King James Version · Babylon and the exile
Ezekiel 21
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1And unto me, saying, , set thy toward , and drop thy word toward the places, and against the land of Israel, And say to the land of Israel, Thus saith ; Behold, I am against thee, and will draw forth my out of his sheath, and will thee . Seeing then that I will thee , therefore shall my go forth out of his sheath against from the south to the north: That may know that I have drawn forth my out of his sheath: it shall not return any more. Sigh therefore, thou , with the breaking of thy loins; and with bitterness sigh before their eyes. And it shall be, when they say unto thee, Wherefore sighest thou? that thou shalt answer, For the tidings; because it cometh: and every shall melt, and all hands shall be feeble, and every shall faint, and all knees shall be weak as water: behold, it cometh, and shall be brought to pass, saith . 8Again unto me, saying, , , and say, Thus saith ; Say, A , a is sharpened, and also furbished: It is sharpened to make a sore slaughter; it is furbished that it may glitter: should we then make mirth? it contemneth the of my son, as every tree. And he hath given it to be furbished, that it may be handled: this is sharpened, and it is furbished, to give it into the hand of the slayer. Cry and howl, : for it shall be upon my people, it shall be upon all the princes of Israel: terrors by reason of shall be upon my people: smite therefore upon thy thigh. Because it is a , and what if contemn even the ? it shall be no more, saith . Thou therefore, , , and smite thine hands together, and let be doubled the third time, of the slain: it is of the great men that are slain, which entereth into their privy chambers. I have set the point of against all their , that their may faint, and their ruins be multiplied: ah! it is made bright, it is wrapped up for the slaughter. Go thee one way or other, either on , or on the left, whithersoever thy is set. I will also smite mine hands together, and I will cause my fury to rest: I have said it. 18 unto me again, saying, Also, thou , appoint thee two ways, that of the king of may come: both twain shall come forth out of one land: and choose thou a place, choose it at the head of to the city. Appoint a way, that may come to Rabbath of , and to Judah in the defenced. For the king of stood at the parting of , at the head of the two ways, to use : he made his arrows bright, he consulted with , he looked in the liver. At his was the for , to appoint captains, to open the in the slaughter, to lift up the voice with shouting, to appoint battering rams against the , to cast a mount, and to build a fort. And it shall be unto them as a false in their sight, to them that have : but he will call to remembrance the , that they may be taken. Therefore thus saith ; Because ye have made your to be remembered, in that your are discovered, so that in all your doings your do appear; because, I say, that ye are come to remembrance, ye shall be taken with the hand. And thou, profane prince of Israel, whose day is come, when shall have an end, Thus saith ; Remove the , and take off the : this shall not be the same: exalt him that is low, and abase him that is high. I will overturn, overturn, overturn, it: and it shall be no more, until he come whose right it is; and I will give it him. And thou, , and say, Thus saith concerning , and concerning their ; even say thou, , is drawn: for the slaughter it is furbished, to consume because of the glittering: Whiles they see unto thee, whiles they divine a lie unto thee, to bring thee upon the necks of them that are slain, of , whose day is come, when their shall have an end. Shall I cause it to return into his sheath? I will judge thee in the place where thou wast created, in the land of thy nativity. And I will pour out mine upon thee, I will blow against thee in the of my , and thee into the hand of brutish men, and skilful to destroy. Thou shalt be for fuel to the ; thy shall be in the midst of the land; thou shalt be no more remembered: for I have spoken it.
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.
All of Ezekiel