King James Version · Babylon and the exile
Ezekiel 41
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Afterward he brought me to , and measured the posts, six broad on the one side, and six broad on the other side, which was the breadth of the . And the breadth of the door was ten ; and the sides of the door were five on the one side, and five on the other side: and he measured the length thereof, forty : and the breadth, twenty . Then went he inward, and measured the post of the door, two ; and the door, six ; and the breadth of the door, seven . So he measured the length thereof, twenty ; and the breadth, twenty , before : and he said unto me, This is the most place. After he measured the wall of the house, six ; and the breadth of every side chamber, four , round about the house on every side. And the side chambers were three, one over another, and thirty in order; and they entered into the wall which was of the house for the side chambers round about, that they might have hold, but they had not hold in the wall of the house. And there was an enlarging, and a winding about still upward to the side chambers: for the winding about of the house went still upward round about the house: therefore the breadth of the house was still upward, and so increased from the lowest chamber to the highest by the midst. I saw also the height of the house round about: the foundations of the side chambers were a full reed of six great . The thickness of the wall, which was for the side chamber without, was five : and that which was left was the place of the side chambers that were within. And between the chambers was the wideness of twenty round about the house on every side. And the doors of the side chambers were toward the place that was left, one door toward the north, and another door toward the south: and the breadth of the place that was left was five round about. Now the building that was before the separate place at the end toward the west was seventy broad; and the wall of the building was five thick round about, and the length thereof ninety . So he measured the house, an hundred long; and the separate place, and the building, with the walls thereof, an hundred long; 14Also the breadth of the of the house, and of the separate place toward the east, an hundred . And he measured the length of the building over against the separate place which was behind it, and the galleries thereof on the one side and on the other side, an hundred , with the inner temple, and the porches of the court; The door posts, and the narrow windows, and the galleries round about on their three stories, over against the door, cieled with wood round about, and from the ground up to the windows, and the windows were covered; To that above the door, even unto the inner house, and without, and by all the wall round about within and without, by measure. And it was made with cherubims and palm trees, so that a palm tree was between a and a ; and every had two faces; So that the of a man was 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 through all the house round about. From the ground unto above the door were cherubims and palm trees made, and on the wall of . The posts of were squared, and the of ; the appearance of the one as the appearance of the other. The of wood was three high, and the length thereof two ; and the corners thereof, and the length thereof, and the walls thereof, were of wood: and he said unto me, This is the table that is before . And and had two doors. And the doors had two leaves apiece, two turning leaves; two leaves for the one door, and two leaves for the other door. And there were made on them, on the doors of , cherubims and palm trees, like as were made upon the walls; and there were thick planks upon the of the porch without. And there were narrow windows and palm trees on the one side and on the other side, on the sides of the porch, and upon the side chambers of the house, and thick planks.
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