How many exiles

Ezra, the scribe of the law, was charged by the Persian king to teach the people in Jerusalem of the law and then set up a judgment system for the lawbreakers see Ezra — In the days of Ezra and Nehemiah these specialists in the law constituted a titled class, to whom deference and honor were paid.

According to Talmudic record, the organization consisted of one hundred and twenty eminent scholars. The scope of their labors, according to the admonition traditionally perpetuated by themselves, is thus expressed: Be careful in judgment; set up many scholars, and make a hedge about the law.

They followed this behest by much study and careful consideration of all traditional details in administration; by multiplying scribes and rabbis unto themselves; and, as some of them interpreted the requirement of setting up many scholars, by writing many books and tractates; moreover, they made a fence or hedge about the law by adding numerous rules, which prescribed with great exactness the officially established proprieties for every occasion.

Ezra is faced with a long and dangerous journey at a time of great unrest. And having boasted his confidence in God, he can hardly now apply to the king for an escort! Any male member of the tribe of Levi was a Levite, but a priest had to be a descendant of Aaron, who was also of the tribe of Levi.

Priests were thus a subgroup of the Levites. The sons referred to in Ezra are those of the Levites who were not priests, that is, those Levites who were not descendants of Aaron. Shortly after Ezra arrived in Jerusalem, he commenced his priestly duties of putting affairs in order.

The priests and Levites in Jerusalem had allowed the temple service to seriously deteriorate. Many of them had gone out to make a living because the temple was not supported sufficiently to allow them to serve full time.

Some of them had even taken wives of the pagan nations, as had many other Jewish citizens. All of this horrified Ezra and many of the faithful who had told him of the problem see Ezra —4. Intermarriage with people from some of the surrounding nations was expressly forbidden by the Lord because it led to idolatry see Deuteronomy —5.

Idolatry had led to the downfall of the Israelite nation, but even the horrors of defeat and exile had not taught the people their lesson.

Ezra , 7, 10—12 shows how Ezra successfully called the people to Jerusalem to confess their transgressions and to covenant to put away their heathen wives. It was an important step for the people of Judah in preparing themselves to be worthy of the temple and the sacred land to which the Lord had prophesied they would return.

It appears that the covenant renewal led by Ezra and described in Nehemiah 8—10 occurred at about this same time see Notes and Commentary on Nehemiah 8— He charges them with cancelling several other places through the same spirit of enmity and opposition. One of the most often repeated lessons of the scriptures is that Jehovah is actively engaged in the affairs of all nations, not just in the affairs of the chosen people of Israel, as Ezra clearly showed.

They were a tiny nation in bondage, surrounded by nations stronger than they were. How could they be preserved?

Only by the divine intervention of a Supreme Deity who watches over the present while He plans for ages to come. This time in Jewish history was the low ebb in the life of a nation destined yet to become a giant in the earth.

What is true for nations is true for individuals. Do you rest tranquilly in your own trust in the Lord? You should appreciate the following remarks of President Brigham Young:. Who of this congregation can realise for one moment, that the Lord would notice so trifling an affair as the hairs you have combed from your heads this morning?

Yet it is so, not one hair has fallen to the ground without the notice of our Father in heaven. To convince the ancient Apostles of His care over them, Jesus selected the most trifling things, in their estimation, to illustrate to their minds that the least thing escaped not His notice. Are not two sparrows sold for a farthing? But the very hairs of your head are numbered. If we have not learned these lessons they are before us, and we have them yet to learn. If we have not learned how to handle the things of this world in the light of salvation, we have it yet to learn.

Though we have mountains of gold and silver, and stores of precious things heaped up, and could control the elements, and command the cattle on a thousand hills, if we have not learned that every iota of it should be devoted to the building up of the kingdom of God on earth, it is a lesson yet to learn. Truly, Ezra was an inspired instrument in the hands of the Lord!

Seemingly, this treasure could reach Jerusalem only if it had a large military guard. The route he had to take was infested with bands of robbers.

