King James Version · Babylon and the exile
Ezekiel 27
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1 again unto me, saying, Now, thou , take up a for ; And say unto , O thou that art situate at the entry of the sea, which art a merchant of the people for many isles, Thus saith ; O , thou hast said, I am of perfect beauty. Thy borders are in the midst of the seas, thy builders have perfected thy beauty. They have made all thy ship boards of fir trees of Senir: they have taken cedars from to make masts for thee. Of the oaks of have they made thine oars; the company of the Ashurites have made thy benches of ivory, brought out of the isles of . Fine linen with broidered work from was that which thou spreadest forth to be thy sail; blue and purple from the isles of was that which covered thee. The inhabitants of Zidon and Arvad were thy mariners: thy men, O , that were in thee, were thy pilots. The ancients of Gebal and men thereof were in thee thy calkers: all the ships of the sea with their mariners were in thee to occupy thy merchandise. They of and of and of Phut were in thine army, thy men of war: they hanged the shield and helmet in thee; they set forth thy comeliness. The men of Arvad with thine army were upon thy walls round about, and the Gammadims were in thy towers: they hanged their shields upon thy walls round about; they have made thy beauty perfect. was thy merchant by reason of of all kind of riches; with silver, iron, tin, and lead, they traded in thy fairs. , , and , they were thy merchants: they traded the persons of men and vessels of brass in thy market. They of the house of traded in thy fairs with horses and horsemen and mules. The men of were thy merchants; many isles were the merchandise of thine hand: they brought thee for a present of ivory and ebony. was thy merchant by reason of of the wares of thy making: they occupied in thy fairs with emeralds, purple, and broidered work, and fine linen, and coral, and agate. Judah, and the land of Israel, they were thy merchants: they traded in thy market wheat of , and Pannag, and honey, and oil, and balm. was thy merchant in of the wares of thy making, for of all riches; in the of Helbon, and white wool. Dan also and going to and fro occupied in thy fairs: bright iron, cassia, and calamus, were in thy market. was thy merchant in precious clothes for chariots. , and all the princes of Kedar, they occupied with thee in lambs, and rams, and goats: in these were they thy merchants. The merchants of and , they were thy merchants: they occupied in thy fairs with chief of all spices, and with all precious stones, and gold. , and Canneh, and , the merchants of , , and Chilmad, were thy merchants. These were thy merchants in all sorts of things, in blue clothes, and broidered work, and in chests of rich apparel, bound with cords, and made of cedar, among thy merchandise. The ships of did sing of thee in thy market: and thou wast replenished, and made very in the midst of the seas. Thy rowers have brought thee into great waters: the east wind hath broken thee in the midst of the seas. Thy riches, and thy fairs, thy merchandise, thy mariners, and thy pilots, thy calkers, and the occupiers of thy merchandise, and all thy men of war, that are in thee, and in all thy company which is in the midst of thee, shall fall into the midst of the seas in the day of thy . The suburbs shall shake at the sound of the cry of thy pilots. And all that handle the oar, the mariners, and all the pilots of the sea, shall come down from their ships, they shall stand upon the land; And shall cause their voice to be heard against thee, and shall cry bitterly, and shall cast up upon their heads, they shall wallow themselves in the : And they shall make themselves utterly bald for thee, and gird them with , and they shall weep for thee with bitterness of and bitter . And in their they shall take up a for thee, and over thee, saying, What city is like , like the destroyed in the midst of the sea? When thy wares went forth out of the seas, thou filledst many people; thou didst enrich the kings of the earth with of thy riches and of thy merchandise. In the time when thou shalt be broken by the seas in the depths of the waters thy merchandise and all thy company in the midst of thee shall fall. All the inhabitants of the isles shall be astonished at thee, and their kings shall be sore afraid, they shall be troubled in their countenance. The merchants among the people shall hiss at thee; thou shalt be a terror, and never shalt be any more.
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