King James Version · Babylon and the exile
Jeremiah 7
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1The word that came to from , saying, Stand in the of ’s house, and proclaim there this word, and say, Hear the word of , all ye of Judah, that enter in at these to . Thus saith of hosts, the of Israel, Amend your ways and your doings, and I will cause you to in this place. ye not in lying words, saying, of , of , of , are these. For if ye throughly amend your ways and your doings; if ye throughly execute between a man and his neighbour; If ye oppress not the , , and the , and shed not innocent in this place, neither walk after other gods to your hurt: Then will I cause you to in this place, in the land that I gave to your fathers, . Behold, ye in lying words, that cannot profit. Will ye steal, , and , and falsely, and unto , and walk after other gods whom ye know not; And come and stand before me in this house, which is called by my name, and say, We are to do all these ? Is this house, which is called by my name, become a den of robbers in your eyes? Behold, even I have seen it, saith . But go ye now unto my place which was in , where I set my name at the first, and see what I did to it for the wickedness of my people Israel. And now, because ye have done all these works, saith , and I spake unto you, rising up early and speaking, but ye heard not; and I called you, but ye answered not; Therefore will I do unto this house, which is called by my name, wherein ye , and unto the place which I gave to you and to your fathers, as I have done to . And I will cast you out of my sight, as I have cast out all your brethren, even the whole of . Therefore not thou for this people, neither lift up cry nor for them, neither make intercession to me: for I will not hear thee. Seest thou not what they do in the cities of Judah and in the streets of ? The children gather wood, and the fathers kindle the , and the women knead their dough, to make cakes to the queen of heaven, and to pour out drink unto other gods, that they may provoke me to . Do they provoke me to ? saith : do they not provoke themselves to the confusion of their own faces? Therefore thus saith ; Behold, mine and my fury shall be poured out upon this place, upon man, and upon beast, and upon the trees of the field, and upon the fruit of the ground; and it shall burn, and shall not be quenched. Thus saith of hosts, the of Israel; Put your burnt offerings unto your , and eat . For I spake not unto your fathers, nor commanded them in the day that I brought them out of the land of , concerning burnt offerings or : But this thing commanded I them, saying, , and I will be your , and ye shall be my people: and walk ye in all the ways that I have commanded you, that it may be well unto you. But they hearkened not, nor inclined their ear, but walked in the counsels and in the imagination of their evil , and went backward, and not forward. Since the day that your fathers came forth out of the land of unto this day I have even sent unto you all my servants , daily rising up early and sending them: Yet they hearkened not unto me, nor inclined their ear, but hardened their neck: they did worse than their fathers. Therefore thou shalt speak all these words unto them; but they will not to thee: thou shalt also call unto them; but they will not answer thee. But thou shalt say unto them, This is a nation that obeyeth not their , nor receiveth : truth is , and is their . thine hair, O , and cast it away, and take up a on ; for hath rejected and forsaken the generation of his . For the children of Judah have done evil in my sight, saith : they have set their in the house which is called by my name, to pollute it. And they have built the of , which is in the valley of the son of Hinnom, to burn their sons and their daughters in the ; which I commanded them not, neither came it into . Therefore, behold, the days come, saith , that it shall no more be called , nor the valley of the son of Hinnom, but the valley of slaughter: for they shall bury in , till there be no place. And the carcases of this people shall be meat for the fowls of the , and for the of the earth; and none shall fray them away. Then will I cause to cease from the cities of Judah, and from the streets of , the voice of mirth, and the voice of gladness, the voice of the , and the voice of the : for the land shall be desolate.
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