King James Version · Babylon and the exile
Isaiah 58
Touch any underlined name to see who or where it is. Tap a verse number to see where it is taken up elsewhere.
Cry aloud, spare not, lift up thy voice like a , and shew my people their , and the house of their . Yet they seek me daily, and delight to know my ways, as a nation that did , and forsook not the of their : they ask of me the of ; they take delight in approaching to . Wherefore have we , say they, and thou seest not? wherefore have we afflicted our , and thou takest no knowledge? Behold, in the day of your ye find pleasure, and exact all your labours. Behold, ye for strife and debate, and to smite with the fist of wickedness: ye shall not as ye do this day, to make your voice to be heard on high. Is it such a that I have chosen? a day for a man to afflict his ? is it to his head as a bulrush, and to spread under him? wilt thou call this a , and an acceptable day to ? Is not this the that I have chosen? to loose the bands of wickedness, to undo the heavy burdens, and to let the oppressed go free, and that ye break every ? Is it not to deal thy bread to the hungry, and that thou bring that are cast out to thy house? when thou seest the , that thou cover him; and that thou hide not thyself from thine own ? Then shall thy break forth as the morning, and thine health shall spring forth speedily: and thy shall go before thee; shall be thy rereward. Then shalt thou call, and shall answer; thou shalt cry, and he shall say, Here I am. If thou take away from the midst of thee the , the putting forth of the finger, and speaking ; And if thou draw out thy to the hungry, and satisfy ; then shall thy rise in obscurity, and thy be as the noonday: And shall guide thee continually, and satisfy thy in , and make fat thy bones: and thou shalt be like a watered garden, and like a spring of water, whose waters fail not. And they that shall be of thee shall build the old waste places: thou shalt raise up the foundations of many generations; and thou shalt be called, The repairer of the breach, The restorer of to in. If thou turn away thy foot from the , from doing thy pleasure on my day; and call the a delight, the of , honourable; and shalt him, not doing thine own ways, nor finding thine own pleasure, nor speaking thine own words: Then shalt thou delight thyself in ; and I will cause thee to ride upon the of the earth, and feed thee with the heritage of thy : for hath spoken it.
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