King James Version · Babylon and the exile
Obadiah
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The of . Thus saith concerning ; We have heard a rumour from , and an ambassador is sent among the heathen, Arise ye, and let us rise up against her in battle. Behold, I have made thee small among the heathen: thou art greatly despised. The pride of thine hath deceived thee, thou that dwellest in the clefts of , whose habitation is high; that saith in , Who shall bring me down to the ground? Though thou exalt thyself as the eagle, and though thou set thy nest among the stars, thence will I bring thee down, saith . If thieves came to thee, if robbers by night, (how art thou !) would they not have stolen till they had enough? if the grapegatherers came to thee, would they not leave some grapes? How are the things of searched out! how are his hidden things sought up! All the men of thy confederacy have brought thee even to the border: the men that were at peace with thee have deceived thee, and prevailed against thee; they that eat thy bread have laid a wound under thee: there is none understanding in him. Shall I not in that day, saith , even destroy men out of , and understanding out of the mount of ? And thy , O , shall be dismayed, to the end that every one of the mount of may by slaughter. For thy against thy brother shall cover thee, and thou shalt for ever. In the day that thou stoodest on the other side, in the day that the strangers his forces, and entered into his , and cast lots upon , even thou wast as one of them. But thou shouldest not have looked on the day of thy brother in the day that he became a ; neither shouldest thou have rejoiced over the children of Judah in the day of their ; neither shouldest thou have spoken proudly in the day of distress. Thou shouldest not have entered into the of my people in the day of their calamity; yea, thou shouldest not have looked on their affliction in the day of their calamity, nor have laid hands on their substance in the day of their calamity; Neither shouldest thou have stood in the crossway, to those of his that did escape; neither shouldest thou have up those of his that did in the day of distress. For is near upon all the heathen: as thou hast done, it shall be done unto thee: thy reward shall return upon thine own head. For as ye have drunk upon my mountain, so shall all the heathen drink continually, yea, they shall drink, and they shall swallow down, and they shall be as though they had not been. But upon mount shall be , and there shall be ; and the house of shall possess their possessions. And the house of shall be a , and the a flame, and the house of for stubble, and they shall kindle in them, and devour them; and there shall not be any remaining of the house of ; for hath spoken it. And they of the south shall possess the mount of ; and they of the plain the : and they shall possess the fields of , and the fields of : and shall possess . And of this host of the shall possess that of , even unto ; and of , which is in , shall possess the cities of the south. And saviours shall come up on mount to judge the mount of ; and shall be ’s.
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 Obadiah