Carchemish

Carchemish is a city on the Euphrates that figures in Scripture as a fixed point on the imperial map. Egyptian kings march to it, Babylonian kings strike at it, and Judah's last decades are dated by what happened there. The city itself is never described — only its location and the battles fought for it.

A City on the Euphrates in the Assyrian Boast

The city is first invoked in the catalogue of Assyrian conquests Isaiah places in the mouth of the Assyrian king. The boast runs through a list of fallen cities, each meant to terrify Jerusalem with the prospect of being next: "Isn't Calno as Carchemish? Isn't Hamath as Arpad? Isn't Samaria as Damascus?" (Isaiah 10:9). Carchemish here is one in a chain of broken capitals on the Assyrian's road westward — its fall a precedent the Assyrian thinks compels the fall of any city not yet taken.

Neco's March and Josiah's Death

A century later the city becomes the destination of an Egyptian army. The Chronicler frames the decisive moment of Josiah's reign by it: "After all this, when Josiah had prepared the temple, Neco king of Egypt went up to fight against Carchemish by the Euphrates: and Josiah went out against him" (2 Chronicles 35:20). The notice serves two ends. It identifies the Egyptian objective — Carchemish, on the Euphrates — and it sets the stage for Josiah's fatal interception of Neco at Megiddo. Carchemish is what Neco was marching toward when Josiah blocked the road; Josiah's death follows from that interception.

Nebuchadrezzar's Strike in the Fourth Year of Jehoiakim

Jeremiah dates the next phase by the same city. The header of the oracle against Egypt reads: "Of Egypt: concerning the army of Pharaoh-neco king of Egypt, which was by the river Euphrates in Carchemish, which Nebuchadrezzar king of Babylon struck in the fourth year of Jehoiakim the son of Josiah, king of Judah" (Jeremiah 46:2). The Egyptian army that had killed Josiah at Megiddo and gone on to the Euphrates is, at Carchemish, broken by Nebuchadrezzar. The fourth year of Jehoiakim — the year of the Babylonian victory at Carchemish — becomes one of Jeremiah's standing date-stamps for the disaster Judah is now under.

The three references hold the same city in three frames: an Assyrian's list of conquests, the Egyptian objective at which Josiah dies trying to interpose, and the Babylonian victory that puts Judah inside Babylon's empire.