King James Version · Babylon and the exile
Jeremiah 37
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And king the son of reigned instead of the son of , whom Nebuchadrezzar king of made king in the land of Judah. But neither he, nor his servants, nor the people of the land, did unto the words of , which he spake by the . And the king sent the son of and the son of the priest to the , saying, now unto our for us. Now came in and went out among the people: for they had not put him into prison. Then ’s army was come forth out of : and when the that besieged heard tidings of them, they departed from . 6Then came the word of unto the , saying, Thus saith , the of Israel; Thus shall ye say to the king of Judah, that sent you unto me to enquire of me; Behold, ’s army, which is come forth to help you, shall return to into their own land. And the shall come again, and fight against this city, and take it, and burn it with . Thus saith ; Deceive not yourselves, saying, The shall surely depart from us: for they shall not depart. For though ye had smitten the whole army of the that fight against you, and there remained but wounded men among them, yet should they rise up every man in his tent, and burn this city with . And it came to pass, that when the army of the was broken up from for fear of ’s army, Then went forth out of to go into the land of , to separate himself thence in the midst of the people. And when he was in the of , a captain of the ward was there, whose name was , the son of , the son of ; and he took the , saying, Thou fallest away to the . Then said , It is false; I fall not away to the . But he hearkened not to him: so took , and brought him to the princes. Wherefore the princes were wroth with , and smote him, and put him in prison in the house of Jonathan the : for they had made that the prison. When was entered into the dungeon, and into the cabins, and had remained there many days; Then the king sent, and took him out: and the king asked him secretly in his house, and said, Is there any word from ? And said, There is: for, said he, thou shalt be into the hand of the king of . Moreover said unto king , What have I offended against thee, or against thy servants, or against this people, that ye have put me in prison? Where are now your which prophesied unto you, saying, The king of shall not come against you, nor against this land? Therefore hear now, I thee, O my the king: let my , I thee, be accepted before thee; that thou cause me not to return to the house of Jonathan the , lest I there. Then the king commanded that they should commit into the court of the prison, and that they should give him daily a piece of bread out of the bakers’ street, until all the bread in the city were spent. Thus remained in the court of the prison.
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