King James Version · Babylon and the exile
Ezekiel 30
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1 again unto me, saying, , and say, Thus saith ; Howl ye, Woe worth the day! For the day is near, even is near, a cloudy day; it shall be the time of the heathen. And shall come upon , and great pain shall be in , when the slain shall fall in , and they shall take away her multitude, and her foundations shall be broken down. , and Libya, and , and all the mingled people, and Chub, and the men of the land that is in league, shall fall with them . Thus saith ; They also that uphold shall fall; and the pride of her shall come down: from the tower of shall they fall in it , saith . And they shall be desolate in the midst of the countries that are desolate, and her cities shall be in the midst of the cities that are wasted. And they shall know that I am , when I have set a in , and when all her helpers shall be destroyed. In that day shall go forth from me in ships to make the careless afraid, and great pain shall come upon them, as in the day of : for, lo, it cometh. Thus saith ; I will also make of to cease by the hand of Nebuchadrezzar king of . He and his people with him, the terrible of the nations, shall be brought to destroy the land: and they shall draw their against , and fill the land with the slain. And I will make the rivers dry, and sell the land into the hand of : and I will make the land waste, and all that is therein, by the hand of strangers: I have spoken it. Thus saith ; I will also destroy the idols, and I will cause their to cease out of ; and there shall be no more a prince of the land of : and I will put a fear in the land of . And I will make desolate, and will set in , and will execute judgments in No. And I will pour my fury upon , the strength of ; and I will of No. And I will set in : shall have great pain, and No shall be rent asunder, and shall have distresses daily. The young men of and of Pi–beseth shall fall : and these cities shall go into . At Tehaphnehes also the day shall be darkened, when I shall break there the of : and the pomp of her strength shall cease in her: as for her, a cloud shall cover her, and her daughters shall go into . Thus will I execute judgments in : and they shall know that I am . And it came to pass in the eleventh year, in the first month, in the seventh day of the month, that unto me, saying, , I have broken the arm of king of ; and, lo, it shall not be bound up to be healed, to put a roller to bind it, to make it strong to hold . Therefore thus saith ; Behold, I am against king of , and will break his arms, the strong, and that which was broken; and I will cause to fall out of his hand. And I will scatter the among the nations, and will disperse them through the countries. And I will strengthen the arms of the king of , and put my in his hand: but I will break ’s arms, and he shall groan before him with the groanings of a deadly wounded man. But I will strengthen the arms of the king of , and the arms of shall fall down; and they shall know that I am , when I shall put my into the hand of the king of , and he shall stretch it out upon the land of . And I will scatter the among the nations, and disperse them among the countries; and they shall know that I am .
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