King James Version · Babylon and the exile
Jeremiah 46
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The word of which came to the against the ; Against , against the army of –necho king of , which was by the river in , which Nebuchadrezzar king of smote in the fourth year of the son of king of Judah. Order ye the buckler and shield, and draw near to battle. Harness the horses; and get up, ye horsemen, and stand forth with your helmets; furbish the spears, and put on the brigandines. Wherefore have I seen them dismayed and turned away back? and their mighty ones are beaten down, and are fled apace, and look not back: for fear was round about, saith . Let not the swift flee away, nor the mighty man escape; they shall stumble, and fall toward the north by the river . Who is this that cometh up as a flood, whose waters are moved as the rivers? riseth up like a flood, and his waters are moved like the rivers; and he saith, I will go up, and will cover the earth; I will destroy the city and the inhabitants thereof. Come up, ye horses; and rage, ye chariots; and let the come forth; the and the Libyans, that handle the shield; and the Lydians, that handle and bend the bow. For this is of hosts, a day of , that he may him of his : and shall devour, and it shall be satiate and made drunk with their : for of hosts hath a in the north country by the river . Go up into , and take balm, O virgin, the daughter of : in shalt thou use many medicines; for thou shalt not be cured. have heard of thy , and thy cry hath filled the land: for the mighty man hath stumbled against the mighty, and they are fallen both together. The word that spake to the , how Nebuchadrezzar king of should come and smite the land of . Declare ye in , and publish in , and publish in and in : say ye, Stand , and prepare thee; for shall devour round about thee. Why are thy valiant men swept away? they stood not, because did drive them. He made many to fall, yea, one fell upon another: and they said, Arise, and let us go again to our own people, and to the land of our nativity, from the oppressing . They did cry there, king of is but a noise; he hath passed the time appointed. As I live, saith the King, whose name is of hosts, Surely as is among the mountains, and as by the sea, so shall he come. O thou daughter dwelling in , furnish thyself to go into : for shall be waste and desolate without an inhabitant. is like a very fair heifer, but cometh; it cometh out of the north. Also her hired men are in the midst of her like fatted bullocks; for they also are turned back, and are fled away together: they did not stand, because the day of their calamity was come upon them, and the time of their visitation. The voice thereof shall go like a ; for they shall march with an army, and come against her with axes, as hewers of wood. They shall cut down her forest, saith , though it cannot be searched; because they are more than the , and are innumerable. The daughter of shall be confounded; she shall be into the hand of the people of the north. of hosts, the of Israel, saith; Behold, I will punish of No, and , and , with their gods, and their kings; even , and all them that in him: And I will them into the hand of those that seek their lives, and into the hand of Nebuchadrezzar king of , and into the hand of his servants: and afterward it shall be inhabited, as in the days of old, saith . But fear not thou, O my servant , and be not dismayed, O Israel: for, behold, I will thee from afar off, and thy from the land of their ; and shall return, and be in rest and at ease, and none shall make him afraid. Fear thou not, O my servant, saith : for I am with thee; for I will make a full end of all the nations whither I have driven thee: but I will not make a full end of thee, but correct thee in measure; yet will I not leave thee wholly unpunished.
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