Jehoiachin

In 597 B.C.E., eleven years before the First Temple’s destruction, King Jehoiachin surrenders to Nebuchadrezzar and is exiled to Babylonia. The prophets Jeremiah and Ezekiel offer dramatically different accounts of his fate.

Why the rabbis came to imagine Ahasuerus as a usurper who halted the rebuilding of the Temple and his wife Vashti as a wicked and grotesque Babylonian princess, who lived as a libertine and persecuted Jews.