Revision of some statements (about 2 Kings chapter 25) I made in my prior post:
Now that I have have had a good night's sleep after making my prior post I realize that I made some incorrect interpretations about portions of 2 Kings chapter 25.
According to the account the people mentioned in verse 12 were included in the group of people which verse 26 says fled into Egypt. As a result, according to verse 26 the human population of Judah became zero. However, (according to the account) the people who fled to Egypt were not in exile in Babylon. But, according to one dictionary meaning of the word "exile" those people in Egypt can be thought of as in voluntary exile in Egypt, since out of great fear they made the choice to flee Judah to a place of safety. With those interpretations, then according to verse 26, by the time the events of verse 26 were completed then all of the human survivors of the conquest of Judah were in exile in one country or another. That agrees with the last sentence of verse 21 which says the following. "Thus Judah went into exile from off its soil." Since according to chapter 25 the land of Judah thus became completely depopulated of humans, then according to the account that also means that all the buildings or huts left behind in the land would have deteriorated (especially if made of wood or other vegetation instead of stone) and become overgrown by vegetation, since no humans would have been left to maintain them. Thus, the account in chapter 25 also means (that according to the account) that all of Judah became desolate, in regards to the human population and in regards to its human made structures.
Furthermore, I think that 2 Kings 25:25 is correct in what it says since it is a very believable, based upon what is known of history and of human nature. And, since the portion of land in Judah which was outside of Jerusalem was likely mostly rural land and thus likely only had a small population prior to the murder of Gedaliah, and since the event of verse 25 very likely really did greatly scare the surviving Jews of the land of Judah, then verse 26 is likely correct in saying that all of the people left Judah in response.
However, there is still the matter of what archaeology says regarding some people still being present in Judah during the exile. I haven't checked the dates which archaeology assigns to the purported evidence of a human population during the exile. Perhaps the dates are from the time in between the destruction of Jerusalem and the murder of Gedaliah. If that is the case, then there is no conflict between those dates and 2 Kings 25:26. Perhaps also some people who voluntarily fled Judah (instead of being sent by Babylonians to Babylon) returned to Judah within 50 years after the murder of Gedaliah. More likely, perhaps some Babylonian people or other non-Jews entered Judah and settled it in between the time that Gedaliah was murdered and the time that Persia conquered Judah. I also now think it is possible that the archaeological dates might be incorrect by a number of decades for purported evidence of a human population during the exile. After all, it is known that many times one archaeological team determines a very different date for the same site than then the date determined by a different archaeological team.
Furthermore, before going to sleep last night i read portions of an article in the Aid book (of a corresponding one in the Insight book) pertaining to Archaeology and I was stunned by how accurate and precise some of the Bible's accounts of purported history have proved to be correct history. One example was that of the claim that two sons of one particular Assyrian king killed the king. For centuries the known historical records from other sources had only mentioned that "a son" (or "the son") had done the killing. Later archaeological records from Assyria had also said that "the son" (singular) of the king had killed the king. To scholars that made it look like that the Bible was inaccurate in that particular, but later an archaeological record (written by the grandson, or a grandson, of the dead king) was found in Assyria which specifically said that two (plural) of the sons of the king had killed the king.
I wonder what did the writers of portions of purported historical accounts in the Bible obtain their information about the history of the kingdoms of Assyria, Babylon, and of Persia? Did they somehow have access to records in those kingdoms? If the primary records were kept in libraries in the palaces of the pagan kings and in libraries of temples of the pagan kingdom, did Jewish officials and Jewish scribes in exile in Babylon, and those later living in the Persian empire, have access to those libraries? Perhaps they did and if so they could have made use of those records. The book of Esther (which many scholars says is historical fiction rather than true history) in 10:2 makes reference to the annals "of the kings of Media and Persia"? Likewise the books of Kings makes reference to purported historical books about kings and their kingdoms. Those books might have been kept at the time in the palaces of the kings of Israel and of Judah and in the temple of Jerusalem. In pagan lands libraries existed in the king's palace and in temples and the common people had access to the temples (but maybe only the scholars had access to libraries in the temples).
Those references make it sound like they are saying that literate Jews how lived back then had access to such records. Is it true that literate Jews really did have access to such records/books? Maybe they did. Note that https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_libraries_in_the_ancient_world gives a list of many ancient libraries which have been found, including the remains of an extensive library which had belonged to a king of Assyria! See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Library_of_Ashurbanipal . It says the following.
'The Royal Library of Ashurbanipal, named after Ashurbanipal, the last great king of the Assyrian Empire, is a collection of more than 30,000 clay tablets and fragments containing texts of all kinds from the 7th century BC, including texts in various languages. Among its holdings was the famous Epic of Gilgamesh.[2]
Ashurbanipal's Library gives modern historians information regarding people of the ancient Near East. In his Outline of History, H. G. Wells calls the library "the most precious source of historical material in the world."[3] '
That is impressive!