Episode #34  Destruction and Banishment

In this episode, Rabbi Reinman describes how the Kingdom of Judah went from the heights to the depths when Menasheh succeeded Chizkiahu.

In 533 b.c.e., after a reign of twenty-five years, Chizkiahu passed away. His twelve-year-old son Menasheh ascended to the throne and remained there for fifty-five years. It was the longest reign in Jewish history. And the worst. Menasheh destroyed everything his father had accomplished, and by the time he was through, the Kingdom of Judah had exceeded the basest forms of paganism it had known during the reign of Ahaz.

It is difficult to understand why a young prince raised in the royal palace of the saintly Chizkiahu should be inclined to such evil. Perhaps some traumatic experience activated the dormant toxins of the blood of Achav and Ezevel that flowed in his young veins. Perhaps the influence of his mother Hephzibah was in some way responsible.[1] But whatever his motivations, he broke new ground in villainy and depravity.

Far more difficult to understand is how the people of Judah allowed themselves to be subverted by Menasheh. The light of Torah had shone more brightly during the reign of Chizkiahu than at any time since the days of Solomon. How could they fall so far in a few short years?

At first glance, it would seem that only people with whom we come into direct contact influence our attitudes and beliefs. After all, how can we be affected by what our ancestors thought and did in the previous century? But the truth is that the attitudes and beliefs of our distant ancestors have an exceedingly powerful influence on our lives.

The Talmud advises against making critical remarks about gentiles in front of the descendants of righteous converts for ten generations.[2] Although these thoroughly Jewish descendants of converts are very far removed from their gentile forbears in time and ideology, there still remains a tenuous connection that is not so easily severed. It manifests itself in thousands of minuscule subliminal and subconscious nuances. The passage of each generation, however, filters out more and more of these nuances. By the tenth generation, they are all gone, and the connection is severed. Such is the power of generational conditioning.

Conversely, the longer successive generations adhere to a particular ideology or way of life, the more ingrained it becomes. All the fine nuances of thought and life are sifted through the filters of each passing generation until they become imprinted on the souls of posterity.

The shaded flavors of a child’s upbringing—the attitudes, the inflections, the rhythms, the humor, the habits, the fears and the hopes—all color his being with the deep-hued dyes of background and identity. Newly acquired attitudes and beliefs, however, no matter how strongly held, do not merge into the fibers of the soul. The intellect is more easily transformed than the identity, and only by generational conditioning do the intellect and the identity merge.

The Kingdom of Judah had been transformed under Chizkiahu. The dismal fate of its sister kingdom to the north and the charismatic leadership of the noble Chizkiahu had combined to diffuse the spirit of the core element to all levels of society. But generational conditioning in the new mode was lacking. Actually, generational conditioning worked against the Jewish people, since they had become conditioned for centuries to apathetic and mechanical Torah observance. Thus, although the light of Torah did indeed illuminate Chizkiahu’s kingdom, it was only a luminous garment worn on the exterior of the soul. It would take generations of continuity for that garment to fuse with the soul, but those generations never came to pass. Menasheh would not let it happen.

The Talmud tells us that three kings have no share in the afterlife—Yeravam, Achav and Menasheh.[3] Yeravam started the nation on its downward spiral by erecting the golden calves as images of worship, thus undermining the Jewish concept of divinity and ultimately causing the downfall of both kingdoms. Achav took advantage of the debilitated spiritual state of the Jewish people and introduced outright idol worship to the Kingdom of Israel, but with customary pagan tolerance, he did not outlaw Torah study or observance. Menasheh, however, was an altogether different story. After a quarter century of Chizkiahu’s enlightened rule, the people were intellectually opposed to the idea of a return to paganism, and Menasheh could therefore not afford to be tolerant. Instead, resorting to cunning and brute force, he mounted a frontal assault on the Torah in order to accomplish his sinister goals.

Menasheh’s gambit was the reintroduction of the forbidden practice of sacrificing to God on private altars.[4] He probably claimed this would be a step forward in piety and observance, and presumably, he drew on his considerable erudition[5] to rationalize this violation of the Torah.

