World English Bible · Babylon and the exile
Jeremiah 47
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word that came to the concerning the , before struck . says: "Behold, waters rise up out of the north, and will become an overflowing stream, and will overflow the land and all that is therein, the city and those who therein. The men will cry, and all the inhabitants of the land will . At the noise of the stamping of the hoofs of his strong ones, at the rushing of his chariots, at the rumbling of his wheels, the fathers don't look back for their children because their hands are so feeble, because of the day that comes to destroy all the , to and every helper who ; for will destroy the , of the isle of Caphtor. Baldness has come on ; is brought to nothing. You of their valley, how long will you cut yourself? "'You of , how long will it be before you are quiet? Put yourself back into your scabbard; rest, and be still.' "How can you be quiet, since has given you a command? Against , and against the seashore, there he has appointed it."
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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