World English Bible · Babylon and the exile
Ezekiel 9
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Then he cried in my ears with a loud voice, saying, "Cause those who are in charge of the city to draw near, each man with his destroying weapon in his hand." Behold, six men came from of the upper , which lies toward the north, every man with his slaughter weapon in his hand. One man in the middle of them was clothed in linen, with a writer's inkhorn by his side. They went in, and stood beside the bronze . The of the of Israel went up from the , whereupon it was, to the threshold of the house; and he called to the man clothed in linen, who had the writer's inkhorn by his side. said to him, "Go through the middle of the city, through the middle of , and set a mark on the foreheads of the men that sigh and that cry over all the that are done within it." To the others he said in my hearing, "Go through the city after him, and strike. Don't let your eye spare, neither have . Kill utterly the old man, the young man, the virgin, little children and women; but don't come near any man on whom is the mark. Begin at my sanctuary." Then they began at the old men who were before the house. He said to them, "Defile the house, and fill the courts with the slain. Go out!" They went out, and struck in the city. While they were killing, and I was left, I fell on , and cried, and said, "Ah ! Will you destroy all the residue of Israel in your pouring out of your on ?" Then he said to me, "The of the and Judah is exceedingly great, and the land is full of , and the city full of perversion; for they say, ' has forsaken the land, and doesn't see.' As for me also, my eye won't spare, neither will I have , but I will bring their way on their head." Behold, the man clothed in linen, who had the inkhorn by his side, reported the matter, saying, "I have done as you have commanded me."
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