King James Version · Babylon and the exile
Lamentations 4
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How is the gold become dim! how is the most fine gold changed! the stones of are poured out in the top of every street. The precious sons of , comparable to fine gold, how are they esteemed as earthen pitchers, the work of the hands of the ! Even the sea monsters draw out the breast, they give suck to their young ones: the daughter of my people is become cruel, like the ostriches in . of the sucking child cleaveth to the roof of his for thirst: the young children ask bread, and no man breaketh it unto them. They that did feed delicately are desolate in the streets: they that were brought up in scarlet embrace dunghills. For the punishment of the of the daughter of my people is greater than the punishment of the of , that was overthrown as in a moment, and no hands stayed on her. Her Nazarites were purer than snow, they were whiter than milk, they were more ruddy in body than rubies, their polishing was of sapphire: Their visage is blacker than a coal; they are not known in the streets: their skin cleaveth to their bones; it is withered, it is become like a stick. They that be slain with are better than they that be slain with : for these pine away, stricken through for want of the fruits of the field. The hands of the pitiful women have sodden their own children: they were their meat in the of the daughter of my people. hath accomplished his fury; he hath poured out his , and hath kindled a in , and it hath devoured the foundations thereof. The kings of the earth, and all the inhabitants of the world, would not have that the adversary and should have entered into the of . For the of her , and the of her priests, that have shed of the in the midst of her, They have wandered as blind men in the streets, they have polluted themselves with , so that men could not touch their garments. They cried unto them, Depart ye; it is ; depart, depart, touch not: when they fled away and wandered, they said among the heathen, They shall no more sojourn there. The of hath divided them; he will no more regard them: they respected not the persons of the priests, they favoured not the . As for us, our eyes as yet failed for our help: in our watching we have watched for a nation that could not us. They hunt our steps, that we cannot go in our streets: our end is near, our days are fulfilled; for our end is come. Our persecutors are swifter than the eagles of the : they pursued us upon the mountains, they laid wait for us in . The breath of our nostrils, of , was taken in their pits, of whom we said, Under his shadow we shall live among the heathen. Rejoice and be glad, O daughter of , that dwellest in the land of ; also shall pass through unto thee: thou shalt be drunken, and shalt make thyself . The punishment of thine is accomplished, O daughter of ; he will no more carry thee away into : he will visit thine , O daughter of ; he will discover thy .
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.