King James Version · Babylon and the exile
Isaiah 47
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Come down, and sit in , O virgin daughter of , sit on the ground: there is no , O daughter of the : for thou shalt no more be called tender and delicate. Take the millstones, and grind meal: uncover thy locks, make the leg, uncover the thigh, pass over the rivers. Thy shall be uncovered, yea, thy shall be seen: I will take , and I will not meet thee as a man. As for our , of hosts is his name, the One of Israel. Sit thou silent, and get thee into , O daughter of the : for thou shalt no more be called, The lady of kingdoms. I was wroth with my people, I have polluted mine , and given them into thine hand: thou didst shew them no mercy; upon the ancient hast thou very heavily laid thy . And thou saidst, I shall be a lady for ever: so that thou didst not lay these things to thy , neither didst remember the latter end of it. Therefore hear now this, thou that art given to pleasures, that dwellest carelessly, that sayest in thine , I am, and none else beside me; I shall not sit as a , neither shall I know the loss of children: But these two things shall come to thee in a moment in one day, the loss of children, and widowhood: they shall come upon thee in their perfection for of thy sorceries, and for the great abundance of thine enchantments. For thou hast trusted in thy wickedness: thou hast said, None seeth me. Thy and thy knowledge, it hath perverted thee; and thou hast said in thine , I am, and none else beside me. Therefore shall evil come upon thee; thou shalt not know from whence it riseth: and mischief shall fall upon thee; thou shalt not be able to put it off: and desolation shall come upon thee suddenly, which thou shalt not know. Stand now with thine enchantments, and with of thy sorceries, wherein thou hast laboured from thy youth; if so be thou shalt be able to profit, if so be thou mayest prevail. Thou art wearied in of thy counsels. Let now the astrologers, the stargazers, the monthly prognosticators, stand up, and thee from these things that shall come upon thee. Behold, they shall be as stubble; the shall burn them; they shall not themselves from the of the flame: there shall not be a coal to warm at, nor to sit before it. Thus shall they be unto thee with whom thou hast laboured, even thy merchants, from thy youth: they shall wander every one to his quarter; none shall thee.
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