587 BC

Siege of Jerusalem (587 BC)

Jerusalem is breached; Babylon then destroys the city and Temple

The Temple did not burn on the day the wall broke. A different Babylonian officer arrived the following month to carry out the destruction.

The breach, in Zedekiah's eleventh year

The Hebrew account dates Jerusalem's breach to the ninth day of the fourth month in Zedekiah's eleventh year — 587 BCE by one reconstruction, 586 by others, depending on how Judean regnal years are counted. Babylonian officials then entered and took seats in the Middle Gate, the place associated with authority and judgment.

Zedekiah and his soldiers fled at night through the gate between the two walls near the King's Garden. Babylonian forces overtook him on the plains of Jericho after his army scattered.

At Nebuchadnezzar's headquarters at Riblah his sons were killed in front of him. Only then was he blinded, fettered and taken to Babylon.

The burning came a month later

Capture and destruction were separate stages. In the following month Nebuzaradan, Nebuchadnezzar's captain of the guard, burned the house of the Lord, the royal palace and Jerusalem's major houses while Babylonian troops demolished the walls.

The accounts disagree even on that date: 2 Kings 25:8 gives the seventh day of the fifth month, Jeremiah 52:12 the tenth. The Babylonians broke up the Temple's monumental bronze fittings for transport, removed its bronze, silver and gold vessels, and took senior priests and officials — including the chief priest Seraiah — to Riblah, where they were executed.

Not an emptied land

Nebuzaradan deported survivors and defectors but explicitly left some of the poorest inhabitants as vineyard workers and farmers, and Nebuchadnezzar placed Gedaliah son of Ahikam over those who remained. Babylon replaced the monarchy with provincial administration rather than clearing the country.

The exile did not begin here either. Babylon had already removed Jehoiachin, his court, elites, soldiers and craftspeople after the 597 BCE capture — the one documented in the Babylonian Chronicle tablet BM 21946, which ends before this campaign.

Excavation in Jerusalem's Giv'ati Parking Lot uncovered an Iron Age public building of roughly 12 by 17 metres with charred beams and pottery crushed where it had stood, under about 2.5 metres of collapse that the excavators attribute to the Babylonian destruction.

Sources

Researched 23 Aug 2026 12 sources 2 audit passes Date disputed

How this was checked

Researched from the web into a fact sheet, rewritten from that sheet, then audited against it by a different model. How the pipeline works →

Date disputed. Sources disagree; the research places it at -0587.

What the sources leave uncertain

The absolute year remains disputed between 587 and 586 BCE because reconstructions differ over accession-year counting and whether Judean regnal years began in Nisan or Tishri. The listed year, 587 BCE, is supported by Robb Andrew Young’s reconstruction, while other scholarly and archaeological publications use 586 BCE.
The surviving Babylonian Chronicle BM 21946 records Nebuchadnezzar’s earlier capture of Jerusalem in 597 BCE, not the final capture and destruction in 587/586. The latter chronology depends chiefly on biblical regnal synchronisms.
The Hebrew textual traditions disagree over the destruction date: 2 Kings 25:8 gives the seventh day of the fifth month, while Jeremiah 52:12 gives the tenth. A peer-reviewed text-critical study argues that the date in 2 Kings is earlier, but certainty is impossible.
The capture, burning, executions, and deportation should not be presented as one day. Kings separates the fourth-month breach from Nebuzaradan’s fifth-month destruction.