Chapter 26: The Rebuilding of Israel - or Maybe Not.
So, the situation is this: the northern kingdom of Israel has been destroyed. The southern kingdom of Judah has been carried off into exile in Babylon. The promises God made seem to have fallen away – at least from a human perspective. How was God going to deal with the problem of sin as he promised to Adam? How was God going to fulfil his promise to Abraham that the whole world would be blessed through his offspring? How was God going to fulfil his promise to David, that one of his descendants would sit on the throne forever, especially now that there was no throne in Jerusalem on which David’s descendent could sit? At this point in the story, it seems as if God has given up on Israel as the nation through which he would bring about his promises. However, as we will see, God was not yet done with his promises, and the books of Ezra and Nehemiah tell us the story of how God restores Judah as a nation.
The books of Ezra and Nehemiah should really be combined into one book, and in fact in the Jewish writings they have always been considered one book. The book tells a single story of how God restores Jerusalem and follows three main story acts.
Act 1: Rebuilding the Temple
Ezra opens with a new emperor on the throne, King Cyrus, the king of Persia. Babylon, who had defeated Israel, had in turn been defeated by Persia, and the Persian empire now controlled the territory Jerusalem was in. Ezra 1:1 makes it clear that the Lord worked in the heart of Cyrus and made him well disposed toward the Jewish people. As a result, he makes a proclamation throughout his kingdom that God had appointed him to build a new temple for him in Jerusalem. As such, any Jews who wanted to, could go back to Jerusalem. The family heads of the remaining tribes of Judah and Benjamin organise those who wanted to go back and so along with the Levites and priests who were left, they return to Israel.
Seven months after returning from exile, Joshua son of Jozadak and Zerubbabel son of Shealtiel begin rebuilding the altar on which the sacrifices were offered. The importance of this cannot be overstated. Remember that the altar was the central part of the priestly system. It is on the altar that all the offerings to God were made, the most important of which were the sin offerings that cleansed the people from their sin. The Jewish people had been living in exile for 70 years without having a way to deal with their sin. So the people begin offering offerings on this altar almost as soon as it was finished, even before the foundations of the temple were laid. Soon after the altar’s completion, Joshua and Zerubbabel begin the work of rebuilding the temple. It is clear that the Jewish people have a zeal and a passion for God. As people who had been following the story for a while, we the readers wonder: could this be a sign that the people’s hearts had finally be turned back to God? They certainly seem to be very keen on returning Judah to the pure worship of God. Will it last?
The temple rebuilding project is fraught with issues. Judah’s neighboring states bribe the Persian officials to frustrate the building plans. When Persia gets a new king, they write to him to tell him that Jerusalem will cause trouble for Persia if he allows the Jews to rebuild. In response the new king commands the people to stop rebuilding and so the temple rebuilding efforts come to a complete halt. This in turn causes the Jews to write to the king to say “Look, King Cyrus made a proclamation to say we are allowed to rebuild the temple, go and look in your archives and you will see the law is on our side.” (my paraphrase).
After a careful search is made, the king discovers that it is exactly as the Jews claimed, and so he issues a new decree, commanding everyone to leave the Jews alone so that they can rebuild the temple. Moreover, he provides funds out of the royal treasury so that the rebuilding project can be completed. Never before has the gift of administration and good record keeping come in so handy!
Finally the temple is completed, and the first thing Zerubbabel and Joshua do is appoint priests according to the laws of Moses, and for the first time in over 70 years they celebrate the Passover. Act 1 concludes with this wonderful statement:
Ezra 6:20-21
“20 All of the priests and Levites were ceremonially clean, because they had purified themselves. They killed the Passover lamb for themselves, their priestly brothers, and all the exiles. 21 The Israelites who had returned from exile ate it, together with all who had separated themselves from the uncleanness of the Gentiles of the land in order to worship the Lord, the God of Israel.”
The temple had successfully been rebuilt, and once again Israel was ceremonially clean. The exile from God’s presence was over.
Act 2: Rebuilding the Spiritual Life
About 60 years after the temple was rebuilt the second act of rebuilding begins. By now Persia had yet another king, Artaxerxes. As with King Cyrus, God moves the king to restore Israel. Artaxerxes issues a decree that Ezra to restore the priestly system and enforce God’s law in Jerusalem. Ezra was well qualified for this job, since he “had determined in his heart to study the law of the Lord, obey it, and teach its statutes and ordinances in Israel”. (Ezra 7:10). So Artaxerxes tells Ezra to go to Jerusalem and to assess it according to God’s law and to do whatever was necessary to get the people spiritually back on track. Remember that the point of the Exile was to turn God’s people’s hearts back to him and to turn their hearts away from the idolatry of the previous generations. Ezra is now tasked with ensuring that that process has happened, and if not to do everything in his power to complete it.
When Ezra gets back to Jerusalem, he discovers something shocking. The very thing that God had instructed Israel not to do as they entered the promised land, is the very thing that Judah had now done upon their return to Jerusalem. From the leaders of the people, to the Levites to the average Jew, they had intermarried with the people from the surrounding nations. We need to understand that this wasn’t a racial issue, this was a spiritual issue. Remember the pattern that Israel showed again and again: when they intermarry with the people around them, they bring their foreign idols into the land and invariably end up bowing down and worshipping them. The same idolatry issue that has plagued Israel for centuries is present here in the returned exiles. God’s people had not learnt their lesson after all!
Ezra is devastated. He prays one of the most heart-rending prayers recorded in the Bible and he concludes his prayer with these words:
Ezra 9:13-15
13 After all that has happened to us because of our evil deeds and terrible guilt—though you, our God, have punished us less than our iniquities deserve and have allowed us to survive— 14 should we break your commands again and intermarry with the peoples who commit these detestable practices? Wouldn’t you become so angry with us