King James Version · Babylon and the exile
Isaiah 55
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Ho, every one that thirsteth, come ye to the waters, and he that hath no money; come ye, buy, and eat; yea, come, buy and milk without money and without price. Wherefore do ye spend money for that which is not bread? and your labour for that which satisfieth not? diligently unto me, and eat ye that which is good, and let your delight itself in fatness. Incline your ear, and come unto me: hear, and your shall live; and I will make an with you, even the sure of . Behold, I have given him for a to the people, a leader and commander to the people. Behold, thou shalt call a nation that thou knowest not, and nations that knew not thee shall run unto thee because of thy , and for the One of Israel; for he hath glorified thee. Seek ye while he may be found, call ye upon him while he is near: Let forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his : and let him return unto , and he will have mercy upon him; and to our , for he will abundantly pardon. For my are not your , neither are your ways my ways, saith . For as are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my than your . For as the cometh down, and the snow from , and returneth not thither, but watereth the earth, and maketh it bring forth and bud, that it may give to the sower, and bread to the eater: So shall my word be that goeth forth out of my : it shall not return unto me void, but it shall accomplish that which I please, and it shall prosper in the thing whereto I sent it. For ye shall go out with joy, and be led forth with peace: the mountains and the hills shall break forth before you into singing, and all the trees of the field shall clap their hands. Instead of the shall come up the fir tree, and instead of the brier shall come up the myrtle tree: and it shall be to for a name, for an sign that shall not .
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