King James Version · Babylon and the exile
Jeremiah 42
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Then all the captains of the forces, and the son of , and Jezaniah the son of Hoshaiah, and all the people from the least even unto the greatest, came near, And said unto the , Let, we beseech thee, our be accepted before thee, and for us unto thy , even for all this ; (for we are left but of many, as thine eyes do behold us:) That thy may shew us wherein we may walk, and the thing that we may do. Then the said unto them, I have heard you; behold, I will unto your according to your words; and it shall come to pass, that whatsoever thing shall answer you, I will declare it unto you; I will keep nothing back from you. Then they said to , be a true and between us, if we do not even according to all things for the which thy shall send thee to us. Whether it be good, or whether it be evil, we will our , to whom we send thee; that it may be well with us, when we our . And it came to pass after ten days, that unto . Then called he the son of , and all the captains of the forces which were with him, and all the people from the least even to the greatest, And said unto them, Thus saith , the of Israel, unto whom ye sent me to present your before him; If ye will still in this land, then will I build you, and not pull you down, and I will plant you, and not pluck you up: for I me of the evil that I have done unto you. Be not afraid of the king of , of whom ye are afraid; be not afraid of him, saith : for I am with you to you, and to you from his hand. And I will shew unto you, that he may have mercy upon you, and cause you to return to your own land. But if ye say, We will not in this land, neither your , Saying, No; but we will go into the land of , where we shall see no war, nor hear the sound of the , nor have of bread; and there will we : And now therefore hear the word of , ye of Judah; Thus saith of hosts, the of Israel; If ye wholly set your faces to enter into , and go to sojourn there; Then it shall come to pass, that , which ye feared, shall overtake you there in the land of , and the , whereof ye were afraid, shall follow close after you there in ; and there ye shall . So shall it be with all the men that set their faces to go into to sojourn there; they shall , by the , and by the pestilence: and none of them shall or escape from the evil that I will bring upon them. For thus saith of hosts, the of Israel; As mine and my fury hath been poured forth upon the inhabitants of ; so shall my fury be poured forth upon you, when ye shall enter into : and ye shall be an execration, and an astonishment, and , and a ; and ye shall see this place no more. hath said concerning you, O ye of Judah; Go ye not into : know certainly that I have admonished you this day. For ye dissembled in your , when ye sent me unto your , saying, for us unto our ; and according unto all that our shall say, so declare unto us, and we will do it. And now I have this day declared it to you; but ye have not your , nor any thing for the which he hath sent me unto you. Now therefore know certainly that ye shall , by the , and by the pestilence, in the place whither ye to go and to sojourn.
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