In this final article in the ‘Living in Babylon Today’ series we examine God’s purpose in sending the people of Israel into exile in Babylon and ask whether his purpose was fulfilled – or was the exile a tragic failure?

At the beginning of the exile, Jeremiah, in his famous letter, stated God’s promise: “‘I will come to you and fulfil my gracious promise to bring you back to this place. For I know the plans I have for you’, declares the Lord. ‘Plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future’” (Jer 29:10-11).

That letter must have been read hundreds of times, committed to memory and passed from parents to children throughout the years in Babylon. But after more than 50 years the exiles were into the third generation and most of those who originally came from Jerusalem had died. It was hard to keep alive the hope of returning to the land of their fathers. But this was the message that God gave to Isaiah, who burst onto the scene saying that the time had now come for God to fulfil his promise and release his people: “Shout for joy, O heavens; rejoice, O earth; burst into song, O mountains! For the Lord comforts his people and will have compassion on his afflicted ones” (Isa 49:13).

Far from accepting the message gladly, most of the exiles treated the Prophet with scorn. So, the first thing he had to do was to counteract the unbelief of the people who said, “The Lord has forsaken me, the Lord has forgotten me.” He said that it was no more possible for God to forget his people than a mother could forget her new-born baby. “See, I have engraved you on the palms of my hands!” (Isa 49:16).

Isaiah said that it was no more possible for God to forget his people than a mother could forget her new-born baby.

Rebuilding the Temple

The vision given to Isaiah was that God was sending his people back to rebuild the city of Jerusalem and its Temple. Even foreigners would be welcome in the Temple if they truly loved God, obeyed the teaching of Moses and kept the sabbath.

The new Temple would be different. Animal sacrifice would be forbidden: “This is the one I esteem: he who is humble and contrite in spirit and trembles at my word. But whoever sacrifices a bull is like one who kills a man, and whoever offers a lamb, like one who breaks a dog’s neck” (Isa 66:1-3). This was not revolutionary, as it had been declared in Jerusalem more than 200 years earlier: “‘The multitude of your sacrifices – what are they to me?’ says the Lord…‘I have no pleasure in the blood of bulls and lambs and goats’” (Isa 1:11-12).

The vision for the new Temple set out in Isaiah 56 was quoted by Jesus when he drove out the cattle and overturned the tables of the moneychangers: “Is it not written: My house will be called a house of prayer for all nations? But you have made it a den of robbers” (Mark 11:17).

A Redeemed People

The major message of Isaiah was not only the new Temple, but his revelation of the reason why God had taken his people into exile in the first place. It was to bring them back as a redeemed people, cleansed from idolatry, to be God’s witnesses to the Gentile world:

‘You are my witnesses’, declares the Lord, ‘and my servant whom I have chosen, so that you may know and believe me and understand that I am he. Before me no God was formed, nor will there be one after me. I, even I, am the Lord, apart from me there is no Saviour. (Isa 43:10-11)

The three things God was looking for in those who returned from the exile were:

• to exercise justice
  
• to keep the sabbath
  
• to act righteously (Isa 56:1-2)
  

God had taken his people into exile to bring them back as a redeemed people, cleansed from idolatry, to be his witnesses to the Gentile world.

Lessons Not Learned

But far from following the pattern of the new Temple being ‘a house of prayer for all nations’ and the people of Israel being God’s witnesses to other nations – none of these things are seen among the people back in Jerusalem.

Haggai was the first to minister among the people newly returned from Babylon. They had been back about 20 years and they were struggling to rebuild the ruined city and regenerate the shattered economy. Haggai said God was not blessing them because they had built fine houses for themselves, but they had not rebuilt the Temple and put God into the centre of their lives.

Two years later, Zechariah accused them of showing no mercy and compassion to one another. He said “Do not oppress the widow or the fatherless, the alien or the poor. In your hearts do not think evil of each other” (Zech 7:9).

About 80 years later, Malachi was scathing in rebuking the people whom he referred to as “adulterers and perjurers”. They defrauded labourers of their wages; they oppressed widows and orphans, deprived aliens of justice and had no fear of God (Mal 3:5). Shortly after this, Nehemiah returned to Jerusalem and found nobody bothering to observe the sabbath and the spiritual life of the nation in disarray.

New Covenant Relationship

There is no evidence of the people of Judah returning from the exile and being God’s messengers to the Gentile nations, revealing his nature and purposes and taking his message of salvation to the world. Even the apocryphal literature shows no evidence of the people being in a new covenant relationship with God and “a light for the Gentiles, to open eyes that are blind”, as promised in Isaiah 42:6-7.

It is not until the Jewish believers in Jesus took the message from Jerusalem out into the Roman Empire that we find this vision being fulfilled. In Acts 13 there is an account of Paul and Barnabas speaking in a synagogue in Pisidian Antioch, where they declared, “This is what the Lord has commanded us: ‘I have made you a light for the Gentiles, that you may bring my salvation to the ends of the earth’. When the Gentiles heard this, they were glad and honoured the word of the Lord. But the synagogue leaders stirred up persecution against Paul and Barnabas and expelled them from the region” (Acts 13:50).

Did the people of Judah put themselves outside the protection of God when they returned from Babylon and fail to fulfil the mission they were given, to be God’s witnesses to the nations? Could this be the reason why they endured such suffering for the next 2,500 years?

This article is the final part of a series. Click here for previous instalments.