King James Version · Babylon and the exile
Ezekiel 6
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1And unto me, saying, , set thy toward the mountains of Israel, and against them, And say, Ye mountains of Israel, hear the word of ; Thus saith to the mountains, and to the hills, to the rivers, and to the valleys; Behold, I, even I, will bring a upon you, and I will destroy your . And your shall be desolate, and your shall be broken: and I will cast down your slain men before your idols. And I will lay carcases of the before their idols; and I will scatter your bones round about your . In all your dwellingplaces the cities shall be laid waste, and the shall be desolate; that your may be laid waste and made desolate, and your idols may be broken and cease, and your may be cut down, and your works may be abolished. And the slain shall fall in the midst of you, and ye shall know that I am . Yet will I leave a , that ye may have some that shall escape among the nations, when ye shall be scattered through the countries. And they that escape of you shall remember me among the nations whither they shall be carried , because I am broken with their whorish , which hath departed from me, and with their eyes, which go a after their idols: and they shall lothe themselves for the evils which they have committed in all their . And they shall know that I am , and that I have not said in that I would do this evil unto them. Thus saith ; Smite with thine hand, and stamp with thy foot, and say, Alas for all the evil of the ! for they shall fall , by the , and by the pestilence. He that is far off shall of the pestilence; and he that is near shall fall ; and he that remaineth and is besieged shall by the : thus will I accomplish my fury upon them. Then shall ye know that I am , when their slain men shall be among their idols round about their , upon every high hill, in all the tops of the mountains, and , and under every thick oak, the place where they did offer sweet savour to all their idols. So will I stretch out my hand upon them, and make the land desolate, yea, more desolate than toward Diblath, in all their habitations: 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