World English Bible · Babylon and the exile
Isaiah 55
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"Hey! Come, everyone who thirsts, to the waters! Come, he who has no money, buy, and eat! Yes, come, buy and milk without money and without price. Why do you spend money for that which is not bread, and your labor for that which doesn't satisfy? Listen diligently to me, and eat that which is good, and let your delight itself in richness. Turn your ear, and come to me. Hear, and your will live. I will make an with you, even the sure of . Behold, I have given him for a to the peoples, a leader and commander to the peoples. Behold, you shall call a nation that you don't know; and a nation that didn't know you shall run to you, because of your , and for the One of Israel; for he has glorified you." Seek while he may be found. Call on him while he is near. Let forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his . Let him , and he will have mercy on him, to our , for he will freely pardon. "For my are not your , and your ways are not my ways," . "For as are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my than your . For as the comes down and the snow from , and doesn't return there, but waters the earth, and makes it grow and bud, and gives to the sower and bread to the eater; so is my word that goes out of my : it will not return to me void, but it will accomplish that which I please, and it will prosper in the thing I sent it to do. For you shall go out with joy, and be led out with peace. The mountains and the hills will break out before you into singing; and all the trees of the fields will clap their hands. Instead of the the cypress tree will come up; and instead of the brier the myrtle tree will come up. It will make a name for , for an sign that will not ."
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