King James Version · Babylon and the exile
Isaiah 61
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of is upon me; because hath me to preach good tidings unto the meek; he hath sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim to the , and the opening of the prison to them that are bound; To proclaim the acceptable year of , and the day of of our ; to comfort all that mourn; To appoint unto them that mourn in , to give unto them beauty for , the oil of joy for , the garment of for of heaviness; that they might be called trees of , the planting of , that he might be glorified. And they shall build the old wastes, they shall raise up the former desolations, and they shall repair the waste cities, the desolations of many generations. And strangers shall stand and feed your flocks, and the sons of shall be your plowmen and your vinedressers. But ye shall be named the Priests of : men shall call you the Ministers of our : ye shall eat the riches of the , and in their shall ye boast yourselves. For your ye shall have double; and for confusion they shall rejoice in their : therefore in their land they shall possess the double: joy shall be unto them. For I love , I hate robbery for burnt offering; and I will direct their work in truth, and I will make an with them. And their shall be known among the , and their among the people: all that see them shall them, that they are the which hath . I will greatly rejoice in , shall be joyful in my ; for he hath clothed me with the garments of , he hath covered me with the robe of , as a decketh himself with ornaments, and as a adorneth herself with her jewels. For as the earth bringeth forth her bud, and as the garden causeth the things that are sown in it to spring forth; so will cause and to spring forth before all the nations.
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