Jehoiachin יהויכין מלך יהודה

Jehoiachin became king at eighteen and reigned three months (2 Kings 24:8). The Babylonian army was already marching on the city; the king went out to Nebuchadnezzar with his mother, his servants and his officers, and surrendered. Out of Jerusalem went the treasures of the Temple and of the royal house, and with them ten thousand people: all the officers, all the men of valour, and «he-charash ve-ha-masger», the craftsmen and the smiths (2 Kings 24:12–16). That exile, eleven years before the destruction of the Temple, carried to Babylon the very layer from which the Babylonian houses of study would later grow.

Thirty-seven years he sat in prison. At the end of the book of Kings stands a short postscript with which the whole history of the kings closes: Evil-Merodach, in the year he became king, brought Jehoiachin out of prison, spoke kindly to him, set his throne above the thrones of the other kings, and gave him an allowance from the royal table all the days of his life (2 Kings 25:27–30). The book of Kings ends not with destruction but with this line — and the sages read it as a sign that the house of David had not been cut off.

He is also the Jeconiah of the genealogies; through him the line of David runs on to the exilarchs. His year of reign is AM 3327 by the traditional count, 598 BCE by the academic one.