King James Version · Babylon and the exile
Jeremiah 18
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1The word which came to from , saying, Arise, and go down to the ’s house, and there I will cause thee to hear my words. Then I went down to the ’s house, and, behold, he wrought a work on the wheels. And the that he made of was marred in the hand of the : so he made it again another , as seemed good to the to make it. 5Then to me, saying, O , cannot I do with you as this ? saith . Behold, as the is in the ’s hand, so are ye in mine hand, O . At what instant I shall speak concerning a nation, and concerning a kingdom, to pluck up, and to pull down, and to destroy it; If that nation, against whom I have pronounced, turn from their evil, I will of the evil that I thought to do unto them. And at what instant I shall speak concerning a nation, and concerning a kingdom, to build and to plant it; If it do evil in my sight, that it not my voice, then I will of the good, wherewith I said I would benefit them. Now therefore go to, speak to the men of Judah, and to the inhabitants of , saying, Thus saith ; Behold, I frame evil against you, and devise a device against you: return ye now every one from his evil way, and make your ways and your doings good. And they said, There is no : but we will walk after our own devices, and we will every one do the imagination of his evil . Therefore thus saith ; Ask ye now among the heathen, who hath heard such things: the virgin of Israel hath done a very horrible thing. Will a man leave the snow of which cometh from of the field? or shall the cold flowing waters that come from another place be forsaken? Because my people hath forgotten me, they have to , and they have caused them to stumble in their ways from the ancient , to walk in , in a way not cast up; To make their land desolate, and a perpetual hissing; every one that passeth thereby shall be astonished, and wag his head. I will scatter them as with an east wind before ; I will shew them the back, and not the , in the day of their calamity. Then said they, Come, and let us devise devices against ; for shall not from the priest, nor from , nor the word from the . Come, and let us smite him with , and let us not give heed to any of his words. Give heed to me, O , and to the voice of them that contend with me. Shall evil be recompensed for good? for they have digged a pit for . Remember that I stood before thee to speak good for them, and to turn away thy from them. Therefore up their children to the , and pour out their by the force of ; and let their wives be bereaved of their children, and be ; and let their men be put to ; let their young men be slain in battle. Let a cry be heard from their houses, when thou shalt bring a troop suddenly upon them: for they have digged a pit to take me, and hid snares for my feet. Yet, , thou knowest all their against me to me: forgive not their , neither blot out their from thy sight, but let them be overthrown before thee; deal thus with them in the time of thine .
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