But Ezra could not ask the king for an army guard to protect him. He therefore found it necessary to seek the Lord by fasting and prayer, that they might have from Him those succours without which they might become a prey to their enemies; and then the religion which they professed would be considered by the heathen as false and vain.

Thus we see that this good man had more anxiety for the glory of God than for his own personal safety. Read again Ezra —23, Now read Proverbs —6.

What steps will you take the next time you face a seemingly insurmountable task? Prophecies of the Dispensation of the fullness of Times.

The next section of the canon , the Deuteronomistic History Deuteronomy through Kings , ends with the Babylonian captivity. Historically, Israel and Judah experienced a number of major exiles.

Foremost among these was the exile of the northern kingdom of Israel at the hands of the Assyrians around B. These exiled people were presumably deported and scattered within the Assyrian Empire , although we know little of their fate. Others fled to Egypt, although a significant number of Judeans also remained behind in Judah. By the sixth century B. For these Jewish communities, living in exile posed a challenge, if not a crisis.

Living outside the Promised Land, without the temple, Jewish exiles were compelled to develop new ways of forming a community and worshipping Yahweh. Many managed not simply to survive but to thrive.

In this view, exile was not simply geographic displacement but had become a reflection of the spiritual, even existential, condition of estrangement from Yahweh.

Martien A. Halvorson-Taylor, "Exile in the Hebrew Bible", n. Halvorson-Taylor is an associate professor and an award-winning teacher at the University of Virginia. Babylon was one of the most important political, religious, and cultural centers of ancient Mesopotamia, the land between the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers in present-day Iraq. Place is of central concern in the Hebrew Bible, and biblical authors used place to make sense of the past, present, and future as well as their relationship to God and neighbor.

Hebrew is regarded as the spoken language of ancient Israel but is largely replaced by Aramaic in the Persian period. People from the region of northern Mesopotamia that includes modern-day Iraq, Syria, Jordan and Lebanon. The period between and B. The exile ended when Cyrus of Persia defeated Babylon and allowed the Judeans to return home.

Residents of the ancient Mesopotamian city of Babylon, also used to refer to the population of the larger geographical designation of lower Mesopotamia. Related to the religious beliefs connected to Deuteronomy, which emphasized monotheism, the Jerusalem temple, observance of the Law, and the destruction of idolatry.

The set of Biblical books shared by Jews and Christians. We know almost nothing of the Jews in Judah after Judah seems to have been wracked by famine, according the biblical book, Lamentations , which was written in Jerusalem during the exile.

The entire situation seemed to be one of infinite despair. Some people were better off; when Nebuchadnezzar deported the wealthy citizens, he redistributed the land among the poor. So some people were better off. In addition, there were rivalries between the two groups of Jews. It is clear that the wealthy and professional Jews in Babylon regarded themselves as the true Jewish people.

The salient feature of the exile, however, was that the Jews were settled in a single place by Nebuchadnezzar. While the Assyrian deportation of Israelites in BC resulted in the complete disappearance of the Israelites, the deported Jews formed their own community in Babylon and retained their religion, practices, and philosophies.

Some, it would seem, adopted the Chaldean religion for they name their offspring after Chaldean gods , but for the most part, the community remained united in its common faith in Yahweh. They called themselves the "gola," "exiles" , or the "bene gola" "the children of the exiles" , and within the crucible of despair and hopelessness, they forged a new national identity and a new religion.

The exile was unexplainable; Hebrew history was built on the promise of Yahweh to protect the Hebrews and use them for his purposes in human history. Their defeat and the loss of the land promised to them by Yahweh seemed to imply that their faith in this promise was misplaced. This crisis, a form of cognitive dissonance when your view of reality and reality itself do not match one another , can precipitate the most profound despair or the most profound reworking of a world view.

For the Jews in Babylon, it did both. From texts such as Lamentations , which was probably written in Jerusalem , and Job , written after the exile, as well as many of the Psalms , Hebrew literature takes on a despairing quality. The subject of Job is human suffering itself.