5 min read

The Exile Prophecies Came True in Cruel Literal Ways

Jehoiachin walked out of Jerusalem to save it. Zedekiah watched his sons die, and his own tears finished the work iron could not do.

Curated by Arthur · Told by Maggid ·
Table of Contents
  1. The Young King Walked Out
  2. Zedekiah Thought Two Prophecies Could Not Both Be True
  3. Iron Could Not Blind Him
  4. A Ghost Asked for a House of Stone
The Exile Prophecies Came True in Cruel Literal Ways Click for full size

The Young King Walked Out

Jehoiachin inherited the throne of Judah while Nebuchadnezzar's army was already at the gates. He was young. He was pious. He understood the arithmetic of sieges. A city with its king inside it fights. A city without its king has nothing left to defend.

He walked out.

Before he handed himself over, he made the Babylonian commanders swear an oath. Spare the city. Spare the people. Take me instead. The commanders swore. Jehoiachin walked into captivity believing he had traded one life for thousands.

The Babylonians broke the oath the moment it became inconvenient. They exiled the king, his mother, and ten thousand of the nobility and scholars of Judah. Every judge, every sage, every scribe who could read Torah at the level Jerusalem required, gone. The city left behind was a city without its mind. An earlier deportation, when they took Jehoiakim, had already carried three hundred of the nobles, among them the prophet Ezekiel. The second wave finished the emptying.

Zedekiah Thought Two Prophecies Could Not Both Be True

Jehoiachin had a throne. His uncle Zedekiah received one from the Babylonians after the first exile, a vassal king in a diminished kingdom. He swore loyalty to Nebuchadnezzar. Then he broke the oath and sent to Egypt for help.

Jeremiah told him exactly what would happen. Pharaoh's army would turn back before it reached Jerusalem. Nebuchadnezzar would return. The city would fall. Zedekiah himself would see Nebuchadnezzar face to face before the end, but he would not see Babylon. Both prophecies were correct. Both prophecies seemed, at the moment they were spoken, to contradict each other. How does a man see his conqueror and then not see the country he is taken to?

Zedekiah decided the contradiction meant the prophet was wrong. He did not make peace. He ran.

Iron Could Not Blind Him

They caught him at Jericho. They brought him before Nebuchadnezzar at Riblah. He looked at the man who had broken him. The man looked back. That was the prophecy of seeing.

Zedekiah asked to be killed before his children, so he would not have to watch their blood. His children asked to be killed first, so they would not have to watch their father die. Nebuchadnezzar had resolved worse things than either of them named. In the sight of their father, the sons were killed. Then the soldiers went to work on Zedekiah's eyes.

He had been endowed with the eyes of Adam. The iron lances forced into them were powerless to destroy his sight. Vision left him only because of the tears he shed over the fate of his children. He wept without stopping. The weeping finished the work the iron could not do. He arrived in Babylon blind. He never saw it. Both prophecies were true, and the cruelty was that they were both true at the same time, through the mechanism of his own body. The exile prophecies had come true in a literal way no court could have drafted.

A Ghost Asked for a House of Stone

Years later, in the Babylonian exile, a rich Jew who had no child dreamed a man standing in his sleep. "I am Barozak," the figure said. "I am one of the princes led into captivity with Jeremiah. I am one of the just. If you will erect a handsome mausoleum for me, you will be blessed with progeny."

The Jew did as he had been bidden. He who had been childless shortly after became a father. Barozak's tomb became a landmark. It stood near the tomb of Ezekiel, which was itself one of the pilgrimage sites of the Babylonian Jewish community. Two graves near each other: the prophet who saw the chariot and the valley of dry bones, and the obscure prince whose ghost walked until someone put his name in stone.

Jehoiachin walked out and the city fell anyway. Zedekiah ran and was caught and was blinded by his own grief after iron failed. Barozak died unnamed and walked until a childless house remembered him, and then a child was born. The cruel literal ways of the fall did not stop at the living. Even the dead had to bargain for a marker, and the marker went up in the same dirt as Ezekiel's.

ExileDreamsGinzbergBabylonEzekiel
← All myths

From the tradition

Sources

3 sources

The texts behind this telling. Some cards carry a translation of the source; others are our own retelling of it, and each card says which. Every card links out to the original.

Legends of the Jews 9:61Legends of the Jews

Retold in our words. Read the original at the link below.The Legends of the Jews by Louis Ginzberg (1909) · Public Domain

Jehoiachin was a king of Judah, and not a particularly lucky one, it seems. He inherited the throne at a turbulent time, with the Babylonian empire breathing down Jerusalem's neck. Nebuchadnezzar, that infamous king, was making his presence felt.

Jehoiachin was, by all accounts, a good and pious man. Ginzberg, in his Legends of the Jews, tells us that Jehoiachin, seeing the precariousness of Jerusalem's situation, made a difficult choice. He didn't want the city to suffer because of him.

So, he did something incredibly brave, or perhaps incredibly naive. He surrendered himself to the Babylonian leaders. But he didn’t do it blindly. He made them swear an oath: if he gave himself up, they wouldn't harm the city or its people. A noble sacrifice. You'd think that would be enough. You'd think the Babylonians, bound by their word, would honor the agreement. But, as is so often the case in history (and sometimes in life), promises are broken.

The Babylonians, those oath-breakers, did not keep their word.

