King James Version · Babylon and the exile
Ezekiel 32
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And it came to pass in the twelfth year, in the twelfth month, in the first day of the month, that unto me, saying, , take up a for king of , and say unto him, Thou art like a young lion of the nations, and thou art as a whale in the seas: and thou camest forth with thy rivers, and troubledst the waters with thy feet, and fouledst their rivers. Thus saith ; I will therefore spread out my net over thee with a company of many people; and they shall bring thee up in my net. Then will I leave thee upon the land, I will cast thee forth upon the open field, and will cause all the fowls of the to upon thee, and I will fill the of the whole earth with thee. And I will lay thy upon the mountains, and fill the valleys with thy height. I will also water with thy the land wherein thou swimmest, even to the mountains; and the rivers shall be full of thee. And when I shall put thee out, I will cover the , and make the stars thereof dark; I will cover the sun with a cloud, and the moon shall not give her . All the bright lights of will I make dark over thee, and set upon thy land, saith . I will also vex the of many people, when I shall bring thy among the nations, into the countries which thou hast not known. Yea, I will make many people amazed at thee, and their kings shall be horribly afraid for thee, when I shall brandish my before them; and they shall tremble at every moment, every man for his own life, in the day of thy fall. For thus saith ; of the king of shall come upon thee. By the of the mighty will I cause thy multitude to fall, the terrible of the nations, all of them: and they shall spoil the pomp of , and all thereof shall be destroyed. I will destroy also all the thereof from beside the great waters; neither shall the foot of man trouble them any more, nor the hoofs of trouble them. 14Then will I make their waters deep, and cause their rivers to run like oil, saith . When I shall make the land of desolate, and the country shall be destitute of that whereof it was full, when I shall smite all them that therein, then shall they know that I am . This is the wherewith they shall her: the daughters of the nations shall her: they shall for her, even for , and for all her multitude, saith . It came to pass also in the twelfth year, in the fifteenth day of the month, that unto me, saying, , for of , and cast them down, even her, and the daughters of the famous nations, unto the nether parts of the earth, with them that go down into . Whom dost thou pass in beauty? go down, and be thou laid with the . They shall fall in the midst of them that are slain : she is to : draw her and all her . The strong among the mighty shall speak to him out of the midst of hell with them that help him: they are gone down, they lie , slain . is there and all her company: his are about him: all of them slain, fallen : Whose are set in the sides of , and her company is round about her : all of them slain, fallen , which caused terror in the land of the living. There is and all her multitude round about her , all of them slain, fallen , which are gone down into the nether parts of the earth, which caused their terror in the land of the living; yet have they borne their with them that go down to . They have set her a bed in the midst of the slain with all her multitude: her are round about him: all of them , slain : though their terror was caused in the land of the living, yet have they borne their with them that go down to : he is put in the midst of them that be slain. There is , , and all her multitude: her are round about him: all of them , slain , though they caused their terror in the land of the living. And they shall not lie with the mighty that are fallen of the , which are gone down to hell with their weapons of war: and they have laid their under their heads, but their shall be upon their bones, though they were the terror of the mighty in the land of the living. Yea, thou shalt be broken in the midst of the , and shalt lie with them that are slain with . There is , her kings, and all her princes, which with their might are laid by them that were slain : they shall lie with the , and with them that go down to . There be the princes of the north, all of them, and all the , which are gone down with the slain; with their terror they are of their might; and they lie with them that be slain , and bear their with them that go down to . shall see them, and shall be comforted over all his multitude, even and all his army slain , saith . For I have caused my terror in the land of the living: and he shall be laid in the midst of the with them that are slain with , even and all his multitude, saith .
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