King James Version · Babylon and the exile
Jeremiah 24
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shewed me, and, behold, two baskets of figs were set before of , after that Nebuchadrezzar king of had the son of king of Judah, and the princes of Judah, with the carpenters and smiths, from , and had brought them to . One basket had very good figs, even like the figs that are first ripe: and the other basket had very naughty figs, which could not be eaten, they were so bad. Then said unto me, What seest thou, ? And I said, Figs; the good figs, very good; and the evil, very evil, that cannot be eaten, they are so evil. 4Again unto me, saying, Thus saith , the of Israel; Like these good figs, so will I them that are of Judah, whom I have sent out of this place into the land of the for their good. For I will set mine eyes upon them for good, and I will bring them again to this land: and I will build them, and not pull them down; and I will plant them, and not pluck them up. And I will give them an to know me, that I am : and they shall be my people, and I will be their : for they shall return unto me with their . And as the evil figs, which cannot be eaten, they are so evil; surely thus saith , So will I give the king of Judah, and his princes, and the residue of , that in this land, and them that in the land of : And I will them to be removed into all the kingdoms of the earth for their hurt, to be a and a , a taunt and , in all places whither I shall drive them. And I will send , the , and the pestilence, among them, till they be consumed from off the land that I gave unto them and to their fathers.
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