The Exile of Jehoiachin and the Scholars—"the Craftsmen and the Smiths"

Eleven years before the destruction of the Temple Babylon carried off the first party of exiles. Jehoiakim rebelled against Babylon and died; the bill fell to his eighteen-year-old son Jehoiachin, who reigned three months. Nebuchadnezzar's army besieged Jerusalem and the king surrendered with his mother, servants and officers. He was deported with the royal family, the fighting men and the craftsmen—"ten thousand exiles in all"—with what was left of the Temple and palace treasures. Only "the poorest people of the land" were left, and his uncle was placed on the throne under a new name, Zedekiah.

Scripture singles out the harash and the masger, "the craftsman and the locksmith." The Sages read these not as trades but as a description of scholars: when they opened their mouths on Torah everyone else fell silent, and when they closed a question no one could reopen it.

That is why the Talmud calls this exile an act of mercy: the scholars were sent to Babylon ahead of everyone else, so that living Torah would already be there when the mass of exiles arrived. Six centuries later that community produced the Babylonian Talmud.

Ezekiel son of Buzi, a priest, went with this group—all his prophecies are dated by "the years of King Jehoiachin's exile." Jehoiachin himself sat in prison thirty-seven years until Evil-Merodach released him and seated him at his own table.

Academic history dates this event differently: Seder Olam Rabbah counts the Persian period about 165 years shorter. Both dates are shown when the chronology-divergence layer is on.