World English Bible · Babylon and the exile
2 Kings 24
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In his days king of came up, and became his servant three years. Then he turned and rebelled against him. sent against him bands of the , bands of , bands of the , and bands of , and sent them against Judah to destroy it, according to word which he spoke by his servants . Surely at the of this came on Judah, to remove them out of his sight for the of , according to all that he did, and also for the innocent that he shed; for he filled with innocent , and would not pardon. Now the rest of the acts of , and all that he did, aren't they written in the book of the chronicles of the kings of Judah? So slept with his fathers, and his son reigned in his place. The king of didn't come out of his land any more; for the king of had taken, from the brook of to the river , all that belonged to the king of . was eighteen years old when he began to reign, and he reigned in three months. His mother's name was the daughter of of . 9He did that which was evil in sight, according to all that his had done. At that time the servants of king of came up to , and the city was besieged. 11 king of came to the city while his servants were besieging it, and the king of Judah went out to the king of —he, his mother, his servants, his princes, and his officers; and the king of captured him in the eighth year of his reign. He carried out from there all the of house and the of the king's house, and cut in pieces all the vessels of gold which king of Israel had made in temple, as had said. He all , and all the princes, and all the of valor, even ten thousand , and all the craftsmen and the smiths. No one remained except the poorest people of the land. He to , with the king's mother, the king's wives, his officers, and the chief men of the land. He carried them into from to . All the men of might, even seven thousand, and the craftsmen and the smiths one thousand, all of them strong and fit for war, even them the king of brought to . The king of made , brother, king in his place, and changed his name to . was twenty-one years old when he began to reign, and he reigned eleven years in . His mother's name was the daughter of of . He did that which was evil in sight, according to all that had done. For through the of , this happened in and Judah, until he had cast them out from his . Then rebelled against the king of .
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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.