Gedalyahu son of Achikam not only refuses to eliminate the threat who is Yishmael son of Netanya, but he entirely disregards the danger. Yishmael joins Gedalyahu for the Rosh Hashanah meal, seemingly without any special security precautions, and with the help of ten loyal soldiers, he succeeds in murdering everyone present, including all ‘the men of war’. In the next stage, he takes all the Jews in Mitzpa captive.

Yishmael has been sent by Baalis, the king of the Ammonites. The king of Ammon may have had several motives for ordering Gedalyahu’s assassination. It is reasonable to assume that he sought to destroy the Jewish settlement in order to expand his borders westward, as suggested in Yirmiyahu’s prophecy: “Concerning the Ammonites, this is what the Lord said: Does Israel have no children? Does he have no heir? Why then did their king posses Gad and their people settled in its towns?” (Yirmiyahu 49:1). Alternatively, Ammon may have been the next kingdom that the king of Babylon intended to conquer, as indicated in Yechezkel 21, and Baalis sought to divert his attention by inciting vengeful bloodshed in Yehuda. Or perhaps he simply feared that the kingdom of Yehuda would threaten his rule and preferred to strike us while we were still weak.

Yet the greater question is about Yishmael himself. Our enemies have always sought to pit us against one another, but what drove Yishmael son of Netanya to assassinate Gedalyahu and destroy what remained of the kingdom? A clue may lie in the emphasis of the Tanakh: “In the seventh month, Yishmael son of Netanya son of Elishama, of royal descent, and among the king’s officers” (41:1). Yishmael is a descendant of the royal line. Along with him, the former officers of King Tzidkiyahu conspire against Gedalyahu. It is likely that Yishmael saw himself as the rightful heir — after all, he was of royal lineage, while Gedalyahu came from the household of Shafan. The king’s officers, too, may have resented their fall from power and seethed at their loss of status. But what were they hoping to achieve? Perhaps Yishmael had envisioned seizing control of Yehuda by force, only for his plan to fall apart. Yet this seems unlikely — it is hard to imagine he could have successfully fought against Yochanan son of Kare’ach’s troops and then rebelled against Babylon anew. More plausibly, he never intended to rule at all. His goal from the outset was murder and escape to Ammon. He envied Gedalyahu, perhaps even despised him for collaborating with the Babylonians who had destroyed the Temple and toppled the Davidic monarchy, and simply wanted revenge. He didn’t plan on gaining anything, but simply to destroy for the sake of destroying—as long as no one cooperated with the enemy.

The cost of this act was great bloodshed and destruction. The Fast of Gedalyahu is the date on which we commemorate the assassination—not only as a day of mourning for the final collapse of the Jewish kingdom but also as a lament over the painful truth that, time and again, throughout Tanakh and history, it is we ourselves who bring about our own downfall.