King James Version · Babylon and the exile
Isaiah 56
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Thus saith , Keep ye , and do : for my is near to come, and my to be . is the man that doeth this, and that layeth hold on it; that keepeth the from polluting it, and keepeth his hand from doing any evil. Neither let the son of the , that hath joined himself to , speak, saying, hath utterly separated me from his people: neither let say, Behold, I am a dry tree. For thus saith unto the that keep my , and choose the things that please me, and take hold of my ; Even unto them will I give in mine house and within my walls a place and a name better than of sons and of daughters: I will give them an name, that shall not . Also the sons of the , that join themselves to , to him, and to love the name of , to be his servants, every one that keepeth the from polluting it, and taketh hold of my ; Even them will I bring to my mountain, and make them joyful in my house of : their burnt offerings and their shall be accepted upon mine ; for mine house shall be called an house of for all people. which gathereth the outcasts of Israel saith, Yet will I gather others to him, beside those that are gathered unto him. All ye of the field, come to devour, yea, all ye in the forest. His watchmen are blind: they are all ignorant, they are all dumb dogs, they cannot bark; sleeping, lying down, loving to slumber. Yea, they are greedy dogs which can never have enough, and they are that cannot understand: they all look to their own way, every one for his gain, from his quarter. Come ye, say they, I will fetch , and we will fill ourselves with ; and to morrow shall be as this day, and much more abundant.
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