King James Version · Babylon and the exile
Jeremiah 3
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They say, If a man his wife, and she go from him, and become another man’s, shall he return unto her again? shall not that land be greatly polluted? but thou hast played the with many lovers; yet return again to me, saith . Lift up thine eyes unto the , and see where thou hast not been lien with. In the ways hast thou sat for them, as the in ; and thou hast polluted the land with thy whoredoms and with thy wickedness. Therefore the have been withholden, and there hath been no ; and thou hadst a whore’s forehead, thou refusedst to be . Wilt thou not from this time cry unto me, , thou art the guide of my youth? Will he reserve his for ever? will he keep it to the end? Behold, thou hast spoken and done evil things as thou couldest. said also unto me in the days of the king, Hast thou seen that which backsliding Israel hath done? she is gone up upon every high mountain and , and there hath played the . And I said after she had done all these things, Turn thou unto me. But she returned not. And her treacherous sister Judah saw it. And I saw, when for all the causes whereby backsliding Israel committed I had put her away, and given her a bill of ; yet her treacherous sister Judah feared not, but went and played the also. And it came to pass through the lightness of her whoredom, that she defiled the land, and committed with stones and with stocks. And yet for all this her treacherous sister Judah hath not turned unto me with her , but feignedly, saith . And said unto me, The backsliding Israel hath herself more than treacherous Judah. Go and proclaim these words toward the north, and say, Return, thou backsliding Israel, saith ; and I will not cause mine to fall upon you: for I am merciful, saith , and I will not keep for ever. Only thine , that thou hast transgressed against thy , and hast scattered thy ways to the strangers , and ye have not , saith . Turn, O backsliding children, saith ; for I am married unto you: and I will take you one of a city, and two of a family, and I will bring you to : And I will give you pastors according to mine , which shall feed you with knowledge and understanding. And it shall come to pass, when ye be multiplied and increased in the land, in those days, saith , they shall say no more, The of : neither shall it come to : neither shall they remember it; neither shall they visit it; neither shall that be done any more. At that time they shall call of ; and all the nations shall be gathered unto it, to the name of , to : neither shall they walk any more after the imagination of their evil . In those days the house of Judah shall walk with the , and they shall come together out of the land of the north to the land that I have given for an unto your fathers. But I said, How shall I put thee among the children, and give thee a pleasant land, a goodly heritage of the hosts of nations? and I said, Thou shalt call me, ; and shalt not turn away from me. Surely as a wife treacherously departeth from her husband, so have ye dealt treacherously with me, O , saith . A voice was heard upon the , weeping and supplications of the : for they have perverted their way, and they have forgotten their . Return, ye backsliding children, and I will heal your backslidings. Behold, we come unto thee; for thou art our . Truly in is for from the hills, and from of mountains: truly in our is the of Israel. For hath devoured the labour of our fathers from our youth; their flocks and their herds, their sons and their daughters. We lie down in our , and our confusion covereth us: for we have against our , we and our fathers, from our youth even unto this day, and have not our .
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