King James Version · Babylon and the exile
Zephaniah 2
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Gather yourselves together, yea, gather together, O nation not ; Before the bring forth, before the day pass as the , before the of come upon you, before ’s come upon you. Seek ye , all ye meek of the earth, which have wrought his ; seek , seek meekness: it may be ye shall be hid in ’s . For shall be forsaken, and a desolation: they shall drive out at the noon day, and shall be rooted up. Woe unto the inhabitants of the sea coast, the nation of the ! the word of is against you; O , the land of the , I will even destroy thee, that there shall be no inhabitant. And the sea coast shall be dwellings and cottages for , and folds for flocks. And the coast shall be for of the house of Judah; they shall feed thereupon: in the houses of shall they lie down in the evening: for their shall visit them, and turn away their . I have heard the of , and the revilings of , whereby they have reproached my people, and magnified themselves against their border. Therefore as I live, saith of hosts, the of Israel, Surely shall be as , and as , even the breeding of nettles, and saltpits, and a perpetual desolation: the residue of my people shall spoil them, and of my people shall possess them. This shall they have for their pride, because they have reproached and magnified themselves against the people of of hosts. will be terrible unto them: for he will famish all the gods of the earth; and men shall him, every one from his place, even all the isles of the heathen. Ye also, ye shall be slain by my . And he will stretch out his hand against the north, and destroy ; and will make a desolation, and dry like a . And flocks shall lie down in the midst of her, all the of the nations: both the cormorant and the bittern shall lodge in the upper lintels of it; their voice shall sing in the windows; desolation shall be in the thresholds: for he shall uncover the cedar work. This is the rejoicing city that dwelt carelessly, that said in her , I am, and there is none beside me: how is she become a desolation, a place for to lie down in! every one that passeth by her shall hiss, and wag his hand.
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.