King James Version · Babylon and the exile
Jeremiah 13
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Thus saith unto me, Go and get thee a linen girdle, and put it upon thy loins, and put it not in water. So I got a girdle according to the word of , and put it on my loins. And unto me the second time, saying, Take the girdle that thou hast got, which is upon thy loins, and arise, go to , and hide it there in a hole of . So I went, and hid it by , as commanded me. 6And it came to pass after many days, that said unto me, Arise, go to , and take the girdle from thence, which I commanded thee to hide there. Then I went to , and digged, and took the girdle from the place where I had hid it: and, behold, the girdle was marred, it was profitable for nothing. 8Then unto me, saying, Thus saith , After this manner will I mar the pride of Judah, and the great pride of . This evil people, which refuse to hear my words, which walk in the imagination of their , and walk after other gods, to them, and to them, shall even be as this girdle, which is good for nothing. For as the girdle cleaveth to the loins of a man, so have I caused to cleave unto me the whole and the whole house of Judah, saith ; that they might be unto me for a people, and for a name, and for a , and for a : but they would not hear. Therefore thou shalt speak unto them this word; Thus saith of Israel, Every bottle shall be filled with : and they shall say unto thee, Do we not certainly know that every bottle shall be filled with ? Then shalt thou say unto them, Thus saith , Behold, I will fill all the inhabitants of this land, even the kings that sit upon ’s , and the priests, and , and all the inhabitants of , with drunkenness. And I will dash them one against another, even the fathers and the sons together, saith : I will not , nor spare, nor have mercy, but destroy them. Hear ye, and give ear; be not proud: for hath spoken. Give to your , before he cause , and before your feet stumble upon the dark mountains, and, while ye look for , he turn it into the shadow of , and make it gross . But if ye will not hear it, shall weep in secret places for your pride; and mine eye shall weep sore, and run down with tears, because ’s flock is . Say unto the king and to the queen, Humble yourselves, sit down: for your shall come down, even the of your . The cities of the south shall be shut up, and none shall open them: Judah shall be all of it, it shall be wholly . Lift up your eyes, and behold them that come from the north: where is the flock that was given thee, thy beautiful flock? What wilt thou say when he shall punish thee? for thou hast taught them to be captains, and as chief over thee: shall not sorrows take thee, as a woman in travail? And if thou say in thine , Wherefore come these things upon me? For the greatness of thine are thy skirts discovered, and thy heels made . Can the change his skin, or the leopard his spots? then may ye also do good, that are accustomed to do evil. Therefore will I scatter them as the stubble that passeth away by the wind of . This is thy lot, the of thy measures from me, saith ; because thou hast forgotten me, and trusted in falsehood. Therefore will I discover thy skirts upon thy , that thy may appear. I have seen thine adulteries, and thy neighings, the lewdness of thy whoredom, and thine on the hills in the fields. Woe unto thee, O ! wilt thou not be made clean? when shall it once be?
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 Jeremiah