World English Bible · Babylon and the exile
Jeremiah 43
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When had finished speaking to all the people all the words of their , with which their had sent him to them, even all these words, then Azariah the son of Hoshaiah, the son of , and all the proud men spoke, saying to , "You speak falsely. our has not sent you to say, 'You shall not go into to live there;' but the son of has turned you against us, to us into the hand of the , that they may put us to or carry us away to ." So the son of , and all the captains of the forces, and all the people, didn't voice, to in the land of Judah. But the son of and all the captains of the forces took all of Judah, who had returned from all the nations where they had been driven, to live in the land of Judah— the men, the women, the children, the king's daughters, and every person who the captain of the guard had left with the son of , the son of ; and the , and the son of . They came into the land of , for they didn't voice; and they came to . Then word came to in , saying, "Take great stones in your hand and hide them in mortar in the brick work which is at the entry of house in , in the sight of the men of Judah. Tell them, of Armies, the of Israel, says: 'Behold, I will send and take the king of , my servant, and will set his on these stones that I have hidden; and he will spread his royal pavilion over them. He will come, and will strike the land of ; such as are for will be put to , and such as are for to , and such as are for to . I will kindle a in the houses of the gods of . He will burn them, and carry them away . He will array himself with the land of , as a puts on his garment; and he will go out from there in peace. He will also break the pillars of that is in the land of ; and he will burn the houses of the gods of with .'"
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