What the Old Testament Means to Us. . . No.6

THE EXILE AND THE SECOND EXODUS

Part of what I am saying about what the Old Testament means to us is that there are two pivotal events around which much of the Old Testament story revolves—the Exodus and the Exile—and that once we have these events in proper perspective we have gone far in understanding the Old Testament. In the previous installment I told the story of the Exodus, depicting it as an act of God’s grace in that it was something that Israel could not do for itself but that God did for them. It was also an expression of God’s grace because it was the beginning of Israel’s nationhood, which had to happen before other gracious things happened.

This time around we pass over several centuries to the second most significant event in Israel’s history, their deportation to Babylon from their homeland in Palestine, which began in 597 B.C. While it is not specifically so designated in Scripture, it has long been called the Exile, a period of about 70 years, following which the Israelites were liberated from their captivity and returned to their homeland.

This is why we refer to these significant events as “The Exile and the Second Exodus,” for just as God’s covenant people were once freed from their Egyptian bondage they are this time delivered from their Babylonian captivity. It was a second exodus and another outburst of God’s free grace, as we shall see. You can see that we are building a theme in this series: God’s grace in the Old Testament.

If the first Exodus (from Egypt) was the beginning of Israel as a nation, the second Exodus (from Babylon) was the reestablishment of Israel as a nation. For the sake of God’s long term purposes nationhood had to begin, and once it was interrupted by captivity in Babylon, it had to be put back on track. If Israel would one day give the Christ to the world, they had to be preserved as a nation.

But why an extended sojourn in captivity covering two generations? Why would God impose such a dreadful interval upon His people? The answer is that during those seven long centuries from the time they left Egypt to the time they were threatened by Babylonian conquest a serious problem had developed, one that threatened their existence as God’s chosen community. This was the gross and persistent sin of idolatry. If God could not rid them of the practice of turning to other gods and serving them, His purposes would be defeated. So, God turns to a pagan king, Nebuchadnezzar of the Chaldeans, whom the Bible refers to as “the Lord’s battle-ax,” to burn the idolatry out of them in a foreign land.

It worked, almost to a fault. In pagan Babylon the captive Israelites got their fill of gods and goddesses, idols and idolatry. So much so that once they returned to their homeland they were paranoid about anything even resembling an idol. They eschewed all images, even innocent ones. They not only disallowed images on their coins, documents, and flags, but even their wallpaper could have no design even remotely resembling an image.

So Israel’s 70 years in Babylon was a prolonged surgical operation—the excision of its relentless idolatry. The surgery was necessary for its survival as God’s covenant people. They could survive with other sins and failures, but not by “gadding about after false gods.” Once Israel had paid “double for all her sins,” as Is. 40:2 puts it, and returned to Palestine as a pardoned people, she continued to be guilty of sins, but not idolatry. When Jesus came to these people centuries later he found them guilty of many sins, but idolatry was not one of them. Idolatry had to be burned out of them, once and for all. That happened in Babylon and that was the purpose of the Exile, which teaches us a lesson about our own “exiles” of life. We all have an occasional “Babylonian captivity,”perhaps a severe one, that God uses to keep us moving in the right direction.

The reason for the Exile goes back to the reign of Manasseh, who ruled Judah for almost a half century (687-642) and promoted idolatry more than any king before or after him. He set in motion idolatrous forces that could be arrested only by severe measures on God’s part. Manasseh “worshipped the whole array of heaven and served it” (2 Kgs. 21:3), practiced soothsaying and magic, and introduced necromancers and wizards, all of which were an abomination to God. While God had said, “Jerusalem is where I will give my name a home,” Manasseh built altars to Baal in the Temple of Yahweh.

When the king “led Judah itself into sin with his idols,” Yahweh resolved to take drastic action: “Yahweh, the God of Israel, says this, ‘Look, I will bring such disaster as to make the ears of all who hear of it tingle” (2 Kgs. 21:12). The disaster referred to was the destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple, and exile in Babylon. Yahweh goes on to say that He was taking such action because Israel had “provoked my anger from the day their ancestors came out of Egypt until now.”

