World English Bible · Babylon and the exile
Isaiah 47
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"Come down and sit in , virgin daughter of . Sit on the ground without a , daughter of the . For you will no longer be called tender and delicate. Take the millstones and grind flour. Remove your , lift up your , uncover your legs, and wade through the rivers. Your will be uncovered. Yes, your will be seen. I will take , and will spare no one." Our , of Armies is his name, is the One of Israel. "Sit in silence, and go into , daughter of the . For you shall no longer be called the mistress of kingdoms. I was angry with my people. I profaned my and gave them into your hand. You showed them no mercy. You laid a very heavy on the aged. You said, 'I will be a princess ,' so that you didn't lay these things to , nor did you remember the results. "Now therefore hear this, you who are given to pleasures, who sit securely, who say in , 'I am, and there is no one else besides me. I won't sit as a , neither will I know the loss of children.' But these two things will come to you in a moment in one day: the loss of children and widowhood. They will come on you in their full measure, in of your sorceries, and the great abundance of your enchantments. For you have trusted in your wickedness. You have said, 'No one sees me.' Your and your knowledge has perverted you. You have said in , 'I am, and there is no one else besides me.' Therefore disaster will come on you. You won't know when it dawns. Mischief will fall on you. You won't be able to put it away. Desolation will come on you suddenly, which you don't understand. "Stand now with your enchantments and with of your sorceries, in which you have labored from your youth, as if you might profit, as if you might prevail. You are wearied in of your counsels. Now let the astrologers, the stargazers, and the monthly prognosticators stand up and you from the things that will happen to you. Behold, they are like stubble. The will burn them. They won't themselves from the of the flame. It won't be a coal to warm at or a to sit by. The things that you labored in will be like this: those who have trafficked with you from your youth will each wander in his own way. There will be no one to you.
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