World English Bible · Babylon and the exile
Isaiah 62
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For sake I will not hold my peace, and for sake I will not rest, until her shines out like the dawn, and her like a burning lamp. will see your , and all kings your . You will be called by a new name, which will name. You will also be a of beauty in hand, and a royal in your hand. You will not be called Forsaken any more, nor will your land be called Desolate any more; but you will be called Hephzibah, and your land Beulah; for delights in you, and your land will be married. For as a young man marries a virgin, so your sons will marry you. As a rejoices over his , so your will rejoice over you. I have set watchmen on your walls, . They will never be silent day nor night. You who call on , take no rest, and give him no rest until he establishes, and until he makes a in the earth. has by his , and by the arm of his strength, "Surely I will no more give your grain to be food for your , and will not drink your , for which you have labored, but those who have harvested it will eat it, and . Those who have gathered it will drink it in the courts of my sanctuary." Go through, go through the ! Prepare of the people! Build up, build up the highway! Gather out the stones! Lift up a banner for the peoples. Behold, has proclaimed to the end of the earth: "Say to the daughter of , 'Behold, your comes! Behold, his reward is with him, and his before him!'" They will call them "The People, ". You will be called "Sought Out, A City Not Forsaken".
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