Not long after Jehoiachin's surrender, they exiled not only the king himself, but also his mother, and a staggering ten thousand of the Jewish nobility and great scholars. Ten thousand! It was a devastating blow.

This, Legends of the Jews reminds us, wasn't Nebuchadnezzar's first rodeo when it came to deporting the Jews. He'd tried it before. On taking the former king, Jehoiakim, captive, he had exiled three hundred of the noblest of the people, among them the prophet Ezekiel. That first deportation was like a warning shot, a sign of things to come.

So, what are we left with? A story of sacrifice, betrayal, and exile. Jehoiachin’s intentions were pure, his actions seemingly selfless. Yet, the consequences were dire.

Is it better to fight, even when the odds are stacked against you? Or is there a point where self-sacrifice, even with the best intentions, becomes a futile gesture? The story of Jehoiachin leaves us with more questions than answers, a reminder that sometimes, even the noblest acts can't prevent the wheels of history from grinding forward.

Full source
Legends of the Jews 10:7Legends of the Jews

Retold in our words. Read the original at the link below.The Legends of the Jews by Louis Ginzberg (1909) · Public Domain

The story of Zedekiah, the last king of Judah before the Babylonian exile, is a powerful example. We find it told in fascinating detail in Ginzberg's Legends of the Jews. Zedekiah found himself in an impossible situation, facing the wrath of Nebuchadnezzar, the king of Babylon. He'd rebelled against Nebuchadnezzar's rule, and now, the consequences were crashing down upon him.

Zedekiah knew his end was near, and he made a plea: to be executed before his children, spared the unimaginable horror of witnessing their deaths. But his children, showing incredible courage and love, begged Nebuchadnezzar to kill them first, so they wouldn't have to see their father humiliated and killed.

Nebuchadnezzar, alas, was not moved by such displays of familial devotion. He was a cruel man. He devised a fate even more terrible than Zedekiah had feared. Before Zedekiah's very eyes, his children were slaughtered.

Then came the blinding. According to Legends of the Jews, Zedekiah wasn't just any man. He possessed extraordinary vision, said to be as powerful as Adam's. The iron lances they used to blind him should have been useless. But the story tells us that it wasn't the iron that took his sight; it was the tears, the unbearable grief he wept over the deaths of his children, that finally extinguished his vision.

Only then, in that moment of utter despair, did Zedekiah understand the prophecy of Jeremiah. Jeremiah had foretold that Zedekiah would be exiled to Babylonia, living there until his death, yet he would never see the land with his own eyes.

Zedekiah had always seen this as a contradiction. How could he be in Babylonia and not see it? This seeming impossibility had led him to ignore Jeremiah's advice to make peace with Nebuchadnezzar. He thought he could outsmart fate.

But now, as he was led away, a blind captive, he finally understood. He was indeed carried to Babylonia, but blind, he would never behold the land. The prophecy, seemingly contradictory, had been fulfilled in the most tragic and literal way possible.

What does Zedekiah's story teach us? Perhaps it's a reminder that prophecies, like life itself, can be complex and many-sided. Maybe it's a cautionary tale about the dangers of ignoring wise counsel, even when it doesn't make immediate sense. Or perhaps, it’s evidence of the enduring power of love and sacrifice, even in the face of unimaginable cruelty. Whatever you take from it, the story of Zedekiah leaves us with a lingering question: How often do we misunderstand the messages we receive, blinded by our own assumptions and expectations?

Full source
Legends of the Jews 10:77Legends of the Jews

Retold in our words. Read the original at the link below.The Legends of the Jews by Louis Ginzberg (1909) · Public Domain

Not far from the tomb of the prophet Ezekiel, legend tells us, lay the less-known grave of Barozak. Now, Barozak wasn't a prophet himself, but he was, according to the tale, one of the princes taken into captivity along with Jeremiah. One day, Barozak appeared in a dream to a wealthy, but childless, Jew.

The scene: you're asleep, and suddenly, a figure from centuries past appears before you. "I am Barozak," he announces, "one of the just. If thou wilt erect a handsome mausoleum for me, thou wilt be blessed with progeny."

The Jew, understandably, did exactly as he was told. And, as the story goes, he who had been childless was, shortly thereafter, blessed with a child. Who might be trying to reach us from the other side?

Speaking of powerful figures in the Babylonian exile, we can't forget Daniel. He might not have been a prophet in the formal sense, but according to Legends of the Jews, as retold by Ginzberg, none surpassed him in wisdom, piety, and good deeds. Daniel was a rock star!

From a young age, Daniel demonstrated an unwavering commitment to his Judaism. As a page in the royal court, he refused to partake of the bread, wine, and oil offered, because it was considered "of the heathen." Now, some might argue that enjoying these things wasn't strictly forbidden by Jewish law. But Daniel understood that his actions spoke louder than words. He wasn't just observing the letter of the law; he was living its spirit.

Daniel's rise to prominence at court wasn't all smooth sailing, though. He and his companions – Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah – faced constant envy and opposition from those who sought their downfall. Their enemies were always scheming, always looking for a way to trip them up. The righteous facing adversity. But it also shows us that even in the highest places, integrity and faith can be a beacon.

Where do you draw the line? What are you willing to stand up for, even when it's difficult? These stories, these legends, they're not just ancient history. They're mirrors, reflecting back at us the choices we face every day.

Full source