King James Version · 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. And sent against him bands of the Chaldees, and bands of , and bands of the , and bands of , and sent them against Judah to destroy it, according to the word of , which he spake by his servants . Surely at the of came this upon 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 ; which would not pardon. Now the rest of the acts of , and all that he did, are they not written in the book of the chronicles of the kings of Judah? So slept with his fathers: and his son reigned in his stead. And the king of came not again any more out of his land: for the king of had taken from the river of unto the river all that pertained to the king of . was eighteen years old when he began to reign, and he reigned in three months. And his mother’s name was , the daughter of of . 9And he did that which was evil in the sight of , according to all that his had done. At that time the servants of king of came up against , and the city was besieged. 11And king of came against the city, and his servants did besiege it. And the king of Judah went out to the king of , he, and his mother, and his servants, and his princes, and his officers: and the king of took him in the eighth year of his reign. And he carried out thence all the of the , and the of the king’s house, and cut in pieces all the vessels of gold which king of Israel had made in of , as had said. And he all , and all the princes, and all the of valour, even ten thousand , and all the craftsmen and smiths: none remained, the poorest sort of the people of the land. And he to , and the king’s mother, and the king’s wives, and his officers, and the mighty of the land, those carried he into from to . And all the men of might, even seven thousand, and craftsmen and smiths a thousand, all that were strong and apt for war, even them the king of brought to . And the king of made his ’s brother king in his stead, and changed his name to . was twenty and one years old when he began to reign, and he reigned eleven years in . And his mother’s name was , the daughter of of . And he did that which was evil in the sight of , according to all that had done. For through the of it came to pass in and Judah, until he had cast them out from his , that rebelled against the king of .
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.