Nebuchadnezzar's Babylonia Ends Davidic Line of Kings of Judah With Zedekiah by 586 BCE: Genealogy Suffers

 Nadene Goldfoot                                               

According to the Book of Joshua

Judah was the largest of the 12 tribes of Jacob, son of Isaac, son of Abraham.  The 12 tribes had been led from Egypt by Moses who died outside of Canaan, and Joshua led them in.  The last census taken in route was that they now numbered 601,730 people, a loss of 1,820 when they had started from Egypt 40 years before.  Joshua told the tribes where they could live as Moses must have had it all figured out.  Judah was comprised in the end of the tribe of Judah, most of Benjamin and presumably absorbed the tribe of Simeon which was isolated in the extreme South.  Benjamin in the census only had 45,600 while Simeon had 22,200 and Judah had 76,500.               

               David, king of Israel (1000-960 BCE) youngest son of Jesse, born in Bethlehem was at age 25 the armor-bearer for King Saul.  He was the king's son Jonathan's best friend.  David fought in wars against the Philistines successfully as well as being a musician.  

There was once this kingdom of Israel that started off with Saul as king.  After him, David (1010-970 BCE) became the king and started the Davidic line of kings that went on till Zedekiah( 597-586 BCE); for 424 years of a Davidic line of rulers.   

 Kings David and his son, Solomon were the best remembered in our scriptures, and after Solomon died, his son, Rehoboam started off a history not to be forgotten, for that was the time that the country had a Civil War and divided between the northern kingdom of Israel with  their king being Jeroboam of the tribe of Ephraim who had been the superintendent of forced labor during Solomon's reign and had led the revolt causing the Civil War between the North (Israel) and the South(Judah).  They actually fought each other as sure as North America's Civil War (1861-1865). 

Nebuchadnezzar took away thousands to Babylon, ending Judah as a statehood.  In such a tragedy to a people, the only people who kept tract of who was born or died were people of royalty, at least for a little while.  Those who could, returned to Jerusalem from Babylon after a 70 year period and that was done with permission and direction from King Cyrus of Persia who had taken over from Nebuchadnezzar.                              

Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon and Zedekiah, his appointee for Judah

Zedekiah was king of Judah from 597 to 586 BCE and was the son of Josiah.  He was born with the name of Mattaniah, but changed it to Zedekiah when he was appointed king by Nebuchadnezzar to be the successor of the exiled King Jehoiachin.  He became king at the age of 21, but there was a hitch.   He had to swear allegiance to Nebuchadnezzar, so he was a puppet king.   

In the early days of his kingship, he refused to join an anti-Babylonian coalition of neighboring kingdoms who were also affected by the takeover of Nebuchadnezzar.  By 594 BCE he actually visited Babylon to see what it was like (Jer.51-59).  

In the 9th year of his reign at age 30, he broke down and conspired with Egypt.  That caused the Babylonians to invade Judah again and this time they again captured Jerusalem.  Zedekiah was overtaken while trying to escape and was brought for trial before Nebuchadnezzar himself.                                                    

 His sons were killed right in front of him and then his eyes were put out.  They threw him in prison in Babylon where he stayed until he died there.   (II Kings 25; Jer. 52).                                                                       

                                 

They didn't have normal access to the sea and commanded no great trade-route, and they occupied no more than 1/3 of the area of the northern kingdom of Israel.  Judah was poor and unimportant as compared with Israel.  That's why Assyria wanted Israel who had taken away the best of their population previously.  

On the other hand, the positive side was that it did not become involved to the same extent in international rivalries, and its existence was more tranquil.  Nobody was interested in it enough to attack before.  

For all these reasons, because Jerusalem was in Judah and contained THE TEMPLE, Judah was able to retain its Mosaic monotheism in a purer form.  The religion had been able to carry on after Israel was carted away.  Until toward its last days, Judah's dynastic history was more settled, and the monarchy generally passed peacefully from father to son in the Davidic house, except for the usurpation of Athaliah in 843-37.  That's a bit of history missing from Matthew in the New Testament who starts off his writing with a genealogy of Judean kings with a few differences.                       

                          Writing in Latin from Roman days about Athalia  

Athalia was the  daughter of Ahab, king of Israel and Jezebel.   She was Queen of Judah from 842-836 BCE.   She was married to Jehoram/Joram, king of Judah, son of Jehoshaphat king from 850-843 BCE.  He was a nasty king, putting his brothers and many of the leading men of state to death.  Yet he was influenced by his equally mean wife, Athalia who influenced him to introduce the Baal cult into Judah.  Both were bad news for Judah.  Under his reign, the Edomites revolted and the Philistines invaded and Arabs came and plundered Jerusalem.  Joram died of an illness and Athalia took over.   When her son, Ahaziah died who was king for only one year, she exterminated the entire royal family except for her grandson, Joash, who was saved by his aunt Jehosheba.  Athalia then seized power and continued to introduce her Baal cult into Judah.  She ruled for 6 years when a successful revolt broke out putting Joash in the throne.  Athalia was put to death.  

A period of political and commercial expansion under Jehoshophat (875-851 BCE),, in alliance with Ahab of Israel, had ended badly.  

