King James Version · Babylon and the exile
Isaiah 50
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Thus saith , Where is the bill of your mother’s divorcement, whom I have ? or which of my creditors is it to whom I have sold you? Behold, for your have ye sold yourselves, and for your is your mother . Wherefore, when I came, was there no man? when I called, was there none to answer? Is my hand shortened at all, that it cannot ? or have I no to ? behold, at my rebuke I dry up the sea, I make the rivers a : their fish stinketh, because there is no water, and dieth for thirst. I clothe with blackness, and I make their covering. hath given me of the learned, that I should know how to speak a word in season to him that is weary: he wakeneth morning by morning, he wakeneth mine ear to hear as the learned. hath opened mine ear, and I was not rebellious, neither turned away back. I gave my back to the smiters, and my cheeks to them that plucked off the hair: I hid not from and spitting. For will help me; therefore shall I not be confounded: therefore have I set like a flint, and I know that I shall not be . He is near that justifieth me; who will contend with me? let us stand together: who is mine adversary? let him come near to me. Behold, will help me; who is he that shall condemn me? lo, they all shall wax old as a garment; the moth shall eat them up. Who is among you that feareth , that obeyeth the voice of his servant, that walketh , and hath no ? let him in the name of , and stay upon his . Behold, all ye that kindle a , that compass yourselves about with sparks: walk in of your , and in the sparks that ye have kindled. This shall ye have of mine hand; ye shall lie down in sorrow.
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