So here I am about to create a sort of commentary on where I am in the Bible right now. That's safe, it's always good in a multitude of ways and, in writing about the Bible, I don't have to worry that I will later regret something personal I may have shared. Or the attitude in which I may have expressed it.
So, be it chicken or be it wise of me, here we go.
Maybe 2 New Years resolutions ago, I purposed to read the Bible "more." When I was out of work for a few months around April, 2017, I had time to make it into an ingrained, daily habit. Currently, I am at the beginning of Jeremiah chapter 34.
Jeremiah has been prophesying and prophesying to God's people that they most certainly WILL be overtaken by Babylon and that they most certainly WILL lose ev...ery...thing... they have. Because they have turned a cold shoulder to God who loves them on a level of love no human could begin to really understand.
Leading up to this part of Jeremiah, the prophecies have begun to center around God's promising that, after an unspecified time has passed (I guess maybe after they have realized their wrongs and gotten back on the right path), God's people will regain their land and once again be so very happy... children playing in the streets, people falling in love, great harvests of fruits and vegetables, all that.
So that's where I ended this morning. Now I am starting chapter 34.
Okay so in verse 1, Nebuchadnezzar is coming with massive forces and fighting Jerusalem and Judah. And God gives Jeremiah a message for King Zedekiah of Judah, saying God is going to give their city to Nebby "and he will burn it down." God says there is no way they can escape; they will be captured and taken off to Babylon.
(I sometimes get curious about something as I'm reading, and end up taking a little side-route/detour to investigate a detail. Right now I'm curious about what Babylon was actually like; what it looked like, what it was like to BE there. Check this out:)
The website <https://biblestudytools.com/dictionary/babylon/> says Babylon actually started out as Babel, where they built the Tower of Babel. Did not know that! See, there's interesting stuff all over the place; just have to look for it. :)
The website <https://ancient.eu/babylon/> says the ruins of Babylon are in what is now Iraq, almost 60 miles SW of Baghdad. Apparently, a German archaeologist named Robert Koldewey excavated these remains in 1899. That is something I really would have loved to see! Let me quote a little tidbit for you:
"...the city is known for its impressive walls and buildings, its reputation as a great seat of learning and culture, the formation of a code of law which pre-dates the Mosaic Law, and for the Hanging Gardens of Babylon which were man-made terraces of flora and fauna, watered by machinery, which were cited by Herodotus as one of the Seven Wonders of the World."
That site also says Babylon was founded over 2,000-some years BEFORE CHRIST! That is some OLD stuff!! Too bad there are no photos or at least paintings. There probably are paintings, come to thing of it. Hang on, let me look a little more.
Okay, check this out (from the same site:)
"Whatever early role the city played in the ancient world is lost to modern-day scholars because the water level in the region has risen steadily over the centuries and the ruins of Old Babylon have become inaccessible. The ruins which were excavated by Koldewey, and are visible today date only to well over one thousand years after the city was founded."
Sounds like you can see a version of parts of Babylon after it had been around for 1,000 years, but not as it was, originally. My mental image is of a city with high, thick walls... terraces of lush, hanging gardens, terraces with riches' worth of plants of animals and lots of flowing water.
I bet it was beautiful.
Here is more information I find extremely interesting:
"The Hanging gardens are most explicitly described in a passage from Diodorus Siculus (90-30 BCE) in his work Bibliotheca Historica Book II.10:"
"There was also, because the acropolis, the Hanging Garden ...was built ...by a later Syrian king to please one of his concubines; for she, they say, being a Persian by race and longing for the meadows of her mountains, asked the king to imitate, through the artifice of a planted garden, the distinctive landscape of Persia. The park extended four plethra...
{<https://britannica.com/science/mathematics/Mathematics-in-ancient-Egypt#ref536066> "in the Greek colonies of the 6th and 5th centuries, there was regular use of a standard length of 70 plethra (one plethron equals 100 feet)}
(Okay, math... so 70 plethra would be 7000 feet, right? And one plethra would be... 700 feet? Which would translate to... 233 yards?? So the park was as long as about 2 1/3 football fields on each side)
"on each side, and since the approach to the garden sloped like a hillside and the several parts of the structure rose from one another tier on tier, the appearance of the whole resembled that of a theatre."
Interesting also:
"When the ascending terraces had been built, there had been constructed beneath them galleries which carried the entire weight of the planted garden and rose little by little one above the other along the approach; and the uppermost gallery, which was fifty cubits high (cubit=1.5 ft=22.5 feet), bore the highest surface of the park.... Furthermore, the walls,,, were twenty-two feet thick, while the passage-way between each two walls was ten feet wide. The roofs of the galleries were covered over with beams of stone sixteen feet long, inclusive of the overlap, and four feet wide."
(Wow!)
"...The roof above these beams had first a layer of reeds... over this two courses of baked brick bonded by cement, and as a third layer a covering of lead, to the end that the moisture from the soil might not penetrate beneath."
(Smart!)
"On all this... earth had been piled to a depth sufficient for the roots of the largest trees; and the ground, which was levelled off, was thickly planted with trees of every kind that, by their great size... could give pleasure to beholder. And since the galleries, each projecting beyond another, all received the light, they contained many royal lodgings of every description; and there was one gallery which contained openings leading from the topmost surface and machines for supplying the garden with water, the machines raising the water in great abundance from the river, although no one outside could see it being done."
Wow, I thing I would have loved it there! Minus the, um, idol worship and what not....
What I mean to say is, a place TODAY that looked like ancient Babylon would definitely be a place on my vacation destination list!
But, back in the years when this part of the Bible was written, it was a place God's people were being captured and taken to as prisoners and slaves.
What I mean to say is, a place TODAY that looked like ancient Babylon would definitely be a place on my vacation destination list!
But, back in the years when this part of the Bible was written, it was a place God's people were being captured and taken to as prisoners and slaves.
Okay. We have gotten 2 verses into Jeremiah 34 but we have also had a very interestimg lesson in history and archaeology, to some extent!
Now my allergy meds are hitting me and I'm fading fast, so we'll stop here. Feel free to keep reading and studying, and share with me what you find!
Nicole :)
