World English Bible · Babylon and the exile
Isaiah 42
Touch any underlined name to see who or where it is. Tap a verse number to see where it is taken up elsewhere.
"Behold, my servant, whom I uphold, my chosen, in whom delights: I have put on him. He will bring to the nations. He will not shout, nor raise his voice, nor cause it to be heard in the street. He won't break a bruised reed. He won't quench a dimly burning wick. He will faithfully bring . He will not fail nor be discouraged, until he has set in the earth, and the islands wait for ." , he who created and stretched them out, he who spread out the earth and that which comes out of it, he who gives breath to its people and to those who walk in it, says: "I, , have called you in . I will hold your hand. I will keep you, and make you a for the people, as a for the nations, to open the blind eyes, to bring the prisoners out of the dungeon, and those who sit out of the prison. "I am . That is my name. I will not give my to another, nor my to engraved . Behold, the former things have happened and I declare new things. I tell you about them before they come up." a new song, and his from the end of the earth, you who go down to the sea, and all that is therein, the islands and their inhabitants. Let and its cities raise their voices, with the villages that inhabits. Let the inhabitants of sing. Let them shout from the top of the mountains! Let them give to , and declare his in the islands. will go out like a mighty man. He will stir up like a man of war. He will raise a war cry. Yes, he will shout aloud. He will triumph over his . "I have been silent a long time. I have been quiet and restrained myself. Now I will cry out like a travailing woman. I will both gasp and pant. I will destroy mountains and hills, and dry up all their herbs. I will make the rivers islands, and will dry up the pools. I will bring the blind by a way that they don't know. I will lead them in that they don't know. I will make before them, and crooked places straight. I will do these things, and I will not forsake them. "Those who in engraved , who tell , 'You are our gods,' will be turned back. They will be utterly disappointed. "Hear, you deaf, and look, you blind, that you may see. Who is blind, but my servant? Or who is as deaf as whom I send? Who is as blind as he who is at peace, and as blind as servant? You see many things, but don't observe. His ears are open, but he doesn't listen. It pleased , for his ' sake, to magnify and make it honorable. But this is a robbed and plundered people. All of them are snared in holes, and they are hidden in prisons. They have become , and no one delivers, and a plunder, and no one says, 'Restore them!' Who is there among you who will give ear to this? Who will listen and hear for the time to come? Who gave as plunder, and Israel to the robbers? Didn't , he against whom we have ? For they would not walk in his ways, and they disobeyed . Therefore he poured the fierceness of his on him, and the strength of battle. It set him on all around, but he didn't know. It burned him, but he didn't take it to ."
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 Isaiah