King James Version · Babylon and the exile
Baruch 3
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1O Almighty, of Israel, the in anguish the troubled , crieth unto thee. 2Hear, O , and have mercy; art thou art merciful: and have upon us, because we have before thee. 3For thou endurest for ever, and we utterly. 4O Almighty, thou of Israel, hear now the prayers of , and of their children, which have before thee, and not hearkened unto the voice of thee their : for the which cause these plagues cleave unto us. 5Remember not the of our forefathers: but think upon thy and thy name now at this time. 6For thou art our , and thee, O , will we . 7And for this cause thou hast put thy fear in our , to the intent that we should call upon thy name, and thee in our : for we have called to all the of our forefathers, that before thee. 8Behold, we are yet this day in our , where thou hast scattered us, for a and , and to be subject to payments, according to all the of our fathers, which departed from our . 9Hear, Israel, of life: give ear to understand . 10How happeneth it Israel, that thou art in thine ’ land, that thou art waxen old in a strange country, that thou art defiled with , 11That thou art counted with them that go down into the ? 12Thou hast forsaken the fountain of . 13For if thou hadst walked in of , thou shouldest have dwelled in peace for ever. 14Learn where is , where is strength, where is understanding; that thou mayest know also where is length of days, and life, where is of the eyes, and peace. 15Who hath found out her place? or who hath come into her ? 16Where are the princes of the heathen become, and such as ruled the upon the earth; 17They that had their pastime with the fowls of the air, and they that hoarded up silver and gold, wherein men , and made no end of their getting? 18For they that wrought in silver, and were so careful, and whose works are unsearchable, 19They are vanished and gone down to the , and others are come up in their steads. 20Young men have seen , and dwelt upon the earth: but of knowledge have they not known, 21Nor understood the thereof, nor laid hold of it: their children were far off from that way. 22It hath not been heard of in , neither hath it been seen in Theman. 23The Agarenes that seek upon earth, the merchants of Meran and of Theman, the authors of fables, and searchers out of understanding; none of these have known of , or remember her . 24O Israel, how great is the house of ! and how large is the place of his possession! 25Great, and hath none end; high, and unmeasurable. 26There were the giants famous , that were of so great stature, and so expert in war. 27Those did not choose, neither gave he of knowledge unto them: 28But they were destroyed, because they had no , and through their own foolishness. 29Who hath gone up into , and taken her, and brought her down from the clouds? 30Who hath gone over the sea, and found her, and will bring her for pure gold? 31No man knoweth her way, nor thinketh of her path. 32But he that knoweth all things knoweth her, and hath found her out with his understanding: he that prepared the earth for evermore hath filled it with fourfooted : 33He that sendeth forth , and it goeth, calleth it again, and it obeyeth him with fear. 34The stars shined in their watches, and rejoiced: when he calleth them, they say, Here we be; and so with cheerfulness they shewed unto him that made them. 35This is our , and there shall none other be accounted of in comparison of him 36He hath found out all of knowledge, and hath given it unto his servant, and to Israel his beloved. 37Afterward did he shew himself upon earth, and conversed with men.
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.