World English Bible · Babylon and the exile
Jeremiah 16
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Then word came to me, saying, "You shall not take a wife, neither shall you have sons or daughters, in this place." For says concerning the sons and concerning the daughters who are born in this place, and concerning their mothers who bore them, and concerning their fathers who became their in this land: "They will grievous deaths. They will not be , neither will they be buried. They will be as dung on the surface of the ground. They will be consumed and by . Their bodies will be food for the birds of and for the animals of the earth." For says, "Don't enter into the house of . Don't go to . Don't bemoan them, for I have taken away my peace from this people," , "even and . Both great and small will in this land. They will not be buried. Men won't for them, cut themselves, or make themselves bald for them. Men won't break bread for them in , to comfort them for . Men won't give them of consolation to drink for their or for their mother. "You shall not go into the house of feasting to sit with them, to eat and to drink." For of Armies, the of Israel says: "Behold, I will cause to cease out of this place, before your eyes and in your days, the voice of mirth and the voice of gladness, the voice of the and the voice of the . It will happen, when you tell this people all these words, and they ask you, 'Why has pronounced all this great evil against us?' or 'What is our ?' or 'What is our that we have committed against our ?' then you shall tell them, 'Because your fathers have forsaken me,' , 'and have walked after other gods, have them, have them, have forsaken me, and have not kept . You have done evil more than your fathers, for behold, you each walk after the stubbornness of his evil , so that you don't listen to me. Therefore I will cast you out of this land into the land that you have not known, neither you nor your fathers. There you will other gods day and night, for I will show you no .' "Therefore behold, the days come," , "that it will no more be said, 'As lives, who brought up the out of the land of ;' but, 'As lives, who brought up the from the land of the north, and from all the countries where he had driven them.' I will bring them again into their land that I gave to their fathers. "Behold, I will send for many fishermen," , "and they will fish them up. Afterward I will send for many hunters, and they will hunt them from every mountain, from every hill, and out of the clefts of the rocks. For my eyes are on all their ways. They are not hidden from . Their isn't concealed from my eyes. First I will their and their double, because they have polluted my land with the carcasses of their things, and have filled my with their ." , my strength, my , and my refuge in the day of affliction, the nations will come to you from the ends of the earth, and will say, "Our fathers have nothing but lies, and things in which there is no profit. Should a man make to himself gods which yet are no gods?" "Therefore behold, I will cause them to know, this once I will cause them to know my hand and my might. Then they will know that my name is ."
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 Jeremiah