

Table 4. Explanation of synchronisms in 2 Kings 24–25, showing that all

synchronisms are in harmony with the author’s Tishri/non-accession

method for Judah and Nisan/non-accession method for Babylon

2 Kings chapter

and verse First event Synchronized with

Overlap of

columns 2 and 3

24:12 End of reign of

Jehoiachin, Adar 597 by

Babylonian Chronicles =

598t/597n

Eighth year of

Nebuchadnezzar = 605n

– 7 (acc) = 598n

598t/597n

(Adar 597)

25:1 Final siege of Jerusalem

began in 9th of

Zedekiah, 598t – 8 (acc)

= 590t; 10th month =

Tebeth/January 589 bc

In Ezek 24:1–2, siege

began in 9th year of

captivity: 598t – 8 (acc) =

590t; 10th month =

Tebeth/ January 589 bc

Tebeth/January

589 bc

25:2–3 City fell in 11th year of

Zedekiah, 4th month =

598t – 10 (acc) = 588t;

4th month = Tammuz/

July 587 bc

As determined from

Ezek 40:1, this was

Tammuz 587 bc

Tammuz/July

587 bc

25:8–9 Temple burned in

11th year of Zedekiah,

5th month = Ab/August

587 bc

19th of Nebuchadnezzar

= 605n – 18 (acc) = 587n

Ab/August 587

25:27 37th of exile of

Jehoiachin = 598t – 36

(acc) = 562t. 12th

month, 27th day =

April 2, 561 bc

Year that Evil-Merodach

became king = 562n

April 2, 561 bc

One Line Short

when did jerusalem fall? 33

v. the chronology of jeremiah

As with the investigation of chronological references in Ezekiel and

2 Kings, we shall not approach the study of Jeremiah with any presupposi-

tions about Nisan versus Tishri years or accession versus non-accession reck-

oning. We might expect that Jeremiah used Tishri years and non-accession

reckoning for the last years of the Judean monarchy, consistent with 2 Kings

and Ezekiel. Nevertheless, such a presupposition will not be allowed to de-

termine the results. The data itself will be used to decide what method Jer-

emiah used in recording the events that he lived through.

Let us examine Jeremiah’s synchronisms to see what the data tells us.

Two texts will be used for the initial sifting. The ﬁrst is Jer 1:3, which says

that the inhabitants of Jerusalem were taken to Babylon in the ﬁfth month

of the eleventh year of Zedekiah. If this is to be consistent with 2 Kings and

Ezekiel, this date must come out to be in 587n/587t. The second reference is

Jer 46:2, which says that the Battle of Carchemish occurred in the fourth

year of Jehoiakim. From the Babylonian Chronicles, it is known that Je-

hoiakim was installed by Necho in Tishri of 609, and the Battle of Carche-

mish occurred in the 605n/605t time frame.

Table 5. Determining reckoning method used in Jer 1:3 and 46:2

Table to determine

measuring method of

Jeremiah in Jer 1:3 and 46:2 1234

Did Jeremiah use Tishri or

Nisan years?

TTNN

Accession or non-accession

reckoning?

acc. non-acc. acc. non-acc.

A. 11th year of Zedekiah—

fall of city (Jer 1:3)

598t – 11

= 587t

598t – 10

= 588t

598n – 11

= 587n

598n – 10

= 588n

B. Fourth year of Jehoiakim,

according to Jer 46:2—Battle

of Carchemish

609t – 4

= 605t

609t – 3

= 606t

609n – 4

= 605n

609n – 3

= 606n

C. Overlap of A with 587n/

587t, fall of Jerusalem

according to Ezekiel and

2 Kings

none 587n/

587t

587n/

587t

none

D. Overlap of B with Battle of

Carchemish, 605n/605t from

Babylonian Chronicle

none 605n/

605t

605n/

605t

none

Thiele, Mysterious Numbers 182, 184–85.

journal of the evangelical theological society34

This simple table demonstrates that there are two reckoning methods that

are consistent with the synchronisms in Jer 1:3 and 46:2. Rule 2 assumes

Tishri years and non-accession reckoning. Rule 3 assumes Nisan years and

accession reckoning. We can use another text to decide between these two

rules. That text is Jer 32:1, which says that an event in the tenth year of

Zedekiah was also in the eighteenth year of Nebuchadnezzar. By Rule 3

(Nisan, accession years), the tenth of Zedekiah was 598n – 10 = 588n. The

eighteenth of Nebuchadnezzar, by the same Nisan/accession reckoning, was

605n – 18 = 587n, which has no overlap with 588n. We would have to as-

cribe non-accession reckoning or Tishri years to Nebuchadnezzar’s reign

in order to get these ﬁgures to harmonize, and Jeremiah would not use non-

accession reckoning or Tishri years for Babylon if he used accession reckon-

ing and Nisan years for Judah (Babylonian scribes used accession years

starting in Nisan). On this basis we reject Rule 3. (Note: if a similar table

were constructed using Thiele’s Nisan 597 starting month for Zedekiah, it

would show that the only valid option is for Tishri, non-accession years,

similar to the results deduced from Table 5.)

