World English Bible · Babylon and the exile
Jeremiah 40
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The word which came to from , after the captain of the guard had let him go from , when he had taken him being bound in chains among all the of and Judah who were to . The captain of the guard took and said to him, " your pronounced this evil on this place; and has brought it, and done according as he spoke. Because you have against , and have not his voice, therefore this thing has come on you. Now, behold, I you today from the chains which are on your hand. If it seems good to you to come with me into , come, and I will take care of you; but if it seems bad to you to come with me into , don't. Behold, all the land is before you. Where it seems good and right to you to go, go there." Now while he had not yet gone back, "Go back then," he said, "to the son of , the son of , whom the king of has made governor over the cities of Judah, and with him among the people; or go wherever it seems right to you to go." So the captain of the guard gave him food and a present, and let him go. Then went to the son of to , and lived with him among the people who were left in the land. Now when all the captains of the forces who were in the fields, even they and their men, heard that the king of had made the son of governor in the land, and had committed to him men, women, children, and of the poorest of the land, of those who were not to , then the son of , and and Jonathan the sons of , and the son of Tanhumeth, and the sons of Ephai the , and Jezaniah the son of the , they and their men came to to . the son of the son of to them and to their men, saying, "Don't be afraid to the . in the land, and the king of , and it will be well with you. As for me, behold, I will at , to stand before the who will come to us; but you, gather and summer fruits and oil, and put them in your vessels, and in your cities that you have taken." Likewise when all the who were in , and among , and in , and who were in all the countries, heard that the king of had left a of Judah, and that he had set over them the son of , the son of , then all the returned out of all places where they were driven, and came to the land of Judah, to , to , and gathered very much and summer fruits. Moreover the son of , and all the captains of the forces who were in the fields, came to to , and said to him, "Do you know that Baalis the king of has sent the son of to take your life?" But the son of didn't them. Then the son of spoke to in secretly, saying, "Please let me go, and I will kill the son of , and no man will know it. Why should he take your life, that all the who are gathered to you should be scattered, and of Judah ?" But the son of said to the son of , "You shall not do this thing, for you speak falsely of ."
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