King James Version · Babylon and the exile
Ezekiel 8
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And it came to pass in the sixth year, in the sixth month, in the fifth day of the month, as I sat in mine house, and the of Judah sat before me, that the hand of fell there upon me. Then I beheld, and lo a as the appearance of : from the appearance of his loins even downward, ; and from his loins even upward, as the appearance of brightness, as the colour of amber. And he put forth the form of an hand, and took me by a lock of mine head; and lifted me up between the earth and the , and brought me in the of to , to the door of the inner that looketh toward the north; where was the seat of the of , which provoketh to . And, behold, the of the of Israel was there, according to the that I saw in the plain. Then said he unto me, , lift up thine eyes now toward the north. So I lifted up mine eyes toward the north, and behold northward at the of the this of in the entry. He said furthermore unto me, , seest thou what they do? even the great that the committeth here, that I should go far off from my sanctuary? but turn thee yet again, and thou shalt see greater . And he brought me to the door of the court; and when I looked, behold a hole in the wall. Then said he unto me, , dig now in the wall: and when I had digged in the wall, behold a door. And he said unto me, Go in, and behold that they do here. So I went in and saw; and behold every form of creeping things, and , and all the idols of the , pourtrayed upon the wall round about. And there stood before them seventy men of the ancients of the , and in the midst of them stood the son of , with every man his censer in his hand; and a thick cloud of went up. Then said he unto me, , hast thou seen what the ancients of the do in the dark, every man in the chambers of his imagery? for they say, seeth us not; hath forsaken the earth. He said also unto me, Turn thee yet again, and thou shalt see greater that they do. Then he brought me to the door of the of ’s house which was toward the north; and, behold, there sat women weeping for . Then said he unto me, Hast thou seen this, O ? turn thee yet again, and thou shalt see greater than these. And he brought me into the inner court of ’s house, and, behold, at the door of of , between the porch and the , were about five and twenty men, with their backs toward of , and their faces toward the east; and they the sun toward the east. Then he said unto me, Hast thou seen this, O ? Is it a thing to the house of Judah that they commit the which they commit here? for they have filled the land with , and have returned to provoke me to : and, lo, they put the branch to their nose. Therefore will I also deal in fury: mine eye shall not spare, neither will I have : and though they cry in mine ears with a loud voice, yet will I not hear them.
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