King James Version · Babylon and the exile
Jeremiah 8
Touch any underlined name to see who or where it is. Tap a verse number to see where it is taken up elsewhere.
At that time, saith , they shall bring out the bones of the kings of Judah, and the bones of his princes, and the bones of the priests, and the bones of , and the bones of the inhabitants of , out of their : And they shall spread them before the sun, and the moon, and of , whom they have loved, and whom they have , and after whom they have walked, and whom they have sought, and whom they have : they shall not be gathered, nor be buried; they shall be for dung upon the of the earth. And shall be chosen rather than life by all the residue of them that of this evil family, which in all the places whither I have driven them, saith of hosts. Moreover thou shalt say unto them, Thus saith ; Shall they fall, and not arise? shall he turn away, and not return? Why then is this people of slidden back by a perpetual backsliding? they hold deceit, they refuse to return. I hearkened and heard, but they spake not aright: no man him of his wickedness, saying, What have I done? every one turned to his course, as the horse rusheth into the battle. Yea, the stork in the knoweth her ; and the turtle and the crane and the swallow observe the time of their coming; but my people know not the of . How do ye say, We are , and of is with us? Lo, certainly in made he it; the pen of the is in . men are , they are dismayed and taken: lo, they have rejected the word of ; and what is in them? Therefore will I give their wives unto others, and their fields to them that shall them: for every one from the least even unto the greatest is given to covetousness, from the even unto the priest every one dealeth falsely. For they have healed the hurt of the daughter of my people slightly, saying, Peace, peace; when there is no peace. Were they when they had committed ? nay, they were not at all , neither could they blush: therefore shall they fall among them that fall: in the time of their visitation they shall be cast down, saith . I will surely consume them, saith : there shall be no grapes on , nor figs on the fig tree, and the leaf shall fade; and the things that I have given them shall pass away from them. Why do we sit still? assemble yourselves, and let us enter into the defenced cities, and let us be silent there: for our hath put us to silence, and given us water of gall to drink, because we have against . We looked for peace, but no good came; and for a time of health, and behold trouble! The snorting of his horses was heard from Dan: the whole land trembled at the sound of the neighing of his strong ones; for they are come, and have devoured the land, and all that is in it; the city, and those that therein. For, behold, I will send , cockatrices, among you, which will not be charmed, and they shall bite you, saith . When I would comfort myself against sorrow, is faint in me. Behold the voice of the cry of the daughter of my people because of them that in a far country: Is not in ? is not her king in her? Why have they provoked me to with their graven , and with strange ? The harvest is past, the summer is ended, and we are not . For the hurt of the daughter of my people am I hurt; I am black; astonishment hath taken hold on me. Is there no balm in ; is there no physician there? why then is not the health of the daughter of my people recovered?
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