King James Version · Babylon and the exile
Jeremiah 4
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If thou wilt return, O Israel, saith , return unto me: and if thou wilt thine out of my sight, then shalt thou not remove. And thou shalt , liveth, in truth, in , and in ; and the nations shall themselves in him, and in him shall they . For thus saith to the men of Judah and , Break up your fallow ground, and sow not among . Circumcise yourselves to , and take away the foreskins of , ye men of Judah and inhabitants of : lest my fury come forth like , and burn that none can quench it, because of the evil of your doings. Declare ye in Judah, and publish in ; and say, Blow ye the in the land: cry, gather together, and say, Assemble yourselves, and let us go into the defenced cities. Set up the standard toward : retire, stay not: for I will bring evil from the north, and a great . The lion is come up from his thicket, and of the is on his way; he is gone forth from his place to make thy land desolate; and thy cities shall be laid waste, without an inhabitant. For this gird you with , and howl: for the of is not turned back from us. And it shall come to pass at that day, saith , that of the king shall , and of the princes; and the priests shall be astonished, and shall wonder. Then said I, Ah, ! surely thou hast greatly deceived this people and , saying, Ye shall have peace; whereas reacheth unto the . At that time shall it be said to this people and to , A dry wind of the in toward the daughter of my people, not to fan, nor to cleanse, Even a full wind from those places shall come unto me: now also will I give sentence against them. Behold, he shall come up as clouds, and his chariots shall be as a whirlwind: his horses are swifter than eagles. Woe unto us! for we are spoiled. O , wash thine from wickedness, that thou mayest be . How long shall thy lodge within thee? For a voice declareth from Dan, and publisheth affliction from mount . Make ye mention to the nations; behold, publish against , that come from a far country, and give out their voice against the cities of Judah. As keepers of a field, are they against her round about; because she hath been rebellious against me, saith . Thy way and thy doings have procured these things unto thee; this is thy wickedness, because it is bitter, because it reacheth unto thine . My bowels, my bowels! I am pained at my very ; maketh a noise in me; I cannot hold my peace, because thou hast heard, O , the sound of the , the alarm of war. upon is cried; for the whole land is spoiled: suddenly are my tents spoiled, and my curtains in a moment. How long shall I see the standard, and hear the sound of the ? For my people is foolish, they have not known me; they are sottish children, and they have none understanding: they are to do evil, but to do good they have no knowledge. I beheld the earth, and, lo, it was without form, and void; and , and they had no . I beheld the mountains, and, lo, they trembled, and all the hills moved lightly. I beheld, and, lo, there was no man, and all the birds of were fled. I beheld, and, lo, the fruitful place was a , and all the cities thereof were broken down at the of , and by his . For thus hath said, The whole land shall be desolate; yet will I not make a full end. For this shall the earth mourn, and above be black: because I have spoken it, I have purposed it, and will not , neither will I from it. The whole city shall flee for the noise of the horsemen and bowmen; they shall go into thickets, and climb up upon the rocks: every city shall be forsaken, and not a man therein. And when thou art spoiled, what wilt thou do? Though thou clothest thyself with crimson, though thou deckest thee with ornaments of gold, though thou rentest thy with painting, in shalt thou make thyself fair; thy lovers will despise thee, they will seek thy life. For I have heard a voice as of a woman in travail, and the anguish as of her that bringeth forth her first child, the voice of the daughter of , that bewaileth herself, that spreadeth her hands, saying, Woe is me now! for is wearied because of .
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