World English Bible · Babylon and the exile
Habakkuk 1
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The which the saw. , how long will I cry, and you will not hear? I cry out to you "!" and will you not ? Why do you show me , and look at perversity? For and are before me. There is strife, and contention rises up. Therefore is paralyzed, and justice never prevails; for surround ; therefore justice comes out perverted. "Look among the nations, watch, and wonder marvelously; for I am working a work in your days which you will not though it is told you. For, behold, I am raising up the , that bitter and hasty nation who march through the width of the earth, to possess dwelling places that are not theirs. They are feared and dreaded. Their and their dignity proceed from themselves. Their horses also are swifter than leopards, and are more fierce than the evening wolves. Their horsemen press proudly on. Yes, their horsemen come from afar. They fly as an eagle that hurries to devour. All of them come for . Their hordes forward. They gather prisoners like sand. Yes, they scoff at kings, and princes are a derision to them. They laugh at every , for they build up an earthen ramp and take it. Then they sweep by like the wind and go on. They are indeed guilty, whose strength is their ." Aren't you from , my , my One? We will not . , you have appointed them for . You, , have established him to punish. You who have purer eyes than to see evil, and who cannot look on perversity, why do you tolerate those who deal treacherously and keep silent when swallows up the man who is more than he, 14and make men like the fish of the sea, like the creeping things that have no ruler over them? He takes up all of them with the hook. He catches them in his net and gathers them in his dragnet. Therefore he rejoices and is glad. Therefore he to his net and burns to his dragnet, because by them his life is luxurious and his food is good. Will he therefore continually empty his net, and kill the nations without mercy?
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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.