King James Version · Babylon and the exile
Zephaniah 1
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The word of which came unto the son of Cushi, the son of , the son of , the son of Hizkiah, in the days of the son of Amon, king of Judah. I will utterly consume all things from off the land, saith . I will consume man and beast; I will consume the fowls of the , and the fishes of the sea, and the stumblingblocks with ; and I will man from off the land, saith . I will also stretch out mine hand upon Judah, and upon all the inhabitants of ; and I will of from this place, and the name of the Chemarims with the priests; And them that upon the housetops; and them that and that by , and that by Malcham; And them that are turned back from ; and those that have not sought , nor enquired for him. Hold thy peace at the of : for is at hand: for hath prepared a , he hath bid his guests. And it shall come to pass in ’s , that I will punish the princes, and the king’s children, and all such as are clothed with strange apparel. In the same day also will I punish all those that leap on the threshold, which fill their masters’ houses with and deceit. And it shall come to pass in that day, saith , that there shall be the noise of a cry from the fish gate, and an howling from the second, and a great crashing from the hills. Howl, ye inhabitants of Maktesh, for all the merchant people are cut down; all they that bear silver are . And it shall come to pass at that time, that I will search with candles, and punish the men that are settled on their lees: that say in their , will not do good, neither will he do evil. Therefore their goods shall become a booty, and their houses a desolation: they shall also build houses, but not inhabit them; and they shall plant vineyards, but not drink the thereof. of is near, it is near, and hasteth greatly, even the voice of : the mighty man shall cry there bitterly. That day is a , a day of trouble and distress, a day of wasteness and desolation, a day of and gloominess, a day of clouds and thick , A day of the and alarm against the fenced cities, and against the high towers. And I will bring distress upon men, that they shall walk like blind men, because they have against : and their shall be poured out as , and their as the dung. Neither their silver nor their gold shall be able to them in ’s ; but the whole land shall be devoured by the of his : for he shall make even a speedy riddance of all them that in the land.
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.