World English Bible · Babylon and the exile
Isaiah 53
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Who has our message? To whom has arm been ? For he grew up before him as a tender plant, and as a root out of dry ground. He has no good looks or majesty. When we see him, there is no beauty that we should him. He was despised and rejected by men, a man of suffering and acquainted with disease. He was despised as one from whom men hide their ; and we didn't respect him. Surely he has borne our sickness and carried our suffering; yet we considered him plagued, struck by , and afflicted. But he was pierced for our . He was crushed for our . The punishment that brought our peace was on him; and by his wounds we are healed. All we like sheep have gone astray. Everyone has turned to his own way; and has laid on him the of us all. He was oppressed, yet when he was afflicted he didn't open his . As that is led to the slaughter, and as a sheep that before its shearers is silent, so he didn't open his . He was taken away by and . As for his generation, who considered that he was out of the land of the living and stricken for the of my people? They made his with , and with a rich man in his , although he had done no , nor was any deceit in his . Yet it pleased to bruise him. He has caused him to suffer. When you make his an for , he will see his . He will prolong his days and pleasure will prosper in his hand. After the suffering of his , he will see and be satisfied. My servant will many by the knowledge of himself; and he will bear their . Therefore I will give him a with the great. He will divide the plunder with the strong, because he poured out his to and was counted with the transgressors; yet he bore the of many and made intercession for the transgressors.
A public domain modern English translation, free to read and share. Notes and cards are EKLI’s own.
Christians read this chapter differently
- How does the death of Jesus save? · Isaiah 53
Every view at its strongest, with who holds it and what it has to answer for.
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