World English Bible · Babylon and the exile
Ezekiel 41
Touch any underlined name to see who or where it is. Tap a verse number to see where it is taken up elsewhere.
He brought me to the nave and measured the posts, six wide on the one side and six wide on the other side, which was the width of the tent. The width of the entrance was ten , and the sides of the entrance were five on the one side, and five on the other side. He measured its length, forty , and the width, twenty . Then he went inward and measured each post of the entrance, two ; and the entrance, six ; and the width of the entrance, seven . He measured its length, twenty , and the width, twenty , before the nave. He said to me, "This is the most place." Then he measured the wall of the house, six ; and the width of every side room, four , all around the house on every side. The side rooms were in three stories, one over another, and thirty in each story. They entered into the wall which belonged to the house for the side rooms all around, that they might be supported and not penetrate the wall of the house. The side rooms were wider on the higher levels, because the walls were narrower at the higher levels. Therefore the width of the house increased upward; and so one went up from the lowest level to the highest through the middle level. I saw also that the house had a base all around. The foundations of the side rooms were a full reed of six great . The thickness of the outer wall of the side rooms was five . That which was left was the place of the side rooms that belonged to the house. Between the rooms was a width of twenty around the house on every side. The doors of the side rooms were toward an open area that was left, one door toward the north, and another door toward the south. The width of the open area was five all around. The building that was before the separate place at the side toward the west was seventy wide; and the wall of the building was five thick all around, and its length ninety . So he measured , one hundred long; and the separate place, and the building, with its walls, one hundred long; 14also the width of the of , and of the separate place toward the east, one hundred . He measured the length of the building before the separate place which was at its back, and its galleries on the one side and on the other side, one hundred from the inner temple, and the porches of the court, the thresholds, and the closed windows, and the galleries around on their three stories, opposite the threshold, with wood ceilings all around, and from the ground up to the windows, (now the windows were covered), to the space above the door, even to the inner house, and outside, and by all the wall all around inside and outside, by measure. It was made with and palm trees. A palm tree was between and , and every had two faces, so that there was the of a man toward the palm tree on the one side, and the of a young lion toward the palm tree on the other side. It was made like this through all the house all around. and palm trees were made from the ground to above the door. The wall of was like this. The door posts of the nave were squared. As for the of the nave, its appearance was as the appearance of . The was of wood, three high, and its length two . Its corners, its base, and its walls were of wood. He said to me, "This is the table that is before ." and had two doors. The doors had two leaves each, two turning leaves: two for the one door, and two leaves for the other. There were made on them, on the doors of the nave, and palm trees, like those made on the walls. There was a threshold of wood on the of the porch outside. There were closed windows and palm trees on the one side and on the other side, on the sides of the porch. This is how the side rooms of and the thresholds were arranged.
A public domain modern English translation, free to read and share. 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