World English Bible · Babylon and the exile
Jeremiah 41
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Now in the seventh month, the son of , the son of Elishama, of the royal and one of the chief officers of the king, and ten men with him, came to the son of to ; and there they ate bread together in . Then the son of arose, and the ten men who were with him, and struck the son of the son of with and killed him, whom the king of had made governor over the land. also killed all the who were with at , and the men of war who were found there. The second day after he had killed , and no man knew it, men came from , from , and from , even eighty men, having their beards shaved and their clothes torn, and having cut themselves, with and in their hand, to bring them to house. the son of went out from to meet them, weeping all along as he went, and as he met them, he said to them, "Come to the son of ." It was so, when they came into the middle of the city, that the son of killed them, and cast them into the middle of , he, and the men who were with him. But ten men were found among those who said to , "Don't kill us; for we have stores hidden in the field, of wheat, and of barley, and of oil, and of honey." So he stopped, and didn't kill them among their brothers. Now in which cast all bodies of the men whom he had killed, by the side of (this was that which the king had made for fear of king of Israel), the son of filled it with those who were killed. Then all of the people who were left in , even the king's daughters, and all the people who remained in , whom the captain of the guard had committed to the son of . the son of carried them away , and departed to go over to . But when the son of , and all the captains of the forces who were with him, heard of all the evil that the son of had done, then they took all the men, and went to fight with the son of , and found him by the great waters that are in . 13Now when all the people who were with saw the son of , and all the captains of the forces who were with him, then they were glad. 14So all the people who had from turned about and came back, and went to the son of . But the son of escaped from with eight men, and went to . Then the son of and all the captains of the forces who were with him took all of the people whom he had recovered from the son of , from , after he had killed the son of —the men of war, with the women, the children, and the , whom he had brought back from . They departed and lived in Geruth , which is by , to go to enter into because of the ; for they were afraid of them, because the son of had killed the son of , whom the king of made governor over the land.
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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