First Babylonian Deportation

Joïakim, king of Judah, had become a vassal of Babylon after Nebuchadnezzar's victory over Egypt at Karkemish. He ceased paying tribute and turned once again toward the pharaoh; the Babylonian army marched on Jerusalem. Joïakim died during the campaign and his son Joïakin, eighteen years old, reigned for three months before going out to surrender with his mother and his court. The Babylonian Chronicle dates the capture of the city to the second day of the month of Adar — one of the rare dates in the history of Israel that an external source fixes to the precise day.

Nebuchadnezzar carried off the treasures of the Temple and the palace, had the golden objects that Solomon had placed there broken apart, and deported to Babylon the king, the queen mother Nehushta, the dignitaries, the men of war, the carpenters and the smiths — the elite that Judah needed in order to revolt again. He placed on the throne Mattanya, Joïakin's uncle, whom he renamed Sédécias. Ration tablets discovered in Babylon name "Yaukin, king of the land of Yahoud" and his sons: the deported king lived there maintained by the court, and this document is the only non-biblical attestation of his fate.

Ézéchiel was among the deportees of this first wave; it was on the bank of the river Kebar, in exile, that he received his vision. This deportation shed no blood: it decapitated Judah, and prepared the revolt that would bring, eleven years later, the destruction of the Temple.

⚠ The sources do not count the deportees in the same way — the second book of Kings, which gives two different figures within a few verses of each other, and the book of Jérémie, which gives a third, considerably lower. The catalogue reproduces the discrepancy rather than resolving it.