By Rule 2, the tenth of Zedekiah was 598t – 9 (acc) = 589t. If accession

years are used for Nebuchadnezzar, this has no overlap with that king’s

eighteenth year for Tishri (606t – 18 = 588t) or Nisan (605n – 18 = 587n)

starting months. If non-accession years are used for Nebuchadnezzar, then

there is an overlap with the required 589t by either Tishri (606t – 17 [acc]

= 589t) or Nisan (605n – 17 [acc] = 588n) reckoning. The same result will be

found if we examine the synchronism of Nebuchadnezzar with Jehoiachin

(see below). Both Tishri and Nisan years work satisfactorily for Nebuchad-

nezzar, but only non-accession counting is acceptable. Although we do not

have enough information to decide between Nisan and Tishri years, we might

prefer to think that Jeremiah used Nisan for Nebuchadnezzar, as is done in

2 Kings.

Having established the methods used by the prophet for these verses,

this information will be applied to the remaining synchronisms in Jeremiah

to see if there are any inconsistencies.

In Jer 25:1, the fourth year of Jehoiakim coincided with the “ﬁrst year”

(tynivøarh: hn;V…h") of Nebuchadnezzar. Thiele, following Tadmor,

pointed out

that tynivøarh: hn;V…h" refers not to Nebuchadnezzar’s ﬁrst full year, but to his

accession year, in keeping with standard Babylonian accession-year count-

ing. This was 605n by Nisan reckoning or 606t by Tishri reckoning, either

of which overlaps with the fourth year of Jeremiah’s Tishri, non-accession

method for Jehoiakim, namely 609t – 3 (acc) = 606t. The only objection that

might be raised to this synchronism is that Jeremiah, in keeping with his

non-accession treatment of Nebuchadnezzar’s reign in 32:1, should have

written the year as something like th"a" tn'v‘BI (“in the ﬁrst year”) as in Dan

9:1. Jeremiah could have recorded the date in that way, but the way he

chose is plain enough, and it is questionable what other method he could

Ibid. 162.

One Line Short

when did jerusalem fall? 35

have used to refer unambiguously to the year in which Nebuchadnezzar

came to the throne.

In Jer 25:3, the prophet counted twenty-three years from the thirteenth

year of Josiah to the fourth year of Jehoiakim, 606t. The cardinal number

twenty-three is given without any preposition or modiﬁer and must be

taken in an absolute (accession) sense; this puts the thirteenth year of Jo-

siah in 606t + 23 = 629t. By Jeremiah’s non-accession reckoning, Josiah’s

beginning year can be calculated as 629t + 12 (acc) = 641t. This date for the

accession of Josiah provides the means of determining if the thirty-one

years for his reign given in 2 Kgs 22:1 is an accession or non-accession ﬁg-

ure. The Babylonian Chronicles allow the date of his death to be calculated

as the fourth month of 609 bc, which was in the year 610t. This was thirty-

one years after the beginning of Josiah’s reign in 641t, so the reign length

as given in 2 Kgs 22:1 is by accession reckoning, showing, incidentally, that

somewhere between 2 Kgs 22:1 and 24:1 the counting system changed from

accession to non-accession.

The phrases “In the beginning of the reign of . . .” in Jer 26:1, 27:1, and

28:1 might indicate that Jeremiah was using the technical phrase for an ac-

cession year in these places, thus conﬂicting with his non-accession method

elsewhere. However, the actual form of the phrase used, tWksl}m}m" tyvIareB} or

tk<l<m}m" tyvIareB}, does not necessarily imply recognition of an accession year as

distinct from a (non-accession) ﬁrst year, according to Hughes.

It is inter-

esting, albeit somewhat puzzling, that the phrase is used in apposition to

the fourth year of Zedekiah in 28:1.

A comparison of Jer 28:1 with 28:17 might suggest a problem with the idea

that Jeremiah always used Tishri reckoning for Judah, but closer examina-

tion will explain the difﬁculty. The false prophet Hananiah had broken the

yoke from Jeremiah’s neck. Some time later, the Lord instructed Jeremiah

to tell Hananiah, “This year you are going to die, because you have coun-

seled rebellion against the Lord” (Jer 28:16 nasb). The next verse says that

Hananiah died “in the same year in the seventh month.” This might appear

to be a problem for the following reason: the conﬂict with Hananiah began

in the ﬁfth month of the fourth year of Zedekiah (Jer 28:1). Months are al-

ways numbered as starting from Nisan, so the seventh month was Tishri.

