World English Bible · Babylon and the exile
Ezekiel 8
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In the sixth year, in the sixth month, in the fifth day of the month, as I sat in my house, and the of Judah sat before me, hand fell on me there. Then I saw, and behold, a as the appearance of —from the appearance of his waist and downward, , and from his waist and upward, as the appearance of brightness, as it were glowing metal. He stretched out the form of a hand, and took me by a lock of my head; and lifted me up between earth and , and brought me in the of to , to the door of the of the inner court that looks toward the north, where there was the seat of the of , which provokes to . Behold, the of the of Israel was there, according to the appearance that I saw in the plain. Then he said to me, ", lift up your eyes now toward the north." So I lifted up my eyes toward the north, and saw, northward of the of the this of in the entry. He said to me, ", do you see what they do? Even the great that the commit here, that I should go far off from my sanctuary? But you will again see yet other great ." He brought me to the door of the court; and when I looked, behold, a hole in the wall. Then he said to me, ", dig now in the wall." When I had dug in the wall, I saw a door. He said to me, "Go in, and see that they do here." So I went in and looked, and saw every form of creeping things, animals, and all the idols of the , portrayed around on the wall. Seventy men of the of the stood before them. In the middle of them the son of stood, every man with his censer in his hand; and the smell of the cloud of went up. Then he said to me, ", have you seen what the of the do in the dark, every man in his rooms of imagery? For they say, ' doesn't see us. has forsaken the land.'" He said also to me, "You will again see more of the great which they do." Then he brought me to the door of the of house which was toward the north; and I saw the women sit there weeping for . Then he said to me, "Have you seen this, ? You will again see yet greater than these." He brought me into the inner court of house; and I saw at the door of temple, between the porch and the , there were about twenty-five men with their backs toward temple and their faces toward the east. They were worshiping the sun toward the east. Then he said to me, "Have you seen this, ? 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 turned again to provoke me to . Behold, they put the branch to their nose. Therefore I will also deal in . My eye won't spare, neither will I have . Though they cry in my ears with a loud voice, yet I will not hear them."
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