World English Bible · Babylon and the exile
Jeremiah 42
Touch any underlined name to see who or where it is. Tap a verse number to see where it is taken up elsewhere.
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 to the greatest, came near, and said to the , "Please let our be presented before you, and for us to your , even for all this , for we are left but of many, as your eyes see us, that your may show us in which we should walk, and the things that we should do." Then the said to them, "I have heard you. Behold, I will to your according to your words; and it will happen that whatever thing answers you, I will declare it to you. I will keep nothing back from you." Then they said to , "May be a true and among us, if we don't do according to all the word with which your sends you to tell us. Whether it is good, or whether it is bad, we will our , to whom we send you; that it may be well with us, when we our ." After ten days, word came to . Then he called the son of , and all the captains of the forces who were with him, and all the people from the least even to the greatest, and said to them, ", the of Israel, to whom you sent me to present your before him, says: 'If you will still live in this land, then I will build you, and not pull you down, and I will plant you, and not pluck you up; for I grieve over the distress that I have brought on you. Don't be afraid of the king of , of whom you are afraid. Don't be afraid of him,' , 'for I am with you to you, and to you from his hand. I will grant you mercy, that he may have mercy on you, and cause you to return to your own land. "'But if you say, "We will not in this land," so that you don't your voice, saying, "No, but we will go into the land of , where we will see no war, nor hear the sound of the , nor have of bread; and there we will ;"' now therefore hear word, O of Judah! of Armies, the of Israel, says, 'If you indeed set your faces to enter into , and go to live there, then it will happen that , which you fear, will overtake you there in the land of ; and the , about which you are afraid, will follow close behind you there in ; and you will there. So will it be with all the men who set their faces to go into to live there. They will , by the , and by the pestilence. None of them will or escape from the evil that I will bring on them.' For of Armies, the of Israel, says: 'As my and my has been poured out on the inhabitants of , so my will be poured out on you, when you enter into ; and you will be an object of horror, an astonishment, , and a ; and you will see this place no more.' " has spoken concerning you, of Judah, 'Don't go into !' Know certainly that I have testified to you today. For you have dealt deceitfully against your own ; for you sent me to your , saying, ' for us to our ; and according to all that our says, so declare to us, and we will do it.' I have declared it to you today; but you have not your voice in anything for which he has sent me to you. Now therefore know certainly that you will , by the , and by the pestilence in the place where you to go to live."
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