Jeconiah (Hebrew: יְכָנְיָה Yəḵonəyā [jəxɔnjaː], meaning "Yah has established";[2] Greek: Ἰεχονίας; Latin: Iechonias, Jechonias), also known as Coniah[3] and as Jehoiachin (Hebrew: יְהוֹיָכִין Yəhōyāḵīn [jəhoːjaːˈxiːn]; Latin: Ioachin, Joachin), was the nineteenth and penultimate king of Judah who was dethroned by the King of Babylon, Nebuchadnezzar II in the 6th century BCE and was taken into captivity.

Written in cuneiform, they mention Jeconiah (Akkadian: 𒅀𒀪𒌑𒆠𒉡, Yaʾúkinu [ia-ʾ-ú-ki-nu]) and his five sons as recipients of food rations in Babylon.

He succeeded Jehoiakim as king of Judah after raiders from surrounding lands invaded Jerusalem and killed his father.

Three months and ten days after Jeconiah became king, the armies of Nebuchadnezzar II seized Jerusalem, with the intention to take high class Judahite captives and assimilate them into Babylonian society.

[9][10] Modern scholars have treated the difference between "eight" and "eighteen" as reflecting a copying error on one side or the other of the issue.

In the Book of Ezekiel, the author refers to Jeconiah as king and dates certain events by the number of years he was in exile.

Jeremiah (22:28–30) cursed Jeconiah that none of his descendants would ever sit on the throne of Israel: This is what the LORD says: 'Record this man as if childless, a man who will not prosper in his lifetime, for none of his offspring will prosper, none will sit on the throne of David or rule anymore in Judah.Chapter 1, verses 11–12 of the Gospel of Matthew lists Jeconiah in the lineage of Jesus Christ, through Joseph.

In Daphne, near Antiochia, Nebuchadnezzar received the Great Sanhedrin, to whom he announced that he would not destroy the Temple if the king were delivered up to him.

He was kept by Nebuchadnezzar in solitary confinement, and as he was therefore separated from his wife, the Sanhedrin, which had been expelled with him to Babylon, feared that at the death of this queen the house of David would become extinct.

They managed to gain the favor of Queen Semiramis, who induced Nebuchadnezzar to ameliorate the lot of the captive king by permitting his wife to share his prison.

Evil-merodach treated Jehoiachin as a king, clothed him in purple and ermine, and for his sake liberated all the Jews that had been imprisoned by Nebuchadnezzar (Targ.

It was Jehoiachin, also, who erected the magnificent mausoleum on the grave of the prophet Ezekiel (Benjamin of Tudela, "Itinerary," ed.

In listing the genealogy of Jesus Christ, Matthew 1:11 records Jeconiah the son of Josiah as an ancestor of Joseph, the husband of Mary.

The Babylonian Chronicles establish that Nebuchadnezzar captured Jerusalem for the first time on 2 Adar (16 March) 597 BCE.

[18] Before Wiseman's publication of the Babylonian Chronicles in 1956, Thiele had determined from biblical texts that Nebuchadnezzar's initial capture of Jerusalem and its king Jeconiah occurred in the spring of 597 BCE, whereas Kenneth Strand points out that other scholars, including Albright, more frequently dated the event to 598 BCE.

Since this fits with his idea that Jeconiah's (and Ezekiel's) exile to Babylon began a month later than the capturing of the city, thus allowing a new Nisan-based year to begin, Thiele took these words in Ezekiel as referring to the day in which the captivity or exile proper began.

[19]: 187 Thiele's reasoning in this regard has been criticized by Rodger C. Young, who advocates the 587 date for the fall of Jerusalem.

[20][21] Young argues that Thiele's arithmetic is inconsistent, and adds an alternative explanation of the phrase "on that very day" (be-etsem ha-yom ha-zeh) in Ezekiel 40:1.

Because this offers an alternative explanation to Thiele's interpretation of Ezekiel 40:1, and because Thiele's chronology for Jeconiah is incompatible with the records of the Babylonian Chronicle, the infobox below dates the end of Jeconiah's reign to 2 Adar (16 March) 597 BCE, the date of the first capture of Jerusalem as given in the Babylonian records.

[24] Gershon Galil also attempted to reconcile a 586 date for the fall of Jerusalem with the data for Jeconiah's exile.

Recognizing these conflicts, Galil admits (p. 377) that his date for the fall of Jerusalem (586 BCE) is inconsistent with the precise data given in the Bible and the Babylonian Chronicle.

The reign of Jeconiah is considered important in establishing the chronology of events in the early sixth century BCE in the Middle East.

According to Jeremiah 52:6, the city wall was breached in the summer month of Tammuz in the eleventh year of Zedekiah.

Ezekiel 33:21 relates that a refugee arrived in Babylon and reported the fall of Jerusalem in the twelfth year, tenth month of "our exile."

He also assumed that Jeconiah's captivity or exile was not to be measured from Adar of 597 BCE, the month Nebuchadnezzar captured Jerusalem and its king according to the Babylonian Chronicle, but in the next month, Nisan, when Thiele assumed Jeconiah began the trip to Babylon.

Ezekiel 24:1–2 (NIV) records the following: In the ninth year, in the tenth month on the tenth day, the word of the Lord came to me: "Son of man, record this date, this very date, because the king of Babylon has laid siege to Jerusalem this very day.

"Assuming that dating here is according to the years of exile of Jeconiah, as elsewhere in Ezekiel, the Babylonian siege of Jerusalem began on January 27, 589 BCE.

In his study of all biblical texts related to the Babylonian capture of Jerusalem, Young concludes that these conjectures are not necessary, and that all texts related to the fall of Jerusalem in Jeremiah, Ezekiel, 2 Kings, and 2 Chronicles are internally consistent and consistent with the fall of the city in Tammuz of 587 BCE.

[28] During his excavation of Babylon in 1899–1917, Robert Koldewey discovered a royal archive room of King Nebuchadnezzar near the Ishtar Gate.

Four of these tablets list rations of oil and barley given to various individuals—including the deposed King Jehoiachin—by Nebuchadnezzar from the royal storehouses, dated five years after Jehoiachin was taken captive.