King James Version · Babylon and the exile
Jeremiah 41
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Now it came to pass in the seventh month, that the son of the son of Elishama, of the royal, and the princes of the king, even ten men with him, came unto the son of to ; and there they did eat bread together in . Then arose the son of , and the ten men that were with him, and smote the son of the son of with , and slew him, whom the king of had made governor over the land. also slew all the that were with him, even with , at , and the that were found there, and the men of war. And it came to pass the second day after he had slain , and no man knew it, That there came certain from , from , and from , even fourscore men, having their beards shaven, and their clothes rent, and having cut themselves, with and in their hand, to bring them to the . And the son of went forth from to meet them, weeping all along as he went: and it came to pass, as he met them, he said unto them, Come to the son of . And it was so, when they came into the midst of the city, that the son of slew them, and cast them into the midst of , he, and the men that were with him. But ten men were found among them that said unto , us not: for we have in the field, of wheat, and of barley, and of oil, and of honey. So he forbare, and slew them not among their brethren. Now wherein had cast all bodies of the men, whom he had slain because of , was it which the king had made for fear of king of Israel: and the son of filled it with them that were slain. Then all the residue of the people that were in , even the king’s daughters, and all the people that remained in , whom Nebuzar–adan the captain of the guard had committed to the son of : and the son of carried them away , and departed to go over to . But when the son of , and all the captains of the forces that 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 it came to pass, that when all the people which were with saw the son of , and all the captains of the forces that were with him, then they were glad. 14So all the people that had from cast about and returned, and went unto the son of . But the son of escaped from with eight men, and went to . Then took the son of , and all the captains of the forces that were with him, all of the people whom he had recovered from the son of , from , after that he had slain the son of , even of war, and the women, and the children, and the , whom he had brought again from : And they departed, and dwelt in the habitation of , which is by Beth–lehem, to go to enter into , Because of the : for they were afraid of them, because the son of had slain the son of , whom the king of made governor in the land.
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