Babylonian Captivity and Return Home

     God’s prophets told the Israelites they would spend seventy years in captivity. They were told to move into houses and settle down to make a life in that foreign country.

     When God allowed His people to return to Jerusalem after the seventy years, some of the people elected to stay on in Babylon. After all, they had reared families there. It seemed like home to them. Queen Esther is one of the individuals whose families stayed.

     Queen Esther was the beautiful young woman chosen by the king to be his wife after he had sent away the former queen. It was in Esther’s position as queen that she was able to save her countrymen from destruction. The Jewish people were hated by some of their captors. The king did not realize that his queen was a Jew, and he signed a decree that all Jews should be killed. Esther bravely intervened. The king provided a way to preserve the Jews. He also honored Esther’s older cousin Mordecai, who had saved the king’s life several years earlier when he reported a plot against the king.

     It was prophesied that King Cyrus would provide the release for God’s children to return to their homeland. King Cyrus not only allowed them to go free, but he gave them the assistance they needed to make the journey and to make the repairs that lay ahead in Jerusalem.

     Ezra and Nehemiah led large groups of people back to their old home. Once they were in Jerusalem, the people began working on the temple and the city wall. The temple was repaired, but it would never again be as wonderfully beautiful as in the day of Solomon. It gave the people a place to worship, and they directed their attention to finding out once again, God’s directions for acceptable worship. Just as we often do, the people had made a mess of their lives. God requires repentance and some changes had to be made.

     The scriptures picture the people standing in the rain and crying pitifully over their lives of sin and disobedience as Ezra reasoned with them. This is recorded in Ezra 10.

     Once the people began to “feel at home” in the land of Israel, they began to build beautifully paneled homes. They became absorbed in their possessions, particularly their lives of leisure in those lovely homes. They began to overlook their dependence on God, and they became indifferent to Him. God and His worship should always be first in our lives. Men and women must remember this. Money and the things money buys often blur our vision, and the Lord and His will might slip into second place.  

     With this lesson, we end our study of the Old Testament. The New Testament, which will follow as Part III, tells its readers that the Old Testament provides lessons, or examples, of how God dealt with His people who lived many years ago. Those accounts show us how God hates sin and how he loves faithful men.