Tishri would bring in the ﬁfth year of Zedekiah, so we could argue that Jer-

emiah should have said, “In the next year, the ﬁfth of Zedekiah, in the sev-

enth month, the prophet Hananiah died.” Technically this would be correct,

but it would also be very misleading, unless everyone understood that four-

teen months had not passed from the ﬁfth month of Zedekiah’s fourth year

to the seventh month of his ﬁfth year, but only two months, both in 594 bc.

To later readers it would look like a failed prophecy, because the death of

Hananiah would appear to happen more than a year after the prophecy. Jer-

emiah, to avoid any misunderstanding regarding the shortness of time be-

tween the giving of the prophecy and its accomplishment, declared that the

Hughes, Secrets 180.

journal of the evangelical theological society36

accomplishment was in the same year—not the same year as measured by

Zedekiah’s regnal year, but the same year as measured from the giving of

the prophecy. To state it otherwise would have opened the door for misun-

derstanding and doubt that God accomplished what he said he would do.

In Jer 39:1, the ﬁnal siege of Jerusalem is said to begin in the ninth year

of Zedekiah, in the tenth month. This is 598t – 8 (acc) = 590t, and the tenth

month would be approximately January 589, which is in agreement with

the beginning of the siege as previously determined from Ezek 24:1.

In Jer 46:2, the Battle of Carchemish is dated in the fourth year of Je-

hoiakim, 609t – 3 (acc) = 606t. The battle occurred in 605n/605t, which is in

the latter half of the year given by Jeremiah.

The writings of Jeremiah end with chapter 51 (Jer 51:64), so his methods

of dating are not automatically applicable to the contents of chapter 52. The

contents of that chapter, except for verses 28 through 30, are all parallel to

passages in the last two chapters of 2 Kings, so the methods already deter-

mined for these chapters in 2 Kings (Tishri, non-accession reckoning) can be

applied to the corresponding verses in Jeremiah 52. Verses 28 through 30

are independent of the Book of Kings and are interesting enough to require

special consideration.

Jer 52:28–30 gives the number of captives taken by Nebuchadnezzar in

his seventh, eighteenth, and twenty-third years. There is one thing certain

about the counting of captives—the captives themselves are in no position

to do it. Every king and pharaoh must have had an ofﬁcial assigned to this

task, so that the number of those vanquished could be recorded on a stela or

in the annals glorifying the king’s exploits. Thus the list of captives in Jer

52:28–30 could not have originated in a Judean record—it came from the

ofﬁcial records of Nebuchadnezzar. The years of the monarch would there-

fore be the Nisan, accession years used in Babylon. This is an independent

veriﬁcation of the use of non-accession years when Jeremiah and the author

of the last two chapters of 2 Kings referred to Nebuchadnezzar: the seventh

(accession) year of Jer 52:28 corresponds to the eighth (non-accession) year

of 2 Kgs 24:12, and the eighteenth (accession) year of Jer 52:29 corresponds

to the nineteenth (non-accession) year of 2 Kgs 25:8. These are not mistakes,

as some have assumed. They are a valuable clue that the synchronisms to

Nebuchadnezzar in 2 Kings were to be taken in a non-accession sense, and

this conclusion could have been reached from these texts alone without going

through the more thorough analysis of the present article.

It has been shown that no synchronisms in the book of Jeremiah contra-

dict a usage of Tishri years and non-accession reckoning for the kings of

Judah throughout the prophet’s writing. By determining from the data the

method that the prophet actually used we have also shown that the dates

given for the events in Jeremiah agree with the dates given for the same

events in Ezekiel, 2 Kings, and the Babylonian Chronicle. This cannot be

because we forced our system on the data; it can only be because (1) we have

found the system used by Jeremiah; (2) Jeremiah used that system consis-

tently; and (3) the Masoretes and others in the textual tradition of the re-

ceived text have transmitted to us correctly all dates and reign lengths

when did jerusalem fall? 37

which are necessary for constructing the proper chronology of the period. If

these dates and reign lengths had not been authentic, we would have ex-

pected to ﬁnd a conﬂict within these three sources (Kings, Jeremiah, and

Ezekiel) that could not be reconciled, no matter what combination of Nisan

versus Tishri or accession versus non-accession was assumed.

