King James Version · Babylon and the exile
Isaiah 64
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Oh that thou wouldest rend , that thou wouldest come down, that the mountains might flow down at thy , As when the melting burneth, the causeth the waters to boil, to make thy name known to thine , that the nations may tremble at thy ! When thou didst terrible things which we looked not for, thou camest down, the mountains flowed down at thy . For since the beginning of the world men have not heard, nor perceived by the ear, neither hath the eye seen, O , beside thee, what he hath prepared for him that waiteth for him. Thou meetest him that rejoiceth and worketh , those that remember thee in thy ways: behold, thou art wroth; for we have : in those is continuance, and we shall be . But we are all as an thing, and all our righteousnesses are as filthy rags; and we all do fade as a leaf; and our , like the wind, have taken us away. And there is none that calleth upon thy name, that stirreth up himself to take hold of thee: for thou hast hid thy from us, and hast consumed us, because of our . But now, O , thou art ; we are the , and thou our ; and we all are the work of thy hand. Be not wroth very sore, O , neither remember for ever: behold, see, we beseech thee, we are all thy people. Thy cities are a , is a , a desolation. Our and our beautiful house, where our fathers praised thee, is burned up with : and all our pleasant things are laid waste. Wilt thou refrain thyself for these things, O ? wilt thou hold thy peace, and afflict us very sore?
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