World English Bible · Babylon and the exile
Ezekiel 46
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"' says: "The of the inner court that looks toward the east shall be shut the six working days; but on the it shall be opened, and on the day of the it shall be opened. The prince shall enter by of the porch of the outside, and shall stand by the post of the ; and the priests shall prepare his burnt offering and his , and he shall at the threshold of the . Then he shall go out, but the shall not be shut . The people of the land shall at the door of that before on the and on the new moons. The burnt offering that the prince shall offer to shall be on the , six lambs and a ram ; and the shall be an ephah for the ram, and the for the lambs as he is able to give, and a hin of oil to an ephah. On the day of the it shall be a young bull , six lambs, and a ram. They shall be . He shall prepare a : an ephah for the bull, and an ephah for the ram, and for the lambs according as he is able, and a hin of oil to an ephah. When the prince enters, he shall go in by of the porch of the , and he shall go out by its way. "'"But when the people of the land come before in the , he who enters by of the north to shall go out by of the south ; and he who enters by of the south shall go out by of the north . He shall not return by of the by which he came in, but shall go out straight before him. The prince shall go in with them when they go in. When they go out, he shall go out. "'"In the feasts and in the appointed holidays, the shall be an ephah for a bull, and an ephah for a ram, and for the lambs as he is able to give, and a hin of oil to an ephah. When the prince prepares a free will , a burnt offering or as a free will to , one shall open for him the that looks toward the east; and he shall prepare his burnt offering and his , as he does on the . Then he shall go out; and after his going out one shall shut the . "'"You shall prepare a year old for a burnt offering to daily. Morning by morning you shall prepare it. You shall prepare a with it morning by morning, the sixth part of an ephah, and the third part of a hin of oil to moisten the ; a to continually by a perpetual . Thus they shall prepare , the , and the oil, morning by morning, for a continual burnt offering." "' says: "If the prince gives a gift to any of his sons, it is his . It shall belong to his sons. It is their possession by . But if he gives of his a gift to one of his servants, it shall be his to the year of ; then it shall return to the prince; but as for his , it shall be for his sons. Moreover the prince shall not take of the people's , to thrust them out of their possession. He shall give to his sons out of his own possession, that my people not each be scattered from his possession."'" Then he brought me through the entry, which was at the side of the , into the rooms for the priests, which looked toward the north. Behold, there was a place on the back part westward. He said to me, "This is the place where the priests shall boil the trespass offering and the , and where they shall bake the , that they not bring them out into the outer court, to the people." 21Then he brought me out into the outer court and caused me to pass by the four corners of the court; and behold, in every corner of the court there was a court. 22In the four corners of the court there were courts enclosed, forty long and thirty wide. These four in the corners were the same size. 23There was a wall around in them, around the four, and boiling places were made under the walls all around. Then he said to me, "These are the boiling houses, where the ministers of the house shall boil the of the people."
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