Judah was saved from Assyria by God because they had a righteous king and were a righteous people. That did not last for long. Hezekiah was followed to the
throne by his very wicked son, Manasseh, and the people again fell into
apostasy and wickedness. There was a brief respite
with the reign of the righteous King Josiah, but after his death in a battle at Megiddo with Egyptian Pharaoh Necho II, the Kingdom
of Judah was conquered by Babylon. The last king of Judah, Zedekiah, was taken
blinded and in chains to Babylon.
According to the Bible, there were three deportations of Jews to Babylon: the exile of King Jeconiah, his court and many others in Nebuchadnezzar's eighth year [597 B.C.E. - this is may have been when Daniel was taken]; Jeconiah's successor Zedekiah and the rest of the people in Nebuchadnezzar's eighteenth year [587 B.C.E.]; and a final deportation in Nebuchadnezzar's twenty-third year [582 B.C.E.] [1] 
Before the conquest, however, the
Lord again sent prophets to warn the people. These prophets foretold the coming destruction if the people did not repent; but the people had become arrogant and
prideful. They claimed responsibility
for their own blessings and they forgot to give thanks to God. Prophets were imprisoned, tortured, and even killed for claiming that Jerusalem and the temple would be destroyed. “It can’t happen to us,” they said. “It
can’t happen here. The Assyrians didn’t
conquer us and neither will Babylon because we are too great. No one will destroy Jerusalem. No one will destroy the temple.” To say anything contrary to this was not only considered to be politically incorrect; it was down right treasonous in the eyes of the people as well as their king and punishable by death.
Jeremiah, that venerable prophet, was thrown into a pit in the darkest reaches of the palace prison where he lived in mud up to his knees and worse. Is it any wonder that one of the books he wrote is called Lamentations? Being a prophet was a dangerous undertaking.
But the prophets were proven correct, to the sorrow of Jerusalem and all of Judah: it did happen
there. Jerusalem – the Jews' “holy city” - was
destroyed. The temple was stripped of its riches and all of Judah fell into ruin.
It was at this point in history – immediately prior to the destruction
of the Kingdom of Judah - that the story of the Book of Mormon began.
[1] Wikipedia, Babylonian Conquest of Judah
Text copyright June 2013, Gebara Education
Picture of Jews being led captive into Babylon from www.propheticverses.com
Picture of Babylonian soldiers fromwww.ancienthistory.about.com
Picture of Lehi preaching in Jerusalem from www.lds.org
Picture of Jerusalem in ruins from www.rockofisrael.org
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