Hezekiah (720-692 BCE) and Josiah (637-608 BCE) were especially associated with periods of religious revival.  

The Assyrian expansion, which had overwhelmed the Northern kingdom of Israel, was checked before the walls of Jerusalem in 701 BCE, but the city and state succumbed to the Babylonians with Nebuchadnezzar in 586 BCE with large numbers of the inhabitants being deported.  An attempt to perpetuate a subject state under Gedaliah, a member of the former royal house of David ended with his assassination in 582 BCE.                                                      

    Judah being marched off by Babylonians in 597 BCE, again in 586 BCE

                                                

 Zedekiah was witness to his own son's death, being that it was his punishment for rebelling.                                  

The descendants of the exiles in Babylonia continued to cherish their national and religious ideals so steadfastly as to make possible the renewal of Jewish life after 539 BCE in the area of the former kingdom of Jerusalem.  

In contrast to its relative political obscurity, the intellectual and spiritual life of Judah was extraordinarily rich.  It was there that most of the canonical prophets carried on their activity, great parts of the Bible were composed and the essential traditions of Judaism were developed and preserved.  

Our genealogy tracing of the kings ends with Zedekiah.  I note that the New Testament does not.  They have added more to reach Jesus, which is another one of those fairly common first names in our history.  Our kings kept good genealogies because to sit on the panel of Cohens in the Sanhedrin, it was the prerequisite, just as important as a college degree is to us.  In order to serve, they had to show their pedigree, and it was no doubt checked.  

Descendants of king of Judah,  Josiah

1  king of Judah Josiah, b: in 645 BCE

. 2  Jehoahaz "Shallum, king of Judah, d: in died in Egyptian captivity in Egypt

. 2  Jehoiakim "Eliakim,"king of Judah."d: in 598 BCE, died in Jerusalem when under siege by Babylonians

   ..... 3  SHEALTIEL

   ..... 3  King of Judah Jehoiachin (597 BCE)king at 18 during Babylonian siege, king for 3 months, 10 days, taken in exile to Babylonia, not released until 561 BCE.    

. 2  Zedekiah "Mattaniah", King of Judah (597-586 BCE) 

Though Johoiakin (598-597) was king for a year before Zedekiah's rule, Nebuchadnezzar had to go back to  Josiah to select his son, Zedekiah to rule.  

Israel fell in 70 CE to the Romans when they burned down Jerusalem, including the Temple.  The Second Temple period in Jewish history lasted between 516 BCE and 70 CE, when the ... After the death of the last Nevi'im (Jewish prophets) of antiquity and still under Persian ... In 6 CE, the country fell into unrest, and the Herodian ruler of Judea was deposed in favor of forming a new Roman province, Roman Judea. That would have been King Herod (73-4 BCE) son of Antipater the Idumean by his Nabatean wife, Cypros. 

Gedaliah, of a noble family,  became the Governor of Judah, appointed by the Babylonians after the destruction of the 1st Temple in 586 BCE, governing from Mizpah and shortly afterwards murdered by the commander Ishmael ben Nethaniah and his followers who were planning a revolt from Babylonia. Gedaliah's supporters fled to Egypt.     

The Sanhedrin was a group of 71 ordained scholars who functioned both as Supreme Court and as legislature.  The head was called the Nasi, who in its later history was usually a descendant of Hillel (who was a descendant of the patriarchs going back to David) , and an Av Bet Din.  Before 70 CE when Jerusalem fell to the Romans, the Sanhedrin met in the Temple chamber called the Hall of Hewn Stone, which could be entered from both the priests' court and the Israelites' court.  

Out of the Sanhedrin, who were made up of Cohens usually, which was part of their job description, came our outstanding rabbis.  In my own genealogy I've discovered a connection going back to Rabbi Solomon Yitzhaki which means ben Isaac.  RASHI (1040-1105) born in France who studied in the Rhineland, a very famous rabbi.  Rashi had an extensive family tree that went back to King David.  Remember, in those days, surnames were not in use as yet with Jews.  

As for American genealogy of today with all our written resources, and genealogical aids such as software and websites,  we do pretty well to be able to go back to the 1700s, some even further if their history is from England.  I've been stumped on finding an Abiathar Smith Robinson's father for lack of a paper trail.  There were a lot of fires in those days  when he was born in 1829.  Our country's history started in 1620 with the Mayflower entering our waters and the country wasn't created until 1776.  I've tried at least 12 different possibilities of a father of his, even using DNA as an aid, and have settled on one man, but I'm not entirely sure without more DNA proof which is carried by the man, and not a woman.  What I'm saying is that we're not always sure until DNA was discovered in our generation.  I've even seen some confusion  around Athalia with our records.                                          

As for Cohens (J1, J2), "The data show that the Kohanim were more than twice as likely to belong to Haplogroup J than the average non-Cohen Jew. Of those who did belong to Haplogroup J, the Kohanim were more than twice as likely to have an STR pattern close to the CMH-6, suggesting a much more recent common ancestry for most of them compared to an average non-Kohen Jew of Haplogroup J." So they are saying that a Jew may have J1 to be from the Kohanim or Cohens from Aaron) but could still have the haplogroup of J1.  Hmm.  

