World English Bible · Babylon and the exile
Ezekiel 15
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1 word came to me, saying, ", what is tree more than any tree, branch which is among the trees of the forest? Will wood be taken of it to make anything? Will men take a pin of it to hang any on it? Behold, it is cast into the for fuel; the has devoured both its ends, and the middle of it is burned. Is it profitable for any work? Behold, when it was whole, it was suitable for no work. How much less, when the has devoured it, and it has been burned, will it yet be suitable for any work?" Therefore says: "As wood among the trees of the forest, which I have given to the for fuel, so I will give the inhabitants of . I will set against them. They will go out from the , but the will still devour them. Then you will know that I am , when I set against them. I will make the land desolate, because they have acted unfaithfully," .
A public domain modern English translation, free to read and share. 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.
All of Ezekiel