King James Version · Babylon and the exile
Jeremiah 43
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And it came to pass, that when had made an end of speaking unto all the people all the words of their , for which their had sent him to them, even all these words, Then spake Azariah the son of Hoshaiah, and the son of , and all the proud men, saying unto , Thou speakest falsely: our hath not sent thee to say, Go not into to sojourn there: But the son of setteth thee on against us, for to us into the hand of the , that they might put us to , and carry us away into . So the son of , and all the captains of the forces, and all the people, not , to in the land of Judah. But the son of , and all the captains of the forces, took all of Judah, that were returned from all nations, whither they had been driven, to in the land of Judah; Even men, and women, and children, and the king’s daughters, and every person that Nebuzar–adan the captain of the guard had left with the son of the son of , and the , and the son of . So they came into the land of : for they not : thus came they even to . Then came the word of unto in , saying, Take great stones in thine hand, and hide them in the in the brickkiln, which is at the entry of ’s house in , in the sight of the men of Judah; And say unto them, Thus saith of hosts, the of Israel; Behold, I will send and take Nebuchadrezzar the king of , my servant, and will set his upon these stones that I have hid; and he shall spread his royal pavilion over them. And when he cometh, he shall smite the land of , and such as are for to ; and such as are for to ; and such as are for to . And I will kindle a in the houses of the gods of ; and he shall burn them, and carry them away : and he shall array himself with the land of , as a putteth on his garment; and he shall go forth from thence in peace. He shall break also the of , that is in the land of ; and the houses of the gods of the shall he burn with .
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