World English Bible · Babylon and the exile
Jeremiah 24
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showed me, and behold, two baskets of figs were set before temple, after king of had the son of , king of Judah, and the princes of Judah, with the craftsmen and smiths, from , and had brought them to . One basket had very good figs, like the figs that are first-ripe; and the other basket had very bad figs, which could not be eaten, they were so bad. Then asked me, "What do you see, ?" I said, "Figs. The good figs are very good, and the bad are very bad, so bad that they can't be eaten." 4 word came to me, saying, ", the of Israel says: 'Like these good figs, so I will regard the of Judah, whom I have sent out of this place into the land of the , as good. For I will set my eyes on them for good, and I will bring them again to this land. I will build them, and not pull them down. I will plant them, and not pluck them up. I will give them a to know me, that I am . They will be my people, and I will be their ; for they will return to me with their . "'As the bad figs, which can't be eaten, they are so bad,' surely says, 'So I will give up the king of Judah, and his princes, and of who in this land, and those who in the land of . I will even give them up to be tossed back and forth among all the kingdoms of the earth for evil, to be a and a , a taunt and , in all places where I will drive them. I will send , the , and the pestilence among them, until they are consumed from off the land that I gave to them and to their fathers.'"
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