586 or 587

The Babylonian Chronicle, a clay tablet of Neo-Babylonian history, records Nebuchadnezzar's seventh year. In the month Kislev he marched to Hatti, the west. He besieged the city of Judah. On the second day of Adar he seized the city and captured the king. He appointed a king of his own choice. He took heavy tribute and sent it to Babylon. The seventh year of Nebuchadnezzar, on the Babylonian count, is 597 BC. The captured king is Jehoiachin. The king of his choice is Zedekiah. 2 Kings 24:12 2 Kings 24:17 This is the firm date. The timeline marks it as a record that lines up.

The burning is not on that tablet. It is dated in the Bible as Zedekiah's eleventh year, the fourth month for the breach and the fifth month for the fire. 2 Kings 25:2 2 Kings 25:8 How you count his eleven years is the whole argument between 586 and 587.

If Zedekiah's reign is counted from the spring of 597, and the year he took the throne is counted as year one, his eleventh year lands in 587. If the remainder of the accession year is not counted as year one, a system Judah used in some periods, the eleventh year lands in 586. Nisan years and Tishri years, the spring new year and the autumn new year, move the arithmetic by months and sometimes by a year. Jeremiah and Ezekiel do not always sound like they are using the same new year, which is what you would expect from a prophet in Jerusalem and a priest in Babylon.

This timeline prints 586 because it is the figure most readers of English Bibles have met, and because it is a defensible accession count from the 597 anchor. It names 587 in the same breath because that figure is the same verses counted the other honest way. Pretending the clay has a day for the fire would be cleaner and false. The chronicle has the surrender. The books have the fire. The one-year gap is the cost of counting a king's years without his coronation tablet.

Ezekiel dates the fall as well, in the twelfth year of his exile, news arriving to the exiles. Ezekiel 33:21 His exile is Jehoiachin's, so his clock and Zedekiah's clock are offset on purpose. They can be lined up. They are not a contradiction. They are two men counting from two installations: one king taken away, one king set up.