An interesting part of this story is the role played by a woman, Huldah the prophetess. When the Book of the Law (Deuteronomy or parts thereof) was discovered in the Temple about this time, during the reform of king Josiah, Israel’s leaders did not know what to make of it, so they sent an envoy of five men to this woman prophet to see what Yahweh had to say about it. She spared no words in telling them that it was part of God’s judgment:

Yahweh says this: I am bringing disaster on this place and on those that live in it, carrying out everything said in the book the king of Judah has read, because they have deserted me and sacrificed to other gods. (2 Kgs. 22:16)

That pinpoints the reason for the destruction of Jerusalem and the Babylonian captivity. It is noteworthy that a woman plays this prophetic role. Five men, including the priest, are sent to a woman to ascertain the will of God! And Huldah does not mince words, speaking for God when He says, “My anger blazes out against this place.” If a woman would be used by God for such a significant role on the eve of the Exile, why do we suppose that her ministry must be all that subdued today?

We get the picture of God’s distress over Israel’s idolatry when we see that King Josiah’s reform, significant as it was, did not turn God from His determination to discipline Israel in Babylon. Josiah renewed the covenant with Yahweh, reestablished the Passover that had long been neglected, and he destroyed all the cult objects that had been made for Baal. He did away with all the sacrifices to false gods on the high places, and in general corrected all the evil things done by Manasseh.

Because Josiah had this kind of heart, and because he wept before God over the evil deeds of his people, Huldah assured him that he would be gathered to his ancestors in peace, and “your eyes will not see the disasters that I mean to bring on this place.”

Israel’s historians gave Josiah high marks: “No king before him had turned to Yahweh as he did, with all his heart, all his soul, all his strength, in perfect loyalty to the Law of Moses; nor was any king like him seen again” (2 Kgs. 23:26). In spite of Josiah’s efforts, Yahweh did not turn from His purpose to punish Israel, as the historian notes:

Yet Yahweh did not renounce the heat of his great anger which blazed out against Judah because of all the provocation Manasseh had offered him, Yahweh decreed: I will thrust Judah away from me too, as I have already thrust Israel; I will cast away Jerusalem, this city I had chosen, and the Temple of which I said: There my name shall be. (2 Kgs. 23:26-27).

If there was an unpardonable sin in the Old Testament it was idolatry. In spite of Josiah’s great reformation, the Babylonian captivity had to be, idolatry being the sin that it was. The prophets both before and during the Exile recognized its inevitability. Micah, writing 150 years before, saw what the people’s idolatry would lead to. “Jerusalem will be plowed like a field, and Jerusalem will become a heap of rubble,” he said in 3:12, and he went on to name Babylon as the place of exile: “To Babylon you must go and there you will be rescued; there Yahweh will ransom you out of the power of your enemies” (4:10).

Isaiah also, a century and a half ahead of time, saw the scourge of Babylon in Israel’s future. The prophet told king Hezekiah: “The days are coming when everything in your palace, everything that your ancestors have amassed until now, will be carried off to Babylon. Not a thing will be left” (Is. 39:6). The prophet also told the king that the chosen sons of Judah will be carried away to serve as eunuchs in the palace of the king of Babylon. But neither the king nor the people were bothered by what the prophet had said, for it would be a long time in coming.

The prophet Jeremiah lived closer to the action. He was in fact in Jerusalem when the Babylonians first invaded. For years before the enemy came he pled with the people that it was not too late for them and their city to be spared, if they would but repent of their idolatry. In such pleas as this the prophet seemed to believe the tragedy could be averted:

For twenty-three years the word of Yahweh has been addressed to me and I have persistently spoken to you, but you have not listened. Furthermore, Yahweh has persistently sent you all his servants the prophets, but you have not listened, or paid attention. The message was this: ‘Turn back, each of you, from your evil behavior and your evil actions, and you will stay on the soil Yahweh long ago gave to you and your ancestors for ever. And do not follow alien gods to serve and worship them; do not provoke me by what your own hands have made; then I will not harm you.” (Jer. 25:1-6, Jer. Bible).

