King James Version · Babylon and the exile
Jeremiah 5
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Run ye to and fro through the streets of , and see now, and know, and seek in the broad places thereof, if ye can find a man, if there be any that executeth , that seeketh the truth; and I will pardon it. And though they say, liveth; surely they falsely. O , are not thine eyes upon the truth? thou hast stricken them, but they have not grieved; thou hast consumed them, but they have refused to receive : they have made their faces harder than a ; they have refused to return. Therefore I said, Surely these are ; they are foolish: for they know not of , nor the of their . I will get me unto the great men, and will speak unto them; for they have known of , and the of their : but these have altogether broken the , and burst the bonds. Wherefore a lion out of the forest shall them, and a wolf of the evenings shall spoil them, a leopard shall watch over their cities: every one that goeth out thence shall be torn in pieces: because their are many, and their backslidings are increased. How shall I pardon thee for this? thy children have forsaken me, and by them that are no gods: when I had fed them to the full, they then committed , and assembled themselves by troops in the harlots’ houses. They were as fed horses in the morning: every one neighed after his neighbour’s wife. Shall I not visit for these things? saith : and shall not be on such a nation as this? Go ye up upon her walls, and destroy; but make not a full end: take away her battlements; for they are not ’s. For the and the house of Judah have dealt very treacherously against me, saith . They have belied , and said, It is not he; neither shall evil come upon us; neither shall we see nor : And shall become wind, and the word is not in them: thus shall it be done unto them. Wherefore thus saith of hosts, Because ye speak this word, behold, I will make my words in thy , and this people wood, and it shall devour them. Lo, I will bring a nation upon you from far, O , saith : it is a mighty nation, it is an ancient nation, a nation whose language thou knowest not, neither understandest what they say. Their quiver is as an open , they are all . And they shall eat up thine harvest, and thy bread, which thy sons and thy daughters should eat: they shall eat up thy flocks and thine herds: they shall eat up thy and thy fig trees: they shall impoverish thy fenced cities, wherein thou trustedst, with . Nevertheless in those days, saith , I will not make a full end with you. And it shall come to pass, when ye shall say, Wherefore doeth our all these things unto us? then shalt thou answer them, Like as ye have forsaken me, and strange gods in your land, so shall ye strangers in a land that is not yours. 20Declare this in the house of , and publish it in Judah, saying, Hear now this, O foolish people, and without understanding; which have eyes, and see not; which have ears, and hear not: Fear ye not me? saith : will ye not tremble at my , which have placed the sand for the bound of the sea by a perpetual , that it cannot pass it: and though the waves thereof toss themselves, yet can they not prevail; though they roar, yet can they not pass over it? But this people hath a revolting and a rebellious ; they are revolted and gone. Neither say they in their , Let us now our , that giveth , both the former and the latter, in his season: he reserveth unto us the appointed weeks of the harvest. Your have turned away these things, and your have withholden good things from you. For among my people are found men: they lay wait, as he that setteth snares; they set a trap, they catch men. As a cage is full of birds, so are their houses full of deceit: therefore they are become great, and waxen rich. They are waxen fat, they shine: yea, they overpass the deeds of : they judge not the cause, the cause of , yet they prosper; and the right of do they not judge. Shall I not visit for these things? saith : shall not be on such a nation as this? A wonderful and horrible thing is committed in the land; falsely, and the priests bear rule by their means; and my people love to have it so: and what will ye do in the end thereof?
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