Assassination of Gedaliah and the Third Deportation

After the destruction of Jerusalem, Nebuchadnezzar left the poorest people in the land and entrusted the government of the remaining population to Gedaliah son of Ahikam, from a family of high officials who had protected Jeremiah. He settled in Mizpah, north of the ruined city, gathered those who had scattered to Moab, Ammon, and Edom, and promised them safety on condition that they cultivate the land and serve the king of Babylon. A seal bearing "belonging to Gedalyahu, steward of the house" was uncovered at Lachish.

Johanan son of Kareah warned him that a conspiracy was being plotted, sent by Baalis, king of the Ammonites; Gedaliah refused to believe it. Ishmael son of Netaniah, who was of royal blood, came to share his meal and killed him, along with the Judeans and the Chaldean garrison present at Mizpah. The following day, while no one yet knew anything, pilgrims coming from Shechem, Shiloh, and Samaria, with shaved beards and torn garments, were making their way toward the destroyed sanctuary with offerings: Ishmael had them brought in, killed them, and threw the bodies into the cistern dug by King Asa. He spared only those who ransomed their lives by revealing stores of wheat hidden in the fields.

The rest of the people, fearing Babylonian reprisals, then fled to Egypt and brought Jeremiah along against his will. A new deportation followed, the third, dated by the book of Jeremiah to the twenty-third year of Nebuchadnezzar. Jewish tradition commemorates the assassination through the fast of Gedaliah, on the day after Rosh Hashanah: it sees in it less a political murder than the end of all organized Jewish life on the land of Judah.

⚠ The date of the assassination and that of the deportation do not coincide in the sources: the book of Kings places the murder in the seventh month without specifying the year, while Jeremiah dates the deportation to the twenty-third year of the reign. The catalogue retains the second, which is the only one given as a number.