The Exile to Babylon
Scripture first
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Nebuchadnezzar carries away the , the mighty, the craftsmen: the first great deportation to Babylon.
The exiles did not cross the ; they marched the long arc north to the Euphrates and down its valley, a journey of months. Settled in canal colonies like Tel Abib, they were told by Jeremiah to build, plant and pray for Babylon, because their sentence was measured in decades.
The forced march east: Jerusalem's fall, the deportations of 597 and 586 BC, and the seventy years by the rivers of Babylon.
- Tel Abib, the Kebar canal, the rivers of Babylon
The distance made return impossible to imagine without God's promise. Seventy years is a lifetime; the exile was designed to be the end of a people, and the prophets spent it insisting it was not.
- 2 Kings 24:14-16 Nebuchadnezzar carries away the king, the mighty, the craftsmen: the first great deportation to Babylon.
- 2 Kings 25:11-12 The rest of the city carried away after the burning
- Psalm 137:1-4 By the rivers of Babylon we sat and wept
- Ezekiel 1:1-3 Ezekiel's call among the exiles by the Kebar canal
- Jeremiah 29:4-7 Build houses, plant gardens, seek the welfare of the city
What we know
Certain
- The deportations are recorded in Scripture and confirmed by Babylonian chronicles and ration tablets naming Jehoiachin.