One of the most astonishing episodes in Jewish history centers around Nevuzaradan, the chief general and executioner of the Babylonian empire, tasked with destroying Jerusalem and the Beis HaMikdash. Chazal (Gittin 57b) tell us that Nevuzaradan personally killed over two million people, and when he reached Yerushalayim, he slaughtered nearly another million. A total of three million people—men, women, children—all fell by his hand.
And yet, the Gemara presents us with an incredible and perplexing episode.
When Nevuzaradan entered the site of the Beis Hamikdash, he saw something that disturbed him. The blood of Zechariah HaNavi, who had been murdered during the First Temple era after rebuking the nation, was still boiling on the floor, bubbling up from the stones. Puzzled, he inquired, “What is this blood?” The people refused to answer, but under threat of death, they finally revealed that it was the blood of Zechariah, a prophet whom the people themselves had killed for speaking the truth.
Upon hearing this, Nevuzaradan unleashed an unimaginable massacre—slaughtering young men, brides, elders, children, and sages—in an effort to silence the blood. Yet the blood of Zechariah continued to boil. Finally, in exasperation, he cried out, “Zechariah, Zechariah! I have killed the best of them—do you want me to annihilate them all?” And at that moment, the blood stopped.
What followed is one of the most mind-boggling moments in all of Chazal. The Gemara tells us that Nevuzaradan was seized by teshuvah. He had a moment of profound introspection. And in that moment, he said: “If the vengeance for one Jewish soul—the Navi Zechariah—is so overwhelming that it demanded the death of hundreds of thousands to appease it, what does that say about me? About the millions I have killed?”
And then—he fled, left his position, abandoned his post, and converted to Judaism.
Think about the gravity of this transformation. This was not a minor figure, nor a common sinner. Nevuzaradan was the architect of the destruction, a man with the blood of entire populations on his hands. And yet, he found a pathway to the emes (truth), and he became a ger tzedek, a sincere convert.
How are we to understand this?
At a superficial level, his logic seems counterintuitive. If anything, realizing the enormity of his sin should have led him to despair, not redemption. If the death of one tzaddik—Zechariah—called forth divine retribution of such magnitude, what hope could there be for a man like him?
Rav Moshe Shapiro zt”l offered a profound insight. Sometimes the path to Hashem begins not from spiritual heights, but from the lowest depths of darkness. Nevuzaradan stood at the epicenter of destruction, at the nadir of human morality, and yet from that very place, he discovered the truth. He recognized the value of one Jewish soul, and from that realization came an even greater one: if one soul is worth so much, then the people who carry such souls must possess an immeasurable truth.
His kal vachomer, his thinking process, was not one of despair; it was one of clarity. The very scale of the destruction, the weight of Divine justice for a single Jewish Navi, revealed to him the infinite worth of Am Yisrael. And from that recognition came a decision: if this is truth, I want to be part of it.
Rav Moshe once shared a chilling but powerful story to illustrate this. During the Holocaust, a Christian priest was stationed in one of the camps. Day after day, he watched as Jews were herded in and mercilessly murdered. At a certain point, he could no longer bear the contradiction between what he had been taught and what he was witnessing. In a moment of anguish and clarity, he stood before the crowd, took off his crucifix, and snapped it in half, declaring, “This cannot be the truth. The Jews must be the true people of G-d.”
Sometimes, it is the overwhelming injustice and darkness that brings a person to finally recognize the light of truth.
Nevuzaradan’s conversion teaches us another lesson.
If the blood of one Jew can cry out for generations, and the price of silencing that blood is so immense, then the value of each Jew is immeasurable. This is why Nevuzaradan didn’t collapse under the weight of his sin. Instead, he chose to attach himself to the very people he had once destroyed. He wanted to be connected to that truth. To be part of something that carried such Divine weight and sanctity.
And this is the secret of teshuvah. From the deepest place of destruction, the seeds of redemption begin to grow. The Midrash says that when the Beis Hamikdash was destroyed, “Tzion sadeh techarash—Zion was plowed like a field.” But plowing is not just a sign of ruin; it is a preparation for planting. The field is made ready for new growth.
This is the meaning of the blessing, “Es tzemach David avdecha meheira tatzmiach—The sprouting of redemption begins in the furrows of destruction.”
And this is the ultimate message of these Three Weeks. From the depths of churban comes the possibility of rebuilding. From the greatest desecration comes the yearning for sanctity. Nevuzaradan’s story is not just about how low one can fall, but about how high one can reach, even from the lowest place.
We do not have to wait for destruction in our own lives to experience this awakening. We can choose now to do teshuvah, to open our eyes to the infinite value of every Jew, and to begin planting seeds of redemption today.
May we be zocheh to that transformation, speedily in our days.
