King James Version · Babylon and the exile
2 Chronicles 36
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Then the people of the land took Jehoahaz the son of , and made him king in his ’s stead in . 2Jehoahaz was twenty and three years old when he began to reign, and he reigned three months in . And the king of put him down at , and condemned the land in an hundred of silver and a of gold. And the king of made his brother king over Judah and , and turned his name to . And took Jehoahaz his brother, and carried him to . was twenty and five years old when he began to reign, and he reigned eleven years in : and he did that which was evil in the sight of his . Against him came up king of , and bound him in fetters, to carry him to . also carried of the vessels of the to , and put them in his temple at . Now the rest of the acts of , and his which he did, and that which was found in him, behold, they are written in the book of the kings of Israel and Judah: and his son reigned in his stead. was eight years old when he began to reign, and he reigned three months and ten days in : and he did that which was evil in the sight of . And when the year was expired, king sent, and brought him to , with the goodly vessels of the , and made his brother king over Judah and . was one and twenty years old when he began to reign, and reigned eleven years in . And he did that which was evil in the sight of his , and humbled not himself before the speaking from . And he also rebelled against king , who had made him by : but he stiffened his neck, and hardened from turning unto of Israel. Moreover all the chief of the priests, and the people, transgressed very much after all the of the heathen; and polluted the which he had hallowed in . And of their fathers sent to them by his , rising up betimes, and sending; because he had on his people, and on his : But they mocked the of , and despised his words, and misused his , until the of arose against his people, till there was no remedy. Therefore he brought upon them the king of the Chaldees, who slew their young men with in the house of their sanctuary, and had no upon young man or maiden, old man, or him that stooped for age: he gave them all into his hand. And all the vessels of the house of , great and small, and the of the , and the of the king, and of his princes; all these he brought to . And they burnt the house of , and brake down the wall of , and burnt all the palaces thereof with , and destroyed all the goodly vessels thereof. And them that had escaped from carried he away to ; where they were servants to him and his sons until the reign of of : To fulfil the word of , until the land had enjoyed her : for as long as she lay desolate she kept , to fulfil threescore and ten years. Now in the first year of king of , that the word of spoken might be accomplished, stirred up of king of , that he made a proclamation throughout all , and put it also in writing, saying, Thus saith king of , All the kingdoms of the earth hath of given me; and he hath charged me to build him an house in , which is in Judah. Who is there among you of all his people? his be with him, and let him go up.
The 1611 translation, public domain. Its original printing included the Apocrypha, which is why the deuterocanonical books can be read here. Notes and cards are EKLI’s own.
The world at this moment · Babylon and the exile, 612 BC to 539 BC ›
Babylon replaces Assyria, Jerusalem and its temple are destroyed in 586 BC, and the leadership of Judah lives in Mesopotamia without a king, a temple, or a country.
- Babylon
- Nebuchadnezzar II rebuilds the city on a scale meant to be seen from a distance: the Ishtar Gate in glazed blue brick, the processional way, the ziggurat, and gardens later counted among the wonders of the world. Babylonian tablets record rations issued to the captive king Jehoiachin of Judah by name, which is one of the tidier points of contact between the Bible and the archives.
- Egypt
- Briefly resurgent. Pharaoh Neco marches north, kills King Josiah at Megiddo, and installs and deposes kings in Jerusalem, until Babylon beats him decisively at Carchemish in 605 BC. Jeremiah spends his career saying that betting on Egypt is suicide, and is proved right.
- Judah
- Deported in stages, then destroyed. The temple is burned, the walls broken, and the leadership marched to Mesopotamia. What happens next is one of the strangest survivals in history: a people keeps its identity without land, king, or sanctuary, and comes out of it with its scriptures more central than before.
- Further afield
- An extraordinary century for ideas everywhere at once. Thales and the first Greek philosophers, Solon's reforms at Athens, the Buddha in India, Confucius and Lao Tzu in China, and Zoroaster in Persia all fall within a few generations of the exile.