King James Version · Babylon and the exile
Ezekiel 39
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Therefore, thou , against , and say, Thus saith ; Behold, I am against thee, O , the of and : And I will turn thee back, and leave but the sixth part of thee, and will cause thee to come up from the north parts, and will bring thee upon the mountains of Israel: And I will smite thy bow out of thy left hand, and will cause thine arrows to fall out of thy . Thou shalt fall upon the mountains of Israel, thou, and all thy bands, and the people that is with thee: I will give thee unto the ravenous birds of every sort, and to the of the field to be devoured. Thou shalt fall upon the open field: for I have spoken it, saith . And I will send a on , and among them that carelessly in the isles: and they shall know that I am . So will I make my name known in the midst of my people Israel; and I will not let them pollute my name any more: and the heathen shall know that I am , the One in Israel. Behold, it is come, and it is done, saith ; this is the day whereof I have spoken. And they that in the cities of Israel shall go forth, and shall set on and burn the weapons, both the shields and the bucklers, the bows and the arrows, and the handstaves, and the spears, and they shall burn them with seven years: So that they shall take no wood out of the field, neither cut down any out of the forests; for they shall burn the weapons with : and they shall spoil those that spoiled them, and rob those that robbed them, saith . And it shall come to pass in that day, that I will give unto a place there of in Israel, the valley of the passengers on the east of the sea: and it shall stop the noses of the passengers: and there shall they bury and all his multitude: and they shall call it The valley of Hamon–gog. And seven months shall the be burying of them, that they may cleanse the land. Yea, all the people of the land shall bury them; and it shall be to them a renown the day that I shall be glorified, saith . And they shall sever out men of continual employment, passing through the land to bury with the passengers those that upon the of the earth, to cleanse it: after the end of seven months shall they search. And the passengers that pass through the land, when any seeth a man’s bone, then shall he set up a sign by it, till the buriers have buried it in the valley of Hamon–gog. 16And also the name of the city shall be Hamonah. Thus shall they cleanse the land. And, thou , thus saith ; Speak unto every feathered fowl, and to every beast of the field, Assemble yourselves, and come; gather yourselves on every side to my that I do for you, even a great upon the mountains of Israel, that ye may eat , and drink . Ye shall eat of the mighty, and drink of the princes of the earth, of rams, of lambs, and of goats, of bullocks, all of them fatlings of . 19And ye shall eat fat till ye be full, and drink till ye be drunken, of my which I have for you. Thus ye shall be filled at my table with horses and chariots, with , and with all men of war, saith . And I will set my among the heathen, and all the heathen shall see my that I have executed, and my hand that I have laid upon them. So the shall know that I am their from that day and forward. And the heathen shall know that the went into for their : because they trespassed against me, therefore hid I from them, and gave them into the hand of their : so fell they all . According to their uncleanness and according to their have I done unto them, and hid from them. Therefore thus saith ; Now will I bring again of , and have mercy upon the whole , and will be my name; After that they have borne their , and all their trespasses whereby they have trespassed against me, when they dwelt safely in their land, and none made them afraid. When I have brought them again from the people, and gathered them out of their ’ lands, and am in them in the sight of many nations; Then shall they know that I am their , which caused them to be led into among the heathen: but I have gathered them unto their own land, and have left none of them any more there. Neither will I hide any more from them: for I have poured out upon the , 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