The authorial intention of this work was to demonstrate that the Babylonian exilarchs were direct descendants of David, King of Israel, through a cascading genealogy.
After a short introduction, taken from the Seder Olam Rabbah, giving the general chronology from Adam to the destruction of the Second Temple (a period of 3,828 years) and stating the number of years which elapsed between the most important events (such as between the Flood and the confusion of tongues), the chronology recommences with Adam.
From David onward, it gives the names of the high priests and prophets who lived in the time of each king.
The second part of the work begins with the statement that Jehoiachin, who reigned only three months and ten days, was carried into captivity by Nebuchadnezzar.
Correcting the somewhat confused genealogical account of 1 Chronicles 3:17–19, the Seder Olam Zuta declares that Jehoiachin had four sons, the eldest of whom was Shealtiel, who succeeded his father.
Like the Seder Olam Rabbah, this chronicle gives the reigns of the Maccabees and the Herods as covering 103 years each.
This might help to determine the time at which the Seder Olam Zuta was written, according to this estimate, would have lived at the end of the 8th century.
However, a closer examination of the text seems to show that the enumeration of the eight exilarchs following Mar-Zutra III was added by two later hands—that of six by one, and that of two, Phinehas and Hazub, by another—and that the chronicle was composed in the first quarter of the 6th century.
Abraham Zacuto inserted in his Yuḥasin the greater part of Seder Olam Zutta, his text being more nearly correct than that of any other edition or manuscript.