King James Version · Babylon and the exile
Isaiah 40
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Comfort ye, comfort ye my people, saith your . Speak ye comfortably to , and cry unto her, that her warfare is accomplished, that her is pardoned: for she hath received of ’s hand double for all her . The voice of him that crieth in , Prepare ye of , make straight in a highway for our . Every valley shall be exalted, and every mountain and hill shall be made low: and the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough places plain: And shall be , and shall see it together: for hath spoken it. The voice said, Cry. And he said, What shall I cry? is grass, and all the goodliness thereof is as the flower of the field: The grass withereth, the flower fadeth: because of bloweth upon it: surely the people is grass. The grass withereth, the flower fadeth: but the word of our shall stand for ever. O , that bringest good tidings, get thee up into the high mountain; O , that bringest good tidings, lift up thy voice with strength; lift it up, be not afraid; say unto the cities of Judah, Behold your ! Behold, will come with strong hand, and his arm shall rule for him: behold, his reward is with him, and his work before him. He shall feed his flock like a : he shall gather the lambs with his arm, and carry them , and shall gently lead those that are with young. Who hath measured the waters in the hollow of his hand, and meted out with the , and comprehended of the earth in a measure, and weighed the mountains in scales, and the hills in a balance? Who hath directed of , or being his counsellor hath taught him? With whom took he , and who instructed him, and taught him in of , and taught him knowledge, and shewed to him of ? Behold, the nations are as a drop of a bucket, and are counted as the small of the balance: behold, he taketh up the isles as a very little thing. And is not sufficient to burn, nor the thereof sufficient for a burnt offering. All nations before him are as nothing; and they are counted to him less than nothing, and . To whom then will ye liken ? or what will ye compare unto him? The workman melteth a graven , and the goldsmith spreadeth it over with gold, and casteth silver chains. He that is so impoverished that he hath no oblation chooseth a tree that will not rot; he seeketh unto him a cunning workman to prepare a graven , that shall not be moved. Have ye not known? have ye not heard? hath it not been told you ? have ye not understood from the foundations of the earth? It is he that sitteth upon the circle of the earth, and the inhabitants thereof are as ; that stretcheth out as a , and spreadeth them out as a tent to in: That bringeth the princes to nothing; he maketh the judges of the earth as . Yea, they shall not be planted; yea, they shall not be sown: yea, their stock shall not take root in the earth: and he shall also blow upon them, and they shall wither, and the whirlwind shall take them away as stubble. To whom then will ye liken me, or shall I be equal? saith the One. Lift up your eyes on high, and behold who hath created these things, that bringeth out their host by number: he calleth them all by names by the greatness of his might, for that he is strong in ; not one faileth. Why sayest thou, O , and speakest, O Israel, My way is hid from , and my is passed over from my ? Hast thou not known? hast thou not heard, that the , , the Creator of the ends of the earth, fainteth not, neither is weary? there is no searching of his . He giveth to the faint; and to them that have no might he increaseth strength. Even the youths shall faint and be weary, and the young men shall utterly fall: But they that wait upon shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with as eagles; they shall run, and not be weary; and they shall walk, and not faint.
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 Isaiah