Israel Goes into Exile

Exile & Return

Israel Goes into Exile

Two kingdoms, two empires, and a century between them

Israel, the northern kingdom, is taken to Assyria. Nineveh is one of its leading cities — and the name should bring back the story of Jonah, sent to that city a century before it swallowed his own nation.

Israel and Judah go into exileOriginal map of the two deportations: the northern kingdom carried into Assyria in 722 BC and Judah into Babylon in 605, 597 and 586 BC, with the return under Cyrus.The Great SeaRed SeaPersian GulfCaspian SeaRiver NileEuphratesTigrisJerusalemSamariaNinevehBabylonSusaHaranCarchemishRiblahIsrael into Assyria — 722 BC, and never returnsJudah into Babylon — 605, 597 and 586 BCThe return under Cyrus — 538 BCThe north went and did not come back. The south went, and did.300 milesN
722 and 587/586 — and the road back under Cyrus.

The same fate, a hundred years apart

Judah, the southern kingdom, lasted another 117 years. Then it suffered the same fate, taken captive to Babylon.

These are two separate catastrophes, not one. Different kingdoms, different empires, more than a century between them — and the map shows both, along with the road home.

And only one of them came back. Cyrus sends Judah home, and Ezra lists the families who went — about fifty thousand of them. The northern ten tribes never return. Assyria’s policy was to break a conquered people by scattering it and settling foreigners in its place (II Kings 17:24), and it worked: the people left in the land became the Samaritans, whom the returning exiles would refuse to build with a century and a half later. Three movements on the map, and only one of them is a road home.

The prophets who watched each of these coming are on this site in the order they spoke. Amos and Hosea warned the north before 722. Isaiah and Micah watched it happen from the south and told Judah what it meant. Jeremiah spent forty years saying the same thing would happen to Jerusalem, and lived to see it. Ezekiel and Daniel wrote from inside the exile the map is showing you.

Even in exile, God has not forgotten. Next we will explore how a remnant was returned to rebuild Jerusalem.

Following it in the text. Samaria falls to Assyria in 722 BC — II Kings 17 gives the account, and the reasons. Judah’s turn begins with the first deportation to Babylon in 605 BC, when Daniel was taken (Daniel 1:1–4), and ends with the destruction of Jerusalem in 587 or 586 BC (II Kings 25). The return under Cyrus follows in Ezra 1:1–4.

Read on in Ezra.

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