The core element of the Jewish people was, of course, not fooled by this ploy, but the weaker elements were. The volatile segment of the population that swung back and forth like a pendulum between observance and paganism did not look to the Sanhedrin, the Kohanim and the Torah scholars for leadership and guidance. Traditionally, they were inclined to follow the lead of their kings. Chizkiahu had been successful in leading them in one direction. Menasheh, with cleverness and subtlety, was now steering them in the opposite direction.

Once Menasheh succeeded in breaching the wall of universal Torah observance, the old habits and rhythms not yet filtered out by generational conditioning began to reappear. Before long, Menasheh felt confident enough to shed his pretense of piety. He declared his fervent allegiance to the god race and built temples in their honor.

Menasheh was right in his assessment of the people. The fickle elements allowed themselves to be drawn into the pagan frenzy. But there was also a great deal of outrage and opposition, because the Torah had sunk deep roots during the days of Chizkiahu. Menasheh responded by declaring war on God, so to speak. He banned the Torah and slaughtered its most ardent adherents so that “Jerusalem was filled from end to end with innocent blood”[6]; among his victims was the prophet Isaiah,[7] who was himself a member of the royal family.[8] Then, in a burst of flagrant blasphemy, Menasheh took a pagan altar built by his grandfather Ahaz and brought it into the Sanctuary of the Holy Temple. For all his iniquity, Ahaz would never have dared do it, but Menasheh had much broader support.[9]

Menasheh continued his mutiny against God and his attack on the Torah for twenty-two years,[10] and by his combination of subterfuge and brutality, he devastated Judah as never before. The core element went into virtual hiding in order to continue observing the Torah, and the rest of the people flocked to the pagan temples.

In the twenty-third year of his reign, Menasheh was captured during an Assyrian incursion and taken in chains to a prison in Babylon. In the dark dungeon, Menasheh saw the light that had eluded him in the royal palace, and he prayed to the God of his fathers for deliverance. His prayers were answered, and he was released and restored to his throne. But the die was cast. For the remaining thirty-three years of his reign, he campaigned vigorously against the Baal cult he himself had introduced to Judah, but to no avail. The people had been subverted, and Menasheh lacked the moral authority to rectify the damage he had done.[11]

The Kingdom of Judah had hit rock bottom. It had become morally corrupt, drained of its grace and holiness, a hotbed of pagan culture in which the Torah was actively persecuted. The last reprieve had been exhausted, and the Divine Presence withdrew from its Abode in Jerusalem.[12] It was now only a matter of time before the kingdom itself would crumble and collapse.

The Experiment of the Kings ended in abject failure. The delicate instrument of the spiritual monarchy of Judah had been introduced prematurely, and it was now encrusted with blood and moral rot. The villainous Menasheh had made a travesty of the aspirations of the Jewish people and the divine mission of the Davidic dynasty, and in the process, he had caused the destruction of the Jewish kingdom and all the tribulations of exile that arose from it.

In 478 b.c.e., Menasheh was succeeded by his son Amon, a fanatical pagan who tried to bring back the Baal cult as in the early days of his father’s reign. He attacked the Jewish religion with peculiar malice, ordering the consignment of Torah scrolls to the flames and the cessation of the Temple service. Faithful Jews were now forced to practice their religion in secret in their own homeland. In the Temple, a thunderous silence replaced the exuberant clamor of the holy service, and the altar languished under a shroud of spider webs.[13] It seemed that nothing less than the complete obliteration of Judaism would satisfy Amon.

In 476 b.c.e., two years after he ascended the throne, Amon was assassinated in the palace by the royal guard. An enraged mob stormed the palace and killed all the rebels. Then they placed Amon’s eight-year-old son Yoshiahu on the throne without the customary anointing of the king by a prophet of God. The rabble of the streets had usurped the coronation process. The kingdom was clearly disintegrating.

Nevertheless, Yoshiahu was a gallant captain of the sinking ship of state. Although raised in a pagan environment, he was already gravitating to the pure faith of his ancestors at the age of sixteen. In 464 b.c.e., at the age of twenty, he courageously undertook to repair the damage inflicted on the kingdom by his father and grandfather for six decades. He began the laborious process of purging Judah of pagan contamination and refurbishing the Holy Temple. It promised to be a difficult task, for it involved not only removing the physical trappings but also reconditioning the hearts and minds of the people.

