King James Version · Babylon and the exile
2 Kings 25
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And it came to pass in the ninth year of his reign, in the tenth month, in the tenth day of the month, that king of came, he, and all his host, against , and pitched against it; and they built forts against it round about. 2And the city was besieged unto the eleventh year of king . And on the ninth day of the fourth month the prevailed in the city, and there was for the people of the land. And the city was broken up, and all the men of war fled by night by of the between two walls, which is by the king’s garden: (now the Chaldees were against the city round about:) and the king went toward the plain. And the army of the Chaldees pursued after the king, and overtook him in the plains of : and all his army were scattered from him. So they took the king, and brought him up to the king of to ; and they gave upon him. And they slew the sons of before his eyes, and put out the eyes of , and bound him with fetters of brass, and carried him to . And in the fifth month, on the seventh day of the month, which is the nineteenth year of king king of , came Nebuzar–adan, captain of the guard, a the king of , unto : And he burnt the , and the king’s house, and all the houses of , and every great man’s house burnt he with . And of the Chaldees, that were with the captain of the guard, brake down the walls of round about. Now the rest of the people that were left in the city, and the fugitives that fell away to the king of , with of , did Nebuzar–adan the captain of the guard carry away. But the captain of the guard left of of the land to be vinedressers and husbandmen. And the pillars of brass that were in the , and the bases, and the brasen sea that was in the , did the Chaldees break in pieces, and carried the brass of them to . And the pots, and the shovels, and the snuffers, and the spoons, and all the vessels of brass wherewith they ministered, took they away. And the firepans, and the bowls, and such things as were of gold, in gold, and of silver, in silver, the captain of the guard took away. The two pillars, one sea, and the bases which had made for the ; the brass of all these vessels was without weight. The height of the one pillar was eighteen , and the chapiter upon it was brass: and the height of the chapiter three ; and the wreathen work, and pomegranates upon the chapiter round about, all of brass: and like unto these had the second pillar with wreathen work. And the captain of the guard took the , and Zephaniah the second priest, and the three keepers of the door: And out of the city he took an officer that was set over the men of war, and five men of them that were in the king’s , which were found in the city, and the principal of the host, which mustered the people of the land, and threescore men of the people of the land that were found in the city: And Nebuzar–adan captain of the guard took these, and brought them to the king of to : And the king of smote them, and slew them at in the land of . So Judah was out of their land. And as for the people that remained in the land of Judah, whom king of had left, even over them he made the son of , the son of , ruler. And when all the captains of the armies, they and their men, heard that the king of had made governor, there came to to , even the son of , and Johanan the son of Careah, and the son of Tanhumeth the , and the son of a Maachathite, they and their men. And sware to them, and to their men, and said unto them, Fear not to be the servants of the Chaldees: in the land, and the king of ; and it shall be well with you. But it came to pass in the seventh month, that the son of , the son of Elishama, of the royal, came, and ten men with him, and smote , that he , and the and the Chaldees that were with him at . And all the people, both small and great, and the captains of the armies, arose, and came to : for they were afraid of the Chaldees. And it came to pass in the seven and thirtieth year of of king of Judah, in the twelfth month, on the seven and twentieth day of the month, that king of in the year that he began to reign did lift up the head of king of Judah out of prison; And he spake kindly to him, and set his above of the kings that were with him in ; And changed his prison garments: and he did eat bread continually before him all the days of his life. And his allowance was a continual allowance given him of the king, a daily rate for every day, all the days of his life.
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.