But the people would not listen to the prophets, so Jeremiah goes on to tell the people that Nebuchadnezzar, the king of Babylon, whom he describes as the servant of Yahweh, will come from the north and make them “an object of horror, of scorn, of lasting shame,” and take them into slavery for 70 years. But when the 70 years are finished God will bring them back to their homeland. “I will give them a heart to acknowledge that I am Yahweh. They shall be my people and I will be their God, for they will return to me with all their heart” (Jer. 24::7).

Once again we see the grace of God in all this. Even when His people would not listen to the prophets He sent to them, God would not give up on them. It is at this point that Jeremiah gives us one of the greatest lines in all the Bible. He has God saying of His people in captivity, “My eyes will watch over them for their good” (Jer.24:6). We can believe that He also watches over us when the dark clouds of exile come our way. Here we have a good interpretation of Ro. 8:28 where we are promised that in all things God works for our good (my translation!). The captivity for Israel was not good but evil, but God used it for their good. Just so a dreadful disease is evil and not good, but God can and will work in it for good.

After several deportations, beginning in 605 B.C. and ending in 586 B.C. with the destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple, Israel was at last settled in a foreign land as captives. Ancient records indicate that as many as 200,000 were deported, but many were left in Palestine, especially the poor and unskilled. In their exile the Jews enjoyed many privileges. They had their trades and professions, built homes, and even kept servants. Prophets, priests, and teachers were with them, some of whom produced writings that became part of our Bible, such as Ezekiel, (Second) Isaiah, and some of the Psalms.

Most of the people became such a part of the Babylonian way of life they forgot their religion and their traditions, and they lost all interest in returning to Palestine. When the call at last came to the new generation that had been born in Babylon to return home, it was a tiny minority that heeded the call. But God always has His remnant!

Beside the problem of losing their people to the paganism of a foreign land, Israel in captivity had to deal with two other matters that were to affect their ongoing history. The first was that they no longer had their Temple, which was the center of both their religion and their culture. God dwelt with them in the Temple, but the Temple was now destroyed. So, their leaders turned to the study of the Law and emphasized a religion of the heart. Prayer and study were thus stressed, and it is probably in this context that the synagogue arose, a new institution in the history of the Jews which was to playa significant role, as well as “places of prayer.”

The second issue was more theological: Why did God allow the holy city of Jerusalem to be destroyed by pagan armies? The Jews believed God watched over the city and that it was impregnable. Was He unable to save it? Now that both the city and the Temple were gone, why should they hold on to their faith? The exilic prophets answered this by observing that it was not a matter of God’s hand being short that He could not save, but that the people’s sins were so gross that destruction and captivity were necessary to save them from themselves. Besides, Yahweh has a plan for His people. He will once again act in history and bring his people back to the promised land. They therefore must keep their faith alive.

In 539 B.C. Babylon fell into the hands of Cyrus the Great of Persia. Even though he was a pagan king the Bible refers to him as “the anointed of the Lord,” for it was he who issued the decree that brought the Jews back to Palestine. In 538 B.C. under Cyrus’ edict 43,000 of them returned home and soon rebuilt their Temple and reestablished Judaism.

Yahweh had his prophet there, assuring them that He was with them and that He would give them the strength for the journey home: “‘Comfort, yes, comfort My people,’ says your God. ‘Speak comfort to Jerusalem, and cry out to her that her warfare is ended, that her iniquity is pardoned’” (Is. 40:1-1). Then comes one of the great passages of the Bible, assuring the Jews that they would have the strength to respond to freedom’s call:

Those who wait on the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings like eagles; they shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint (Is. 40:31).

In the next installment we will look at the Exilic prophets and see how they preached Good News to a people in bondage.—the Editor

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Man looks forward with smiles, but backward with sighs. Such is the wise providence of God. The cup of life is sweetness at the brim—the flavor is impaired as we drink deeper, and the dregs are made bitter that we may not struggle when it is taken from our lips.—Ralph Waldo Emerson