Zedekiah: Last King of Judah
Reconstructs the final decade of the Judean kingdom by setting five witnesses side by side, namely 2 Chronicles, 2 Kings, the Lachish ostraca, passages of Jeremiah and Ezekiel 17, and argues that unlike the clashing testimonies of Rashomon these accounts complement one another to portray a weak and vacillating king caught between Babylonian overlordship and a pro-Egyptian faction.
Bakon opens with the fall of Assyria, the rise of Babylon, the death of Josiah at Megiddo, and the rapid succession of kings that left Zedekiah on a throne he owed to Nebuchadnezzar. He then compares the sources. Chronicles reduces the reign to apostasy and a broken oath; Kings recounts the flight from the breached city, the killing of the king’s sons, and his blinding; the Lachish ostraca supply a contemporary glimpse of Judah’s last fortresses; Jeremiah preserves the furtive exchanges between king and prophet; and Ezekiel’s parable of the two eagles indicts a violated covenant while promising eventual replanting.
Shimon Bakon, PhD, is the editor of the Jewish Bible Quarterly.
Cite this article
Shimon Bakon. "Zedekiah: Last King of Judah." Jewish Bible Quarterly 36, no. 2 (April – June 2008): 93–101.
Shimon Bakon. "Zedekiah: Last King of Judah." Jewish Bible Quarterly, vol. 36, no. 2, 2008, pp. 93–101.