An encoding of the Atbash cipher in the Bible is in the book of Jeremiah. Jeremiah, the "Weeping prophet", is in Jerusalem in the time of Nebuchadnezzar - while during hist later ministry, Daniel is in Babylon.

What is Sheshach? No record of a city or region by that name has never been found.


If the word "Sheshach" is translated using an atbash cipher, the resulting term is "Babel" (in Hebrew, of course).

More: Jeremiah: 25, 51 An ancient cipher code called atbash

The Hebrew atbash is a reciprocal substitution cipher where the 22 letters of the Hebrew alphabet are exchanged in a substitution cipher (shown with gray dotted line).

By tradition, the "writing on the wall" in Daniel 5 was in an atbash cipher. Daniel thus had to read the writing in two steps. First, decode the writing to Hebrew and then interpret the decoded words.

Details are left as a future topic.

After Nebuchadnezzar puts Zedekiah in charge of Israel and goes back to Babylon, Zedekiah listens to his false prophets and decides to revolt.

Nebuchadnezzar is not happy to have to come back from Babylon to take care of the insurrection.

In the first century, Josephus records that Zedekiah had made fun of the prophet Jeremiah because of the inconsistency he saw in Jeremiah's prophecies. But they came true in a manner Zedekiah had not anticipated.

In the first century, Josephus records that Zedekiah made fun of Jeremiah for his conflicting, in his view, prophecies.

• Jeremiah prophesied that Zedekiah would never see Babylon.
• Jeremiah prophesied that Zedekiah would die in Babylon.

Zedekiah did not anticipate how both of these could be fulfilled.

Josephus, Antiquities of the Jews, book X, section 106.

More: Flavius Josephus

The Hebrew word "בבל" (ba-vel) ≈ "Babel" as in the "confusion" of languages that happened there. The corresponding Aramaic word is pronounced closer to "Babel".
In English, one is said to "babble" if one says unintelligible sounds that are somewhat like spoken language.