King James Version · Babylon and the exile
Baruch 5
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1Put off, O , the garment of and affliction, and put on the comeliness of the that cometh from for ever. 2Cast about thee a double garment of the which cometh from ; and set a on thine head of the of the . 3For will shew thy brightness unto every country under . 4For thy name shall be called of for ever The peace of , and The of ’s . 5Arise, O , and stand on high, and look about toward the east, and behold thy children gathered from the west unto the east by the word of the One, rejoicing in the remembrance of . 6For they departed from thee on foot, and were led away of their : but bringeth them unto thee exalted with , as children of . 7For hath appointed that every high hill, and banks of long continuance, should be cast down, and valleys filled up, to make even the ground, that Israel may go safely in the of , 8Moreover even the woods and every sweetsmelling tree shall overshadow Israel by the of . 9For shall lead Israel with joy in of his with the mercy and that cometh from him.
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.