Kings closes with a strange, quiet mercy: the exiled Jehoiachin, decades a prisoner, is given a seat at the Babylonian king's table and a regular allowance. In Babylon's own palace accounts, clerks recorded deliveries of sesame oil “to Yaukin, king of the land of Judah” and his five sons. Office paperwork, never meant to be read again, agreeing with the Bible's final paragraph about the house of David in exile.
- What it is
- Babylonian palace book-keeping tablets listing oil rations for named dependants of the crown
- Date of artifact
- c. 592 BC
- Discovered
- a vaulted storeroom near the Ishtar Gate, Babylon, 1900 (Robert Koldewey's excavation (published decades later))
- Where it is now
- Vorderasiatisches Museum (Pergamon Museum), Berlin
- Related to
- The exiled King Jehoiachin of Judah, kept at the Babylonian court
- Scripture
- 2 Kings 25:27–30 · Jeremiah 52:31–34
What this find showsJehoiachin lived in Babylon as a recognised, provisioned royal — still titled “king of Judah” — precisely as the end of 2 Kings describes.
What it does not proveThe tablets predate his release from confinement, so they document the maintenance, not the later elevation the Bible reports under Evil-merodach.
Sources & further reading