In 458 b.c.e., a startling discovery shocked the nation. The original Torah scroll written by Moses nearly one thousand years before was found in the Sanctuary of the Temple, where it had been secreted during the times of persecution.[14] It was open to the Tochachah, the Reproof Section of Deuteronomy, specifically to the verses, “God shall deport you and the king you appoint for yourselves to a nation unknown to you or your fathers, and you will be subservient to alien gods of wood and stone. And you will be desolate, ridiculed and mocked by all the peoples wherever God will deliver you.”[15]

This unmistakable portent triggered intense consternation among the king and his advisors. Moreover, having been installed by the mob without prophetic sanction, Yoshiahu was certain that he was “the king you appoint for yourselves.”[16] He wept and rent his garments, and he sent the High Priest to consult the prophets.

Five years earlier, the great Jeremiah had begun to prophesy in the Kingdom of Judah. At the time of this crisis, however, he was absent from Jerusalem, and instead, the High Priest consulted the prophetess Huldah, who lived in Jerusalem.[17] The prophetess confirmed the approaching calamity, but she reassured the king that because of his submission to God the destruction would not occur during his lifetime.

Huldah’s message sparked the last great spiritual revival in the Kingdom of Judah. The king convened an assembly of the people in the Holy Temple, and he informed them of what had transpired. Then he proclaimed a covenant to reaffirm the Jewish commitment to God and His Torah, and the people solemnly voiced their acceptance.

From that point on, the purge was no longer slow and laborious. Indeed, it became a veritable frenzy that surpassed any of the earlier purges. In a few short months, every last vestige of idolatrous worship and private altars was destroyed. All animals, utensils and artifacts with any idolatrous connection whatsoever were incinerated in huge pyres in the valley outside Jerusalem, and their ashes were scattered on the graves of idol worshippers. The purge then spread into the virtually vacant lands of the former Kingdom of Israel. The altars of Jeroboam in Bethel and Dan were finally torn down, torched and ground to dust along with any other trace of idolatry that remained in the forlorn countryside.

At long last, there were no visible signs of the pagan penetration of Jewish society, but the invisible stains were too deep to be so quickly expunged. An uneasy quiet descended on the land for the next thirteen years, but it was like living in the shadow of a smoking volcano. Internally, a revitalized Jewish society did not materialize; the people still harbored pagan sentiments, which they had renounced only out of abject fear, and many still practiced the pagan rites in secret.[18]

Externally, tensions between the declining Assyrian colossus in the north and the obdurate Egyptian kingdom in the south were reaching a fever pitch, and the tiny Kingdom of Judah lay directly in the path of confrontation. The ground beneath the doomed Jewish kingdom shook and trembled, riven by the forces of inexorable fate.

In 445 b.c.e., an Egyptian army under Pharaoh Neco crossed the border of the Kingdom of Judah and headed north to drive Assyrian invaders from the Aramean city of Carchemish on the Euphrates River. Yoshiahu denied the Egyptians the use of his country as a war corridor, and he mustered an army to block their passage in the valley of Megiddo. In the ensuing battle, Yoshiahu was killed by Egyptian archers, and the Jewish forces withdrew. The Egyptians went on to defeat the Assyrians at the First Battle of Carchemish, gaining temporary suzerainty over the entire region south of Syria in the vacuum created by the collapsing Assyrian Empire.

After the death of Yoshiahu, mob rule once again determined the succession to the crown. Without prophetic sanction, the mob passed over Yoshiahu’s oldest son Eliakim and chose his younger brother Yehoahaz as the new king. Yehoahaz turned out to be a throwback to Menasheh and Amon, which was undoubtedly why the mob had wanted him in the first place. But they need not have worried, for events would show that Eliakim was no better than his younger brother.

Three months later, Pharaoh Neco replaced the vengeful Yehoahaz, who was harassing Egypt,[19] with the elder Eliakim, who accepted Egyptian overlordship; Neco also changed Eliakim’s name to Yehoiakim to underscore that he controlled the Jewish king.[20] Neco had chosen well. Yehoiakim proved to be an obsequious Egyptian puppet, ever eager to please his avaricious master. As depraved as his deposed brother, Yehoiakim made a mockery of his illustrious father’s desperate efforts to save the kingdom. Paganism once again spread among the common people, and Jewish society was once again devastated by the dissolution of religious life and the breakdown of morality and simple decency.