The consistency of data in Jeremiah is shown in Table 6. The 52nd chap-

ter is not included because it is not from the pen of Jeremiah (Jer 51:64).

vi. conclusion

This study has examined all texts in Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and 2 Kings that

bear on the question, “When did Jerusalem fall?” Many side issues needed

to be addressed to answer the question satisfactorily. A technique called De-

cision Analysis was used to ensure that all combinations of hypotheses were

considered and that any hidden assumptions were brought out into the

open. The analysis allowed us to rule out many presuppositions that were

accepted in former studies and to replace them with presuppositions that do

Table 6. All synchronisms in the writings of Jeremiah, showing that

the Tishri/non-accession method he used for kings of Judah, and the

non-accession method for Nebuchadnezzar, are in harmony with dates

for all events internal to or external to Jeremiah

Jeremiah

chapter & verse First event Synchronized with

Overlap of

columns 2 and 3

1:3, 39:2 Zedekiah’s 11th year,

598t – 10 (acc) = 588t;

4th month = Tammuz/

July 587

Fall of Jerusalem:

calculated from Ezek

40:1 as Tammuz 587

Tammuz/July

587

25:1 4th of Jehoiakim = 609t

– 3 (acc) = 606t

First (accession) of

Nebuchadnezzar, 605n/

605t

605n/605t

25:3 4th of Jehoiakim (606t) 23 years from 13th of

Josiah = 641t – 12 (acc) –

23 = 606t

606t

32:1 10th of Zedekiah = 598t

– 9 (acc) = 589t

18th of Nebuchadnezzar

= 606t – 17 (acc) = 589t

or 605n – 17 (acc) = 588n

589t or 588n/

588t

39:1 9th of Zedekiah = 598t –

8 (acc) = 590t; 10th

month = Jan. 589

Final siege begins; Jan.

589 (from Ezek 24:1)

Jan. 589

46:2 4th of Jehoiakim (606t) Battle of Carchemish,

605n/605t from

Babylonian Chronicle

605n/605t

See the treatment of Jeremiah 52 in the text above.

journal of the evangelical theological society38

not contradict the data (the received text). The conclusions from the analy-

sis are as follows.

(1) Jerusalem fell in the fourth month (Tammuz) of 587 bc. All sources

which bear on the question—Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and 2 Kings—are con-

sistent in dating the event in that year.

(2) Ezekiel consistently dated events from the time that Jehoiachin was

taken captive in early 597 bc. He used Tishri years in all his reckoning.

(3) Similarly, 2 Kings 24–25 consistently used Tishri years and non-ac-

cession reckoning for Judean kings. For Nebuchadnezzar, non-acces-

sion years, starting in Nisan, were used.

(4) In the writings of Jeremiah (which excludes the ﬁfty-second chapter),

Jeremiah consistently used Tishri years for Judah, as did Ezekiel and

the source for the last chapters of 2 Kings. This is in harmony with

the usage of Judah throughout the monarchic period, in contrast to

Thiele’s assumption that Jeremiah and Ezekiel used Nisan reckoning

for Judah.

Jeremiah used non-accession years for the kings of Judah

and for Nebuchadnezzar. There is not enough information to deter-

mine if he started the years for Nebuchadnezzar in Tishri or Nisan;

both assumptions ﬁt the data.

(5) All three sources are internally consistent and consistent with each

other. There are no texts which bear on the question of the chronol-

ogy of the last years of the Judean monarchy and the fall of Jerusa-

lem which do not ﬁt the methods described here regarding how the

biblical authors treated the history of their times.

(6) None of these conclusions was arrived at by forcing presuppositions

on the data found in the scriptural text received from the Masoretes,

except perhaps the presupposition that when the data conﬂicted with

one of our hypotheses, then any reasonable set of hypotheses which did

not conﬂict with the data was to be preferred over the set which pro-

duced conﬂict. This approach may be contrasted with an approach

which says that when a favorite set of hypotheses conﬂicts with the

data, the data will be declared in error and no further effort will be ex-

pended to see if another set of hypotheses offers a better explanation.

(7) The use of Decision Tables reveals that previous studies have over-

looked many possibilities that were entirely consistent with the ideas

of the author of the study, but which were not explored simply be-

cause they were never thought of. This failure to explore all the pos-

sibilities has been a major problem in the studies of OT chronology,

and one that has led to signiﬁcant confusion in the chronologies pro-

duced. It is to be hoped that future studies will not declare that some

new solution is to be preferred, or the text needs to be emended, until

it is demonstrated that there are no other sets of hypotheses that

better explain the data. Ignoring this practice will reduce the credi-

bility of the study.

Thiele, Mysterious Numbers 180.