King James Version · Babylon and the exile
Ezekiel 28
Touch any underlined name to see who or where it is. Tap a verse number to see where it is taken up elsewhere.
1 again unto me, saying, , say unto the prince of , Thus saith ; Because thine is lifted up, and thou hast said, I am a , I sit in the seat of , in the midst of the seas; yet thou art a man, and not , though thou set thine as of : Behold, thou art wiser than ; there is no secret that they can hide from thee: With thy and with thine understanding thou hast gotten thee riches, and hast gotten gold and silver into thy : By thy great and by thy traffick hast thou increased thy riches, and thine is lifted up because of thy riches: Therefore thus saith ; Because thou hast set thine as of ; Behold, therefore I will bring strangers upon thee, the terrible of the nations: and they shall draw their against the beauty of thy , and they shall defile thy brightness. They shall bring thee down to , and thou shalt the deaths of them that are slain in the midst of the seas. Wilt thou yet say before him that slayeth thee, I am ? but thou shalt be a man, and no , in the hand of him that slayeth thee. Thou shalt the deaths of the by the hand of strangers: for I have spoken it, saith . 11Moreover unto me, saying, , take up a upon the king of , and say unto him, Thus saith ; Thou sealest up the sum, full of , and perfect in beauty. Thou hast been in the garden of ; every precious stone was thy covering, the sardius, topaz, and the diamond, the beryl, the onyx, and the jasper, the sapphire, the emerald, and the carbuncle, and gold: the workmanship of thy tabrets and of thy pipes was prepared in thee in the day that thou wast created. Thou art that covereth; and I have set thee so: thou wast upon the mountain of ; thou hast walked up and down in the midst of the stones of . Thou wast perfect in thy ways from the day that thou wast created, till was found in thee. By of thy merchandise they have filled the midst of thee with , and thou hast : therefore I will cast thee as profane out of : and I will destroy thee, O covering , from the midst of the stones of . Thine was lifted up because of thy beauty, thou hast corrupted thy by reason of thy brightness: I will cast thee to the ground, I will lay thee before kings, that they may behold thee. Thou hast defiled thy sanctuaries by of thine , by the of thy traffick; therefore will I bring forth a from the midst of thee, it shall devour thee, and I will bring thee to upon the earth in the sight of all them that behold thee. All they that know thee among the people shall be astonished at thee: thou shalt be a terror, and never shalt thou be any more. 20Again unto me, saying, , set thy against Zidon, and against it, And say, Thus saith ; Behold, I am against thee, O Zidon; and I will be glorified in the midst of thee: and they shall know that I am , when I shall have executed judgments in her, and shall be in her. For I will send into her pestilence, and into her streets; and the wounded shall be judged in the midst of her upon her on every side; and they shall know that I am . And there shall be no more a pricking brier unto the , nor any grieving of all that are round about them, that despised them; and they shall know that I am . Thus saith ; When I shall have gathered the from the people among whom they are scattered, and shall be in them in the sight of the heathen, then shall they in their land that I have given to my servant . And they shall safely therein, and shall build houses, and plant vineyards; yea, they shall with confidence, when I have executed judgments upon all those that despise them round about them; and they shall know that I am their .
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