Nevertheless, despite the dire prophecies and the fall from grace, the Jewish people still retained freedom of choice; to an extent, their fate was in their own hands. Even in the final doomed days of Judah, the gates of repentance were clearly not sealed shut. “Thus said the God of Hosts . . .” Jeremiah prophesied during Yehoiakim’s reign. “For if you truly mend your ways and deeds, if you truly execute justice between one man and another, you will not exploit the stranger, orphan or widow, nor will you spill innocent blood in this place, nor will you follow alien gods to your own detriment. Only then will I allow you to dwell in this place, in the land I gave your forefathers always and forever.”[21] But Jeremiah’s words fell on deaf ears, and the death watch of the kingdom continued.

Meanwhile, important changes were taking place in Mesopotamia. The collapse of the Assyrian Empire resulted in a shift of power to the ancient city of Babylon, an immense metropolis of millions of inhabitants covering many square miles. Although Nineveh had been the capital of the Assyrian Empire, Babylon had been its most important city; Babylon had played New York to Nineveh’s Washington. Practically an entire nation unto itself, Babylon was the economic, religious and cultural capital of Mesopotamia, and now it also became the political capital.

Four years into Yehoiakim’s reign, in 441 b.c.e., a Babylonian army under Nebuchadnezzar crushed the Egyptian forces at the Second Battle of Carchemish and drove the Egyptians back behind their own borders.[22] The Kingdom of Judah now passed back into the Mesopotamian sphere of influence, and Yehoiakim became a Babylonian vassal. In 438 b.c.e., expecting a new resurgence in Egyptian power, Yehoiakim rebelled and refused to pay tribute to his Babylonian masters. For four years, he lived on borrowed time as Nebuchadnezzar secured the eastern borders of his empire, but stripped of Babylonian protection, the Kingdom of Judah now fell victim to repeated raids by Chaldean, Aramean, Moabite and Ammonite marauders.

In 434 b.c.e., Nebuchadnezzar finally descended on the mettlesome little Jewish kingdom. He overran the country, raided the Holy Temple, arrested Yehoiakim and took him in chains to Babylon, where he died in disgrace.[23]

Yehoiakim was replaced by his eighteen-year-old son Yehoiachin, known to the Prophets and the Talmud as Yechaniah.[24] The young king was cut from the same cloth as his father and uncle, both in his pagan sympathies and in his unwillingness to submit to Babylonian domination. He bolstered the fortifications of Jerusalem[25] and waited hopefully for Egyptian support. It was not forthcoming.

Three short months after Yehoiachin became king, Nebuchadnezzar laid siege to Jerusalem. Yehoiachin gave himself up, along with the royal family and ministers, as a sign of submission, but it was not enough for Nebuchadnezzar. He took ten thousand additional captives, the best and the finest in the land, the great Torah scholars, the leaders, the judges, the learned priests, virtually the entire core element of the Jewish people that had clung tenaciously to the sacred Torah regardless of the sentiments of the man who sat on the throne.[26] Besides stripping the human valuables from the Kingdom of Judah, he paused to strip even more material valuables from the Holy Temple. Then he returned to Babylon and put the captive Yehoiachin in prison.

Before he left, Nebuchadnezzar took Mattaniah, Yehoiachin’s twenty-one-year-old uncle, changed his name to Tzidkiahu and placed him on the vacated throne. Tzidkiahu thus became the third son of Yoshiahu and the twenty-second member of the House of David to become king of Judah. He was also its last king. For all its shortcomings, this illustrious dynasty had provided the Kingdom of Judah with the stability of uninterrupted patrilineal succession for four and a half centuries. The kingdom and its royal house had become indivisible, and together, they would face their tragic fate.

A true son of his father, Tzidkiahu was a faithful servant of God and a staunch follower of the Torah, but he found himself in an untenable situation. Nebuchadnezzar had skimmed off the cream of the Jewish people and taken it for himself, leaving only the human sediment that had carried the pagan infection for generations. The faint light of Torah that had still shone during the reign of Yehoiachin was now extinguished, and despite Jeremiah’s impassioned exhortations, the last pitiful remnants of the kingdom lapsed into total degeneration.

Disheartened, Tzidkiahu resigned himself to the political administration of his kingdom. He did not even attempt to exert a positive spiritual influence on his hapless subjects, and the prophet Jeremiah admonished him for this unforgivable omission in the Book of Kings.[27] In spite of their fallen state, these people were still Jews, and their anointed king had no right to despair of them and turn inward in the waning days of the kingdom.

