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Captive in Babylon
Captive in Babylon is a historical novel about the captivity of the Jews in Babylon. It begins in 584 BCE, two years after the Babylonian ruler Nebuchadnezzar sacked Jerusalem and destroyed the First Temple. The story follows Nathan, a Judean boy with a gift for languages and a penchant for telling powerful people things they don’t wish to hear. By chance, Nathan is thrown together with Zedekiah, the last King of Judah. Accused of rebelling against Nebuchadnezzar’s rule, Zedekiah was forced to witness the execution of his children before he was blinded and led off to Babylon in chains.
Nathan’s kindness to the blind ex-king—a pariah to the other Judean exiles—puts him at odds with his family and the exile community while simultaneously making him a favorite of King Nebuchadnezzar. He and Zedekiah become the King’s emissaries to the Judeans in Nippur, who, under the leadership of the priest Hilkiah and the prophet Ezekiel, are beginning to assemble and transcribe the sacred texts that will become the Torah and the other books of the Hebrew Bible. Nathan’s failure to win over the Judeans, which almost costs him his life, stands in stark contrast to the success he enjoys with the Babylonian priests and the High Priestess of Ishtar.
His greatest success in Nippur, however, is to win the heart of Hannah, the educated daughter of a Judean scribe. Hannah and her father draw Nathan into the study of the Judean holy books, and later, after Nathan has gone to war and lost Nebuchadnezzar’s favor, Hannah reappears and draws him back into the Judean community in Babylon. Together, they raise a family and join the circle of priests, scribes, and sages engaged in the passionate deliberations that will determine the contents of the Torah.
But then Nebuchadnezzar dies and is succeeded by his son, Amel-Marduk, a vindictive man Nathan has offended in the past. Nathan and Hannah and their children are forced to flee into a different kind of exile, which will take them to the frontier villages of the Zagros Mountains, the watery marshes of the Sea Land, and finally to the ancient city of Ur, the city from which the Judean patriarch Abraham set out so many generations before.
It is in Ur that Amel-Marduk’s agents finally track Nathan down and take him and his family captive. All except for the youngest son, Jesse, who rides north in a desperate attempt to head off the revenge Amel-Marduk is planning to take. Friends and allies are gathering strength and moving south against the King, but it remains to be seen if they will arrive in time to intervene. The captive Judeans can only wait and pray for deliverance.