King James Version · Babylon and the exile
Isaiah 52
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Awake, awake; put on thy strength, O ; put on thy beautiful garments, O , the city: for henceforth there shall no more come into thee the and the . Shake thyself from ; arise, and sit down, O : loose thyself from the bands of thy neck, O daughter of . For thus saith , Ye have sold yourselves for nought; and ye shall be without money. For thus saith , My people went down aforetime into to sojourn there; and the oppressed them without cause. Now therefore, what have I here, saith , that my people is taken away for nought? they that them make them to howl, saith ; and my name continually every day is blasphemed. Therefore my people shall know my name: therefore they shall know in that day that I am he that doth speak: behold, it is I. How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of him that bringeth good tidings, that publisheth peace; that bringeth good tidings of good, that publisheth ; that saith unto , Thy reigneth! Thy watchmen shall lift up the voice; with the voice together shall they sing: for they shall see eye to eye, when shall bring again . Break forth into joy, sing together, ye waste places of : for hath comforted his people, he hath . hath made his arm in the eyes of all the nations; and all the ends of the earth shall see the of our . Depart ye, depart ye, go ye out from thence, touch no thing; go ye out of the midst of her; be ye clean, that bear the vessels of . For ye shall not go out with haste, nor go by flight: for will go before you; and the of Israel will be your rereward. Behold, my servant shall deal prudently, he shall be exalted and extolled, and be very high. As many were astonied at thee; his visage was so marred more than any man, and his form more than the sons of men: So shall he sprinkle many nations; the kings shall shut their mouths at him: for that which had not been told them shall they see; and that which they had not heard shall they consider.
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