World English Bible · Babylon and the exile
Jeremiah 19
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Thus said , "Go, and buy a earthen container, and take some of the of the people and of the of the priests; and go out to the valley of the son of Hinnom, which is by the entry of the Harsith, and proclaim there the words that I will tell you. Say, 'Hear word, kings of Judah and inhabitants of : of Armies, the of Israel says, "Behold, I will bring evil on this place, which whoever hears, his ears will tingle. Because they have forsaken me, and have defiled this place, and have in it to other gods that they didn't know—they, their fathers, and the kings of Judah—and have filled this place with of innocents, and have built the of to burn their children in the for burnt offerings to , which I didn't command, nor speak, which didn't even enter into my . Therefore, behold, the days come," , "that this place will no more be called 'Topheth', nor 'The Valley of the son of Hinnom', but 'The valley of Slaughter'. "'"I will make the of Judah and void in this place. I will cause them to fall before their , and by the hand of those who seek their life. I will give their bodies to be food for the birds of and for the animals of the earth. I will make this city an astonishment and a hissing. Everyone who passes by it will be astonished and hiss because of all its plagues. I will cause them to eat of their sons and of their daughters. They will each eat of his friend in the siege and in the distress with which their , and those who seek their life, will distress them."' "Then you shall break the container in the sight of the men who go with you, and shall tell them, ' of Armies says: "Even so I will break this people and this city as one breaks a , that can't be made whole again. They will bury in Topheth until there is no place to bury. This is what I will do to this place," , "and to its inhabitants, even making this city as Topheth. The houses of and the houses of the kings of Judah, which are defiled, will be as the place of Topheth, even all the houses on whose roofs they have to of and have poured out drink to other gods."'" Then came from Topheth, where had sent him to , and he stood in the court of house, and said to all the people: " of Armies, the of Israel says, 'Behold, I will bring on this city and on all its towns all the evil that I have pronounced against it, because they have made their neck stiff, that they may not hear my words.'"
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