The WTS commences the “Seventy Years” of the Babylonian Exile when people from the city of Mizpah left for Egypt, following the murder of Governor Gedaliah. The WTS claims that the Seventy Years could not commence until Judah was without a living soul or domestic animal, and that this departure for Egypt marked that moment. Their position, however, is not supported by Scripture or archaeology.
The Hebrews said the land was to be without “inhabitant”( y`v^B ) or without “men” ( a`D`< ), but they never said it would be without “people” ( u^< ).
The general meaning of y`v^B (inhabitant) is to “sit, sit down”, with the connotations of “live, dwell, remain, settle”. When they used the word for “inhabitant”, the prophets thus understood it with the understanding of “settled”; this was missing from the land of Judah during the Exile.
a`D`< is typically used when the biblical writer wants to indicate humanity as a whole. Speaking before Jerusalem fell, the people were saying that the land was already desolate and “without men” ( a`D`< ), and the reason they gave was that Babylon was already in control of the country - “ It is a desolate waste, without men (adam) or animals, for it has been handed over to the Babylonians .’” Jer. 32:43. (See also Jer 33:10-12, written while Babylon was attacking Jerusalem.)
The meaning of u^< (without “people”, which expression was not used in this context) is a congregated unit of people, especially a tribe (as those of Israel), a nation, army, troop, etc. Most frequently u^< denotes a large group of people united by a familial relationship.
Archaeologists and historians agree that Judah was not devoid of human inhabitants. Views include those who see minimal or no disruption to normal life for those left in Judah (such as Barstad, Carroll, McNutt), those who recognise a level of disruption (such as Finkelstein, Silberman) and those who see major impact on Judah and its people (such as Schniedewind). Whatever their view on the level of disruption, all recognise that the evidence shows people continued to live on the land. The following was written by Schniedewind:
“ Recent archaeological investigations have increasingly laid bare the fury of the Babylonian destruction of Jerusalem, Judah, and the entire Levant ... Despite recent tendencies to dismiss or downplay the exile, the scope and ferocity of the Babylonian conquest are becoming clearer with each new archaeological investigation.
“There was some continuity after the Babylonian exiles. ... A provisional center in the town of Mizpah was set up to the north of Jerusalem, which – unlike the rest of Judah – was largely unscathed by the Babylonian military campaigns; ... The demographic changes in Judah were quite profound, reflecting a massive depopulation. The land was not emptied, but it was depopulated. Moreover, every cultural institution of Judean life changed. There was no more Davidic king. There was no Temple. ... To be sure, the everyday life of the peasant in Yehud was perhaps not much different under the Babylonians or Persians than it had been under the Davidic kings – that is, the life for those few peasants who were not either killed in war, exiled to Babylon, or forced to flee from economic blight and social chaos.
“The trauma of the Babylonian conquest and exile was profound in Judah. Although the material culture definitely continued after 586 BCE , the end of the Davidic monarchy and the destruction and pillaging of the Jerusalem Temple alone suggest that basic socialorganizations did not remain the same. ...
“Barstad’s work underscores the way that the later collective memory of the Jewish people creates the event of the exile and emphasizes the totality of this catastrophe. This telescoping of the exile into a single event reflects psychological and ideological factors in later literature; however, the acute psychological trauma, the social dislocation, and the economic devastation were profound and lasting. ...
“Archaeologists have done extensive surveys of settlement patterns for this period. From these surveys, a relative assessment of the demographics can be made. For example, in the seventh century BCE(at the end of the monarchy), there were at least 116 settled sites (cities, towns, and villages) in Judah. In the sixth century BCE(the Babylonian period), the number drops to 41 sites. Even more striking is that 92 of the 116 sites of the late monarchic period were abandoned in the Babylonian period. Eighty percent of the cities, towns, and villages were either abandoned or destroyed in the sixth century. Many of the towns and villages of the Persian period (41%, i.e., 17 of 41) were settled at previously virgin locations, reflecting a profound disjunction in the population. ...
“Not only was Jerusalem burned, but most large cities disappear from Judah proper. In general, there is a population shift from the cities to villages. Excavations of cities such as Jerusalem, Lachish, Gezer, and Megiddo testify to great conflagrations set by the Babylonians in Palestine. And the depopulation trend continued throughout the Babylonian period. Moreover, pottery assemblages and distribution patterns change dramatically at the beginning of the Babylonian period. Only a few sites north of Jerusalem show significant continuity, particularly Mizpah, the center of the Babylonian provincial government. In short, by the end of the Babylonian period few people lived in Judah. Those who remained were “the poorest of the land” and lived in small towns and villages. The economy was essentially one of subsistence farming and pastoralism.” (How the Bible Became a Book, “The Fury of Babylon” , pp. 141-146)
Two major political alignments in Judah were the urban populace and the pastoral. The former were typically the royal household and the priests and prophets of Jerusalem. The pastoral group was known as the “People of The Land” ( u^m h^-a^r\x ). When the authority of this regional power group held sway, the People of the Land removed and installed monarchs (such as Josiah – 2 Kings 21:24). The “Elders of the Land” was the group who defended Jeremiah when the Jerusalem priests wanted to kill him.
With each deportation, Babylon exiled the elite, the power players, the upper echelon of Judaean society. They finally left behind the poorest of the People of the Land. It is not difficult to work out their reasons for doing this. The Babylonians redistributed land to these people, but these subsistence farmers spent their time struggling to survive.
While in exile, the elite wrote that these traumatic events had happened to Judah because the people had not listened to the prophets during the previous centuries. These writers in exile did not record the events of Judah during that time, while the agrarian farming community of Judah continued to rely on oral transmission of their traditions. The written records are thus the biased views of the religious elite, who sought to regain the power they had enjoyed, such as during a brief time under Josiah. (It is fascinating to see that the People of the Land installed Josiah, yet the Jerusalem priests were able to sway him to their side with the use of a document they “discovered” during renovation of the temple.)
When the first exiles returned to the temple site, they were met with hostility from the people who had remained on the land during the exile. Little imagination is required to comprehend the reason for their anger and concern.
When the ideologue Ezra returned with his fundamentalist views, he too was confronted by the People of the Land, whom he accused of religious impurity. His extreme behaviour shows the antagonism between the Exiles and the People of the Land who had remained in Judah during the exile.
So neither Scripture nor archaeology supports the WTS’s requirement that the land was utterly devoid of people during the Babylonian Exile.