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Jehoiachin’s ration tablets
document · 592/591 BC · Assyria and Babylon · also called Jehoiachin's Rations Tablets, Babylonian ration lists naming Jehoiachin
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- Date
- 592/591 BC (the one tablet whose date survives)
- Found
- Babylon, Iraq. Found by Robert Koldewey’s German excavations at Babylon (1899–1917) in a vaulted building of storerooms at the north-east corner of the Southern Palace, near the Ishtar Gate.
- Now
- Vorderasiatisches Museum (Pergamonmuseum), Berlin
- Passages
- 2 Kings 24:15, 2 Kings 25:27–30, Jeremiah 52:31–34
What it is
Clay tablets from a royal storehouse at Babylon that record deliveries of oil to foreigners dependent on Nebuchadnezzar II’s court, among them deported kings and princes and skilled workers from across his empire. Among them is “Ya’u-kinu, king of the land of Yahudu”, with five sons of the king of Judah. One tablet is dated to Nebuchadnezzar’s 13th year, 592/591 BC.
How it connects to the Bible
Kings says Nebuchadnezzar carried Jehoiachin away to Babylon in 597 BC (2 Kings 24:15), and both Kings and Jeremiah end with him released from prison and given “a continual allowance given him of the king” (2 Kings 25:30). The tablets show him in Babylon, still called king of Judah and supplied from the royal stores, within a few years of his exile.