	xDE[6]	xDE,PR[1]	Hg J[7]	CMH.1[1]	CMH[1]		CMH.1/HgJ	CMH/HgJ
Ashkenazi Cohanim (AC):	98.5%	96%	87%	69%	45%		79%	52%
Sephardic Cohanim (SC):	100%	88%	75%	61%	56%		81%	75%
Ashkenazi Jews (AI):	82%	62%	37%	15%	13%		40%	35%
Sephardic Jews (SI):	85%	63%	37%	14%	10%		38%	27%

The tribe of Levi included Aaron, brother of Moses who was given the responsibility of the high priest.  All of Aaron's descendants were thus Cohens.  Not all Levites were the Cohens but also carried the Y haplogroup of Levi.  

The Kohen hypothesis was first tested through DNA analysis in 1997 by Prof. Karl Skorecki and collaborators from Haifa, Israel. In their study, "Y chromosomes of Jewish priests," published in the journal Nature, they found that the Kohanim appeared to share a different probability distribution compared to the rest of the Jewish population for the two Y-chromosome markers they tested (YAP and DYS19).  My brother, not a Cohen of J1 or J2 has a DYS19 of a 13.  Another, a J-M267, Hochfeld, has a 14. He also had starred, DYS38911 was a 30.  My brother also had a 30 in that place.  Hochfeld had from FTDNA a badge saying he is the Cohen Model Haplotype.   "If you have a The Cohen Modal Haplotype badge in the Badges section of your dashboard, it means that you match or are close to the historic Cohen Modal Haplotype (CMH). One of the earliest Y-chromosome population genetics studies documented the CMH."   Skorecki lists a YAP also showing Cohen Model DNA which is a new one on me.  It's haplogroup DE, again an unknown to me.  DNA analysis is deepening.  You just need a good company to analyze your DNA like FTDNA.  

Hammer and Skorecki were part of the first research group in 1999 that found the DNA marker signature of the Cohanim, termed the Cohen Modal Haplotype. Today, Hammer and his colleagues are able to use a much larger battery of DNA markers and consequently able to develop a more fully resolved Cohen Modal Haplotype called the extended Cohen Modal Haplotype. The smaller number of markers used in the original Cohanim studies did not allow for full resolution of the history of the Jewish priesthood. 

Additional Y chromosome lineages that are distinct from that defined by the extended Cohen Modal Haplotype, but also shared among Cohanim from different Jewish communities, reveal that the priesthood was established by several unrelated male lines.  Since this honor is orally passed on from father to son, Hochfeld knew he was a Cohen when he was a child.  He was one of the first in the synagogue to read from the Torah on Saturday, the day of Shabbat.  He was lucky to have had a father to tell him things.  Not all Cohens have been that lucky.  Thus-DNA testing tells the story.  Keep in mind that while the CMH (Cohen Model Haplotype) was the most frequent haplotype found in Cohanim men, it was not the only haplotype. Therefore, if you have an oral tradition of being Cohanim, then you most likely are genetically a Cohen. If you do not have a tradition of being Cohanim and if your ancestors were Jewish, then you come from the same genetic Gene Pool. While not being directly from the line of Aaron, you could be descended from one of his numerous male relatives. Three percent of Jewish males who identify as Yisrael have the CMH.

From surveys of markers in Jewish cemeteries, about 5% of Jewish men have historically been Cohanim. Genetic research indicates that many Jewish men who self-identify as Cohanim belong to the Y-chromosome DNA lineage that is most common in the Cohanim. That is, they belong to the Cohanim Modal Haplotype (CMH). Further, in a study conducted in Israel where men were asked at random if they were Cohanim, Levite, or Israel, of those answering Israel, about 3% when tested were part of the CMH lineage.

Levites were given the role by Moses to be the teachers.    They didn't even get a share of the land but was excluded from any territorial inheritance.  They did get 48 towns throughout the country, as well as a tithe of the agricultural produce, working a little differently in practice later on.  They were to serve in the Temple and to instruct the people.  In ancient times, the 1st born of each family served as priest, but were replaced during the incident of the Golden Calf, by the Levites.  They taught the Torah to the people.  

Levites read from the Torah after the Cohens in the synagogues.  After them, all other Israelites may read.  

Resource:

The New Standard Jewish Encyclopedia

Matthew of New Testament

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Y-chromosomal_Aaron

https://news.arizona.edu/story/new-genetic-research-indicates-jewish-priesthood-has-multiple-lineages

https://learn.familytreedna.com/jewish-dna-testing/percent-jews-carry-cohanim-modal-haplotype-cmh/

https://learn.familytreedna.com/jewish-dna-testing/cohen-match-badge/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kings_of_Judah

https://jewishbubba.blogspot.com/2021/03/timeline-of-judean-kings-after-zedekiah.html

   

  

I'm an amateur genealogist using Family Tree Maker as my software.Besides my own family, I've also put the genealogy found in our Tanakh and Jewish encyclopoedia in there as well, showing me some interesting facts.