In one aspect, however, Tzidkiahu did share the sentiments of the previous three kings. He chafed under the yoke of Babylonian domination, and against the advice of Jeremiah, he tried to cast it off.[28]

In 425 b.c.e., on the tenth day of the month of Tebeth, Nebuchadnezzar invaded Judah with a vast army and laid siege to Jerusalem for the last time. Massive siege machines and structures were erected around the embattled city, and the long wait began. The siege lasted two years, and towards the end, the privations of the people barricaded within the walls of Jerusalem were fearsome. The Jewish kingdom was suffering its final death throes. Spiritually moribund, it was about to perish physically as well.

In 423 b.c.e., on the ninth day of the month of Tammuz, the walls of Jerusalem were breached, and the long-frustrated Babylonian hordes burst into the city.[29] A scene of unimaginable carnage followed, with the bleeding bodies of the slaughtered falling near the emaciated bodies of their brothers and neighbors who had expired from hunger and thirst. Those fortunate few who managed to flee the stricken city scattered to the winds and sought refuge in the neighboring lands; some eventually reached the distant shores of France and Spain.[30]

Tzidkiahu tried to escape through a long subterranean passage that led to Jericho, but he was captured. Nebuchadnezzar made Tzidkiahu watch as all his sons were butchered, then the vindictive Babylonian king put out Tzidkiahu’s eyes and sent him off in chains to Babylon, where he died in captivity.[31]

Even as Tzidkiahu was being brought before Nebuchadnezzar, the Temple Mount still held out, but on the seventeenth day of Tammuz, the pressure of the fighting brought a halt to the daily sacrifices.[32] On the seventh day of the month of Ab, the invaders penetrated the walls of the Holy Temple and massacred its defenders. They vandalized and ransacked the Holy Temple for two days, stripping it bare of all portable valuables, and on the ninth day of the month, they set it ablaze.[33]

As the writhing flames licked at the incarnadine sky, a pall of dense smoke spread over the beautiful Jerusalem hills. The timbers and the fabrics and the finery that had adorned the glorious Abode of the Divine Presence for four hundred and ten years exploded into fiery embers that streaked the dark heavens of the incredulous night. Ashes borne aloft by the heat-driven winds rained down on the remains of the fallen kingdom and mixed with the blood on its cobblestones and the tears of the captives being led into exile in Babylon. The fires raged through the night and long into the following day, and when they finally subsided, the Jewish homeland that had stood for nearly a thousand years was a smoldering ruin.

Yet even at this point of deepest tragedy, with a millennium of hopes and aspirations reduced to ashes, with the abject failure of the divine Jewish mission to lead humanity to its ultimate destiny, with the kingdom destroyed and its people in captivity, a ray of hope still shone. Before departing for Babylon, Nebuchadnezzar allowed some of the most destitute Jewish survivors to stay on the land, and he appointed Gedaliah ben Ahikam to serve as governor of the newly constituted Babylonian colony.

Gedaliah, a noble and devout man of distinguished lineage, encouraged the stunned survivors to resume their normal lives. He reassured them that they need not fear the occupation forces as long as they were loyal to the Babylonian king. Slowly, bedraggled officers and soldiers of the scattered Jewish military forces and a number of returning civilian refugees began to coalesce around Gedaliah’s fledgling government at Mitzpah outside Jerusalem. The process of picking up the pieces began.

It was as if, after having exhausted all their last chances, the Jewish people were being given yet another last chance from God’s seemingly inexhaustible supply of reprieves. Astonishingly, there still remained a tenuous ligament of attachment between the Jewish people and their ancestral homeland; the exile was still not absolute, and there was still hope. Perhaps this tiny nucleus, stripped of glory and bombast, would find its way back to the ancient Jewish ideals. Perhaps these poverty-stricken derelicts of society would take possession of the vacated fields and vineyards and use the bounty of the land to support true Torah life. Perhaps this humble little seed would sink its slender tendrils into the hallowed soil and bring forth verdant new shoots. But it was not to be.

