World English Bible · Babylon and the exile
Lamentations 5
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Remember, , what has come on us. Look, and see our . Our has been turned over to strangers, our houses to aliens. We are and . Our mothers are as . We must pay for water to drink. Our wood is sold to us. Our pursuers are on our necks. We are weary, and have no rest. We have given our hands to the , and to the , to be satisfied with bread. Our fathers , and are no more. We have borne their . Servants us. There is no one to us out of their hand. We get our bread at the peril of our lives, because of in . Our skin is black like an oven, because of the burning heat of . They ravished the women in , the virgins in the cities of Judah. Princes were hanged up by their hands. The faces of were not . The young men carry millstones. The children stumbled under loads of wood. The have ceased from the , and the young men from their music. The joy of our has ceased. Our dance is turned into . The has fallen from our head. Woe to us, for we have ! For this our is faint. For these things our eyes are dim: for the mountain of , which is desolate. The foxes walk on it. You, , . Your is from generation to generation. Why do you forget us , and forsake us for so long a time? Turn us to yourself, , and we will be turned. Renew our days as of old. But you have utterly rejected us. You are very angry against us.
A public domain modern English translation, free to read and share. 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.