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NEBUCHADNEZZAR

(Heb. nĕḇûḵaḏneʾṣṣar), NEBUCHADREZZAR (nĕḇûḵaḏreʾṣṣar)

King of Babylon for 43 years (605-562 b.c.e.), more than any other monarch of the Chaldean dynasty. He succeeded his father Nabopolassar (Akk. Nabû-apla-uṣur), who founded the dynasty. Nebuchadnezzar II (Akk. Nabû-kudurri-uṣur) had considerable prior military experience, having campaigned against the Egyptian armies just south of Carchemish and won an important victory. Shortly thereafter, he received word of his father’s death and hastened to Babylon to claim the throne. For ca. the next three years, he waged war in Syria and exacted tribute from a number of cities, including Damascus. He then campaigned against the forces of Neco II (610-595) of Egypt and in Arabia, where he appears to have had successes. By March 597 he was in Palestine, where he besieged Jerusalem and placed a certain Zedekiah, the uncle of the former ruler of Judah, Jehoiachim, on the throne. According to Josephus’ Antiquities, Nebuchadnezzar returned to besiege Jerusalem a second time in 586. The book of Jeremiah states that this campaign resulted in the taking of the city, the destruction of Solomon’s temple, and the deportation of the Hebrews into captivity (which was to last until 538). Unfortunately, no contemporary cuneiform account of this event is known to exist, since the Babylonian Chronicle is incomplete after 594. Such is also the case with the accounts of campaigns against Tyre and Egypt referred to in Josephus; however, it is likely that they did occur. The king died in 562 and was succeeded by his son, Amel-marduk (OT Evil-merodach), who is said to have released Jehoiachin, former king of Judah (Jer. 52:31) and to have provided him with an allowance.

When Nebuchadnezzar gained the throne in Babylon, he faced several challenges. Although Babylon had been rebuilt by the Assyrian king Esarhaddon (681-669), it was not suited to be the headquarters of an imperial administrative bureaucracy. In order to restore Marduk to supremacy as “king of the gods,” his temple, the Esagila, and the ziggurat Etemenanki (the biblical tower of Babel) had to be restored and fortified. Furthermore, as recorded in inscriptions, Nebuchadnezzar had to build a royal residence of his own. Excavations by Robert Koldewey and his successors have revealed remains of no fewer than five walls, with three comprising an outer ring and two an inner rampart, built of both sun-dried and baked bricks and of varying degrees of thickness. Projecting towers were at spaced intervals, and the entire city was surrounded by a moat. Although Nebuchadnezzar at first lived in his father’s palace, he later built a residence of his own to the west of it. As the political situation became more stable, he also built the so-called Summer Palace in the part of the city still carrying the name Babil. The Southern Palace was the most important, not only because of its size but because it was located near the Ishtar gate and the “Processional Way.” Lavish materials were used in construction of the palace, including cedar, ivory, gold, silver, and lapis lazuli.

Attending to the traditional responsibility of Babylonian kings, Nebuchadnezzar repaired temple sanctuaries and restored divine images. He oversaw construction work in no fewer than 12 cities throughout the realm. He also refurbished the Esagila and Ezida (the temple of Nabû), and supposedly created the Hanging Gardens, which later Greek writers regarded as one of the seven wonders of the ancient world. Unfortunately, Koldewey turned up little or no evidence of work on these temples, nor is there any trace of the Etemenanki or the ziggurat north of the Esagila. However, excavations by Iraqi archaeologists have yielded traces of an elevation on the north side of the city that may support Nebuchadnezzar’s reputation.

Even though contemporary cuneiform sources are incomplete or, in some instances, silent on the extent of his achievements and activities, Nebuchadnezzar’s name occurs in more secondary sources for the Chaldean period than that of any other member of his dynasty. Apart from Jeremiah, 2 Kings, 2 Chronicles, and Daniel of the OT, he appears in no fewer than 10 rabbinic commentaries, six books of the Apocrypha, several Arabic commentaries, and in the extant writings of classical and medieval Greek and Latin authors. Some of these, most notably Berossus’ Babyloniaca, stress his building activities throughout Babylonia. Since the Greek mind clearly idolized the monumental, it should be no surprise to see Nebuchadnezzar’s name associated with some structure of enduring quality, such as the fortification walls around Babylon or the ziggurat of Marduk itself. Writers such as Megasthenes characterize his achievements as the result of Marduk giving the king the ability to create something of eternal greatness, while authors such as Strabo and Diodorus Siculus speak to his achievements as if they were the creation of some superhuman figure who was god or godlike.

Conversely, Hebrew writers had to preserve an image of a conqueror-king who captured the city of Jerusalem, dismantled the temple of Solomon, and deported captives back to Babylonia. All of these acts could not be construed positively. Destruction and wickedness had to be emphasized, as seen in the didactic message of the book of Daniel. To better strengthen his point, the OT author liberally drew from the sources for the reign of Nabonidus (556-539), who had not only introduced the worship of the god Sin of Harran into Babylonia but also forsook his kingdom for a campaign to the Arabian oasis of Tema. What resulted from this distortion of historical accuracy was a picture of a Babylonian monarch whose deeds could be applied to any later king who accomplished the same things. The concrete became subordinate to the abstract, and Nebuchadnezzar’s “character” could be applied to virtually any period of history.

Bibliography. R. H. Sack, Images of Nebuchadnezzar (Cranbury, N.J., 1991); D. J. Wiseman, Chronicles of Chaldean Kings (1961, repr. London, 1974); Nebuchadrezzar and Babylon (Oxford, 1985).

Ronald H. Sack

Prayer Tents Bible References - Prayer Tents

NEBUCHADNEZZAR

Eerdmans Dictionary of the Bible (2000)