King James Version · Babylon and the exile
Jeremiah 30
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The word that came to from , saying, Thus speaketh of Israel, saying, Write thee all the words that I have spoken unto thee in a book. For, lo, the days come, saith , that I will bring again of my people Israel and Judah, saith : and I will cause them to return to the land that I gave to their fathers, and they shall possess it. 4And these are the words that spake concerning Israel and concerning Judah. For thus saith ; We have heard a voice of trembling, of fear, and not of peace. Ask ye now, and see whether a man doth travail with child? wherefore do I see every man with his hands on his loins, as a woman in travail, and all faces are turned into paleness? Alas! for that day is great, so that none is like it: it is even the time of ’s trouble; but he shall be out of it. For it shall come to pass in that day, saith of hosts, that I will break his from off thy neck, and will burst thy bonds, and strangers shall no more themselves of him: But they shall their , and their king, whom I will raise up unto them. Therefore fear thou not, O my servant , saith ; neither be dismayed, O Israel: for, lo, I will thee from afar, and thy from the land of their ; and shall return, and shall be in rest, and be quiet, and none shall make him afraid. For I am with thee, saith , to thee: though I make a full end of all nations whither I have scattered thee, yet will I not make a full end of thee: but I will correct thee in measure, and will not leave thee altogether unpunished. For thus saith , Thy bruise is incurable, and thy wound is grievous. There is none to plead thy cause, that thou mayest be bound up: thou hast no healing medicines. All thy lovers have forgotten thee; they seek thee not; for I have wounded thee with the wound of an enemy, with the chastisement of a cruel one, for of thine ; because thy were increased. Why criest thou for thine affliction? thy sorrow is incurable for of thine : because thy were increased, I have done these things unto thee. Therefore all they that devour thee shall be devoured; and all thine , every one of them, shall go into ; and they that spoil thee shall be a spoil, and all that prey upon thee will I give for a prey. For I will restore health unto thee, and I will heal thee of thy wounds, saith ; because they called thee an Outcast, saying, This is , whom no man seeketh after. Thus saith ; Behold, I will bring again of ’s tents, and have mercy on his dwellingplaces; and the city shall be builded upon her own heap, and the palace shall after the manner thereof. And out of them shall proceed and the voice of them that make merry: and I will multiply them, and they shall not be few; I will also them, and they shall not be small. Their children also shall be as aforetime, and their shall be established before me, and I will punish all that oppress them. And their nobles shall be of themselves, and their governor shall proceed from the midst of them; and I will cause him to draw near, and he shall approach unto me: for who is this that engaged to approach unto me? saith . And ye shall be my people, and I will be your . Behold, the whirlwind of goeth forth with fury, a continuing whirlwind: it shall fall with pain upon the head of . The of shall not return, until he have done it, and until he have performed the intents of : in the ye shall consider it.
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