King James Version · Babylon and the exile
Jeremiah 31
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At the same time, saith , will I be the of all the families of Israel, and they shall be my people. Thus saith , The people which were left of found in ; even Israel, when I went to cause him to rest. hath appeared of old unto me, saying, Yea, I have loved thee with an love: therefore with have I drawn thee. Again I will build thee, and thou shalt be built, O virgin of Israel: thou shalt again be adorned with thy tabrets, and shalt go forth in the dances of them that make merry. Thou shalt yet plant upon the mountains of : the planters shall plant, and shall eat them as common things. For there shall be a day, that the watchmen upon the mount shall cry, Arise ye, and let us go up to unto our . For thus saith ; Sing with gladness for , and shout among the chief of the nations: publish ye, ye, and say, O , thy people, of Israel. Behold, I will bring them from the north country, and gather them from the coasts of the earth, and with them the blind and the lame, the woman with child and her that travaileth with child together: a great company shall return thither. They shall come with weeping, and with supplications will I lead them: I will cause them to walk by the rivers of waters in a straight way, wherein they shall not stumble: for I am a to Israel, and is my . Hear the word of , O ye nations, and declare it in the isles afar off, and say, He that scattered Israel will gather him, and keep him, as a doth his flock. For hath , and ransomed him from the hand of him that was stronger than he. Therefore they shall come and sing in the height of , and shall flow together to the goodness of , for wheat, and for , and for oil, and for the young of the flock and of the herd: and their shall be as a watered garden; and they shall not sorrow any more at all. Then shall the virgin rejoice in the dance, both young men and old together: for I will turn their into joy, and will comfort them, and make them rejoice from their sorrow. And I will satiate the of the priests with fatness, and my people shall be satisfied with my goodness, saith . Thus saith ; A voice was heard in , , and bitter weeping; Rahel weeping for her children refused to be comforted for her children, because they were not. Thus saith ; Refrain thy voice from weeping, and thine eyes from tears: for thy work shall be rewarded, saith ; and they shall come again from the land of . And there is in thine end, saith , that thy children shall come again to their own border. I have surely heard bemoaning himself thus; Thou hast chastised me, and I was chastised, as a bullock unaccustomed to the : turn thou me, and I shall be turned; for thou art my . Surely after that I was turned, I ; and after that I was instructed, I smote upon my thigh: I was , yea, even confounded, because I did bear the of my youth. Is my dear son? is he a pleasant child? for since I spake against him, I do earnestly remember him still: therefore my bowels are troubled for him; I will surely have mercy upon him, saith . Set thee up waymarks, make thee high heaps: set thine toward the highway, even which thou wentest: turn again, O virgin of Israel, turn again to these thy cities. How long wilt thou go about, O thou backsliding daughter? for hath created a new thing in the earth, A woman shall compass a man. Thus saith of hosts, the of Israel; As yet they shall use this speech in the land of Judah and in the cities thereof, when I shall bring again their ; thee, O habitation of justice, and mountain of . And there shall in Judah itself, and in all the cities thereof together, husbandmen, and they that go forth with flocks. For I have satiated the weary , and I have replenished every sorrowful . Upon this I awaked, and beheld; and my sleep was sweet unto me. Behold, the days come, saith , that I will sow the and the house of Judah with the of man, and with the of beast. And it shall come to pass, that like as I have watched over them, to pluck up, and to break down, and to throw down, and to destroy, and to afflict; so will I watch over them, to build, and to plant, saith . In those days they shall say no more, The fathers have eaten a sour grape, and the children’s teeth are set on edge. But every one shall for his own : every man that eateth the sour grape, his teeth shall be set on edge. Behold, the days come, saith , that I will make a with the , and with the house of Judah: Not according to that I made with their fathers in the day that I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of ; which my they brake, although I was an husband unto them, saith : But this shall be that I will make with the ; After those days, saith , I will put in their inward parts, and write it in their ; and will be their , and they shall be my people. And they shall teach no more every man his neighbour, and every man his brother, saying, Know : for they shall all know me, from the least of them unto the greatest of them, saith : for I will forgive their , and I will remember their no more. Thus saith , which giveth the sun for a by day, and the ordinances of the moon and of the stars for a by night, which divideth the sea when the waves thereof roar; of hosts is his name: If those ordinances depart from before me, saith , then the of Israel also shall cease from being a nation before me for ever. Thus saith ; If above can be measured, and the foundations of the earth searched out beneath, I will also cast off all the of Israel for all that they have done, saith . Behold, the days come, saith , that the city shall be built to from the tower of Hananeel unto the of the corner. And the shall yet go forth over against it upon the hill , and shall compass about to Goath. And the whole valley of bodies, and of the , and all the fields unto the brook of , unto the corner of the horse gate toward the east, shall be unto ; it shall not be plucked up, nor thrown down any more for ever.
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