The age of the book is easily determined: it tells of the two sieges of Jerusalem by the Babylonians (597 and 586 B.C.); the destruction of the temple and palace and the razing of the city walls, the assassination of Gedaliah, whom Nebuchadnezzar had made governor over the devastated land; and the flight of the Jews from the king's vengeance to Egypt. The last event mentioned is the liberation of King Jehoiachin by Evil-Merodach (Amil-Marduk) in 561 B.C. It is of course possible that this detached notice (2 Kings xxv. 27-30) was added by a later hand; but there is no reason to include the story of Gedaliah in this suspicion. The book in its present form cannot, therefore, be earlier than, say, about 580 B.C. In some places in the body of the book, also, the fall of Judah is spoken of as an accomplished fact, e.g. 2 Kings xvii. 19 f. (in conflict with vss. 18 and 21 ff.). Such passages are, however, not very numerous, and they commonly sit loose in their context, like the verses just cited, as if they were thrust into the narrative by an editor. The bulk of the work, on the contrary, seems to suppose the existence of the kingdom. It is, therefore, the general opinion that the book was written before the fall of Jerusalem, and that a continuator added the account of the catastrophe and the events immediately subsequent to it. The older Kings, from beginning to end, is dominated by the conception and permeated by the phraseology of Deuteronomy and of the prophet Jeremiah, and must therefore be placed between 621 B.C. (the date of the introduction of the deuteronomic law) and the beginning of the last act of the history, that is to say, probably shortly before the year 600 B.C.