Among the returnees was an ambitious member of the royal family named Ishmael ben Nethaniah. Upon the instigation of Baalith, the Ammonite king, Ishmael and his followers assassinated Gedaliah and murdered the entire Babylonian garrison. In the ensuing battle between Ishmael’s group and Gedaliah’s supporters led by Johanan ben Kareah, Ishmael’s forces were destroyed, and he fled to Ammon with only a handful of men. But the damage was done. Fearful of Babylonian retaliation for the massacre of the garrison and disregarding the dire warnings of the prophet Jeremiah, Johanan led all the remaining Jews to the illusory safety of Egypt, which would fall to the Babylonian Empire eight years later. Only a few short months had elapsed from the destruction of the Temple to the collapse of Gedaliah’s administration and the total downfall of Judah.

The exile was complete. The land, empty of its inhabitants, lay submerged under a blanket of memories without rememberers. The air quivered with the fading sounds of the past. And then there was silence.

[1] When the Prophet reports Menasheh’s accession to the throne in II Kings 21:1, he identifies Menasheh’s mother as Hephzibah. In general, the specific mention of a mother’s name implies a measure of influence and responsibility (see I Kings 21:21,31 and II Chronicles 12:13 with regard to Rehoboam and his mother Naamah). Therefore, the indication would seem to be that Hephzibah was, to some degree, responsible for Menasheh’s crimes. However, II Chronicles 33:1 does not mention Hephzibah, which seems to indicate that her influence was not that great.

[2] Sanhedrin 94a

[3] Sanhedrin 90a

[4] Malbim, II Kings 21:3

[5] Sanhedrin 101b, 102b

[6] II Kings 21:16, Metzudas David

[7] Sanhedrin 103b, Yebamoth 49b

[8] Rashi, Isaiah 1:1

[9] Malbim, II Kings 21:11

[10] Sanhedrin 103a

[11] This episode appears in II Chronicles 33:11-17. It is omitted from II Kings because his repentance did not rectify the damage he had done. See Malbim, II Kings 21:15.

[12] Rashi, II Chronicles 33:9

[13] Sanhedrin 103b

[14] Rashi, Malbim, II Kings 22:8

[15] Deuteronomy 28:36-37

[16] Rashi, II Chronicles 34:19

[17] Rashi, Redak, II Kings 22:14. They also mention an alternate view that Huldah was chosen because a woman, being more merciful, was likely to be a more effective intercessor for the king.

[18] Redak, II Kings 23:29

[19] Redak, II Kings 23:33.

[20] Redak, II Kings 23:34.

[21] Jeremiah 7:3-7

[22] Jeremiah 46:2; II Kings 24:7

[23] Jeremiah 22:19.

[24] Gittin 88a.

[25] The prophet does not mention a siege in the account of Nebuchadnezzar’s conquest and arrest of Yehoiakim, whereas the arrest of Yehoiachin was preceded by a siege. Therefore, one can reasonably assume that Yehoiachin fortified the city to resist attack. This is further supported by the brief duration of Yehoiachin’s reign. What had he done in those three months that prompted Nebuchadnezzar to lay siege to Jerusalem and remove him from the throne? Most probably, he had fortified the city against attack.

[26] Gittin 88a.

[27] II Kings 24:19; Jeremiah 52:2; Sanhedrin 103a

[28] II Chronicles 36:12; Sanhedrin 103a

[29] Rosh Hashanah 18b. During the destruction of the Second Temple, the walls were breached on 17 Tammuz. See Taanis 28b.

[30] Obadiah 1:20

[31] Yirmiyahu 52:11

[32] Arachin 11b. Rashi explains that because of the fighting they had no animals to sacrifice. Elsewhere, Rashi states that the interruption of the Temple service was by a Roman imperial decree. See Taanis 26b. Apparently, these were both events that occurred on the same date. They are both mentioned in context. The Talmud in Arachin discusses the destruction of the First Temple, while in Taanis, it appears on a list that also includes events that occurred during the Second Temple Era.

This was also the date on which Moshe broke the Luchos when he came down from the mountain a thousand years before. See Taanis 26a.

[33] The unbearable privations in the city during the siege, the frightful carnage that followed when the walls of the city were breached and the yearning of a people in exile are portrayed in excruciating detail in the Book of Lamentations, an eyewitness account by the prophet Jeremiah. This heartbreaking dirge is read in its entirety every year on the ninth day of the month of Ab, a day of national mourning observed by the Jewish people to this very day.