King James Version · Babylon and the exile
Isaiah 41
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Keep silence before me, O islands; and let the people renew their strength: let them come near; then let them speak: let us come near together to . Who up man from the east, called him to his foot, gave the nations before him, and made him kings? he gave them as to his , and as driven stubble to his bow. He pursued them, and passed safely; even by that he had not gone with his feet. Who hath wrought and done it, calling the generations ? I , the first, and with the last; I am he. The isles saw it, and feared; the ends of the earth were afraid, drew near, and came. They helped every one his neighbour; and every one said to his brother, Be of good courage. So the carpenter encouraged the goldsmith, and he that smootheth with the hammer him that smote the anvil, saying, It is ready for the sodering: and he fastened it with nails, that it should not be moved. But thou, Israel, art my servant, whom I have chosen, the of my friend. Thou whom I have taken from the ends of the earth, and called thee from the chief men thereof, and said unto thee, Thou art my servant; I have chosen thee, and not cast thee away. Fear thou not; for I am with thee: be not dismayed; for I am thy : I will strengthen thee; yea, I will help thee; yea, I will uphold thee with of my . Behold, all they that were incensed against thee shall be and confounded: they shall be as nothing; and they that strive with thee shall . Thou shalt seek them, and shalt not find them, even them that contended with thee: they that war against thee shall be as nothing, and as a thing of nought. For I thy will hold thy , saying unto thee, Fear not; I will help thee. Fear not, thou worm , and ye men of Israel; I will help thee, saith , and thy , the One of Israel. Behold, I will make thee a new sharp instrument having teeth: thou shalt thresh the mountains, and beat them small, and shalt make the hills as . Thou shalt fan them, and the wind shall carry them away, and the whirlwind shall scatter them: and thou shalt rejoice in , and shalt in the One of Israel. When and needy seek water, and there is none, and their faileth for thirst, I will hear them, I the of Israel will not forsake them. I will open rivers in , and fountains in the midst of the valleys: I will make a pool of water, and the dry land springs of water. I will plant in the cedar, the shittah tree, and the myrtle, and the oil tree; I will set in the fir tree, and the pine, and the box tree together: That they may see, and know, and consider, and understand together, that the hand of hath done this, and the One of Israel hath created it. Produce your cause, saith ; bring forth your strong reasons, saith the King of . Let them bring them forth, and shew us what shall happen: let them shew the former things, what they be, that we may consider them, and know the latter end of them; or declare us things for to come. Shew the things that are to come hereafter, that we may know that ye are gods: yea, do good, or do evil, that we may be dismayed, and behold it together. Behold, ye are of nothing, and your work of nought: an is he that chooseth you. I have up one from the north, and he shall come: from the rising of the sun shall he call upon my name: and he shall come upon princes as upon morter, and as the treadeth . Who hath declared , that we may know? and beforetime, that we may say, He is ? yea, there is none that sheweth, yea, there is none that declareth, yea, there is none that heareth your words. The first shall say to , Behold, behold them: and I will give to one that bringeth good tidings. For I beheld, and there was no man; even among them, and there was no counsellor, that, when I asked of them, could answer a word. Behold, they are all ; their works are nothing: their are wind and confusion.
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