The Babylonian Captivity
(the key points)
The Babylonian exile was the period in Jewish history during which the Jews of the ancient Kingdom of Judah were captives in Babylon.

According to the Hebrew Bible, there were three deportations of Jews to Babylon. The first, in 597 BCE, involving king Jeconiah and his court and many others, a second in 587 BCE of the next king, Zedekiah, and the rest of the people, and a possible deportation after the assassination of Gedaliah, the Babylonian-appointed governor of Yehud Province, possibly in 582 BCE. The forced exile ended in 538 BCE after the fall of Babylon to the Persian king Cyrus the Great, who gave the Jews permission to return to Yehud province and to rebuild the Temple; but most Jews chose to remain in Babylon.[citation needed]
The captivity and subsequent return to the Land of Israel and the rebuilding of the Second Temple in the Jerusalem are considered significant events in Jewish history and culture, which had a far-reaching impact on the development of Judaism.
The term "Babylonian captivity" is sometimes used when referring to the Avignon Papacy, a period of Medieval Catholic history, because of perceived parallels between the two.[1]
In the late 7th century BCE, the kingdom of Judah was a client state of the powerful Assyrian empire. In the last decades of the century Assyria was overthrown by Babylon, an Assyrian province with a history of former glory in its own right. Egypt, fearing the sudden rise of the Neo-Babylonian empire, seized control of Assyrian territory up to the Euphrates river in Syria, but Babylon counter-attacked and in the process Josiah, the king of Judah, was killed in the Battle of Megiddo (609 BC), although the circumstances are obscure.
After the defeat of the Egyptians by the Babylonians at Carchemish in 605 BC, Jehoiakim began paying tribute to Nebuchadnezzar II of Babylon. At this time, some young nobility of Judah (such as Daniel, Shadrac, Meshak, and Abendnogo) were taken to Babylon. But in the following years two parties formed at the court in Jerusalem: one pro-Egyptian and the other pro-Babylonian.
In 599 BCE, the pro-Egyptian party was in power and Judah revolted against Babylon. Nebuchadnezzar II of Babylon began the Siege of Jerusalem (597 BC),[2] and Jehoiakim, the king of Judah, died in 598 BCE with the siege still under way.[3] He was succeeded by his son Jehoiachin also called Jeconiah, aged eighteen.[4] The city fell about three months later,[5] on 2 Adar (March 16) 597 BCE, and Nebuchadnezzar pillaged Jerusalem and its Temple and took Jeconiah and his court and other prominent citizens (including the prophet Ezekiel) back to Babylon.[6] Jehoiakim's uncle Zedekiah was appointed king in his place, but the exiles in Babylon continued to consider Jeconiah as their Exilarch, or rightful ruler.
Despite the strong remonstrances of Jeremiah and others of the pro-Babylonian party, Zedekiah revolted against Babylon and entered into an alliance with Pharaoh Hophra of Egypt. Nebuchadnezzar returned, defeated the Egyptians, and again besieged Jerusalem. The city fell in 587. Nebuchadnezzar destroyed the city wall and the Temple, together with the houses of the most important citizens, and Zedekiah was blinded, and taken to Babylon, together with many others. Judah became a Babylonian province, called Yehud Medinata (Judah Province),[7] putting an end to the independent Kingdom of Judah. Rabbinic sources place the date of the destruction of the First Temple to be 3338 HC (423 BCE)[8] or 3358 HC (403 BCE),[9] while modern historical dating is c. 587 BCE.
The first governor appointed by Babylon was Gedaliah, a native Judahite; he encouraged the many Jews who had fled to surrounding countries such as Moab, Ammon, Edom, to return, and took steps to return the country to prosperity. Sometime afterwards, however – it is not clear when, but possibly 582 BCE – a surviving member of the royal family assassinated Gedaliah and his Babylonian advisors, prompting a rush of refugees seeking safety in Egypt. Thus by the end of the second decade of the 6th century, in addition to those who remained in Judah, there were significant Jewish communities in Babylon and in Egypt; this was the beginning of the later numerous Jewish communities living permanently outside Judah in the Jewish Diaspora.
According to the book of Ezra, the Persian Cyrus the Great ended the exile in 538 BCE, the year in which he captured Babylon.[10] The exile ended with the return under Zerubbabel the Prince (so-called because he was a descendant of the royal line of David) and Joshua the Priest (a descendant of the line of the former High Priests of the Temple) and their construction of the Second Temple in the period 521–516 BCE.[10]
References
1. Coogan, Michael (2009). A Brief Introduction to the Old Testament. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
2. Geoffrey Wigoder, The Illustrated Dictionary & Concordance of the Bible Pub. by Sterling Publishing Company, Inc. (2006)
3. Dan Cohn-Sherbok, The Hebrew Bible, Continuum International, 1996, page x. ISBN 0-304-33703-X
4. 2Kings 24:6–8
5. Philip J. King, Jeremiah: An Archaeological Companion (Westminster John Knox Press, 1993), page 23.
6. The Oxford History of the Biblical World, ed. by Michael D Coogan. Pub. by Oxford University Press, 1999. pg 350
7. Yehud being the Babylonian equivalent of the Hebrew Yehuda, or "Judah", and "medinata" the word for province
8. Rashi to Talmud Bavli, avodah zara p. 9a. Josephus, seder hadoroth year 3338
9. malbim to ezekiel 24:1, abarbanel et al.
10 Second Temple Period (538 B.C.E. to 70 C.E.) Persian Rule.