King James Version · Babylon and the exile
Ezekiel 38
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1And unto me, saying, , set thy against , the land of , the of and , and against him, And say, Thus saith ; Behold, I am against thee, O , the of and : And I will turn thee back, and put hooks into thy jaws, and I will bring thee forth, and all thine army, horses and horsemen, all of them clothed with all sorts of armour, even a great company with bucklers and shields, all of them handling : , , and Libya with them; all of them with shield and helmet: , and all his bands; the house of of the north quarters, and all his bands: and many people with thee. Be thou prepared, and prepare for thyself, thou, and all thy company that are assembled unto thee, and be thou a guard unto them. After many days thou shalt be visited: in the latter years thou shalt come into the land that is brought back from , and is gathered out of many people, against the mountains of Israel, which have been always waste: but it is brought forth out of the nations, and they shall safely all of them. Thou shalt ascend and come like a storm, thou shalt be like a cloud to cover the land, thou, and all thy bands, and many people with thee. Thus saith ; It shall also come to pass, that at the same time shall things come into thy , and thou shalt think an evil thought: And thou shalt say, I will go up to the land of unwalled villages; I will go to them that are at rest, that safely, all of them dwelling without walls, and having neither bars nor , To take a spoil, and to take a prey; to turn thine hand upon the desolate places that are now inhabited, and upon the people that are gathered out of the nations, which have gotten cattle and goods, that in the midst of the land. , and , and the merchants of , with all the young lions thereof, shall say unto thee, Art thou come to take a spoil? hast thou gathered thy company to take a prey? to carry away silver and gold, to take away cattle and goods, to take a great spoil? Therefore, , and say unto , Thus saith ; In that day when my people of Israel dwelleth safely, shalt thou not know it? And thou shalt come from thy place out of the north parts, thou, and many people with thee, all of them riding upon horses, a great company, and a mighty army: And thou shalt come up against my people of Israel, as a cloud to cover the land; it shall be in the , and I will bring thee against my land, that the heathen may know me, when I shall be in thee, O , before their eyes. Thus saith ; Art thou he of whom I have spoken in old time by my servants of Israel, which prophesied in those days many years that I would bring thee against them? And it shall come to pass at the same time when shall come against the land of Israel, saith , that my fury shall come up in . For in my and in the of my have I spoken, Surely in that day there shall be a great shaking in the land of Israel; So that the fishes of the sea, and the fowls of the , and the of the field, and all creeping things that creep upon the earth, and all the men that are upon the of the earth, shall shake at my , and the mountains shall be thrown down, and the steep places shall fall, and every wall shall fall to the ground. And I will call for a against him throughout all my mountains, saith : every man’s shall be against his brother. And I will plead against him with pestilence and with ; and I will upon him, and upon his bands, and upon the many people that are with him, an overflowing , and great hailstones, , and brimstone. Thus will I magnify myself, and myself; and I will be known in the eyes of many nations, 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