In August of the year 586 B. C. Jerusalem was destroyed by Nebuchadrezzar. The temple, the royal palace, and the residences of the principal men were burned and the walls of the city were broken down (2 Kings 25:9, 10). All that was combustible was burned, including the city gates (Neh. 1:3). All portable things of value were carried away. Jerusalem now entered on a period of desolation. The city was probably not entirely deserted. Some of the poor who still managed to extract a subsistence from the desolate hills still found shelter in her ruins. All the well-to-do inhabitants were transported to Babylonia.
It is often assumed that the site of the temple was unused during the Exile and that no offerings were made there, but Jer. 41:4, 5 shows that this was not the case. Probably an altar was repaired very soon, and the poor people still went through their most indispensable religious ceremonies amid the desolation, for men came from Samaria two months after the destruction of the city to celebrate there the Feast of Tabernacles.
This destruction of the city and the deportation of its population made a very deep impression on the Jews. How their affections clung to the desolate and defaced city is touchingly depicted in the book of Lamentations and in the 137th Psalm. Indeed, the destruction of the real Jerusalem was the beginning of that ideal Jerusalem which has been so influential in the religious history of the world.[250]
=12. The Second Temple.=--Beyond the erection of an altar, already mentioned, the first steps toward the rebuilding of the temple were taken, so many scholars think, in the second year of King Darius of Persia, _i. e._, in 520 B. C. Eighteen years earlier Cyrus had made it possible for this to be done,[251] but for various reasons it had not been undertaken.[252] The man whose preaching moved the people to begin the rebuilding was Haggai, and the circumstances under which he did it are recounted in his book. Haggai's persuasion was later seconded by the efforts of Zechariah. Through four years the house slowly rose, and was finally completed in March of the sixth year of Darius (516 B. C.), five months less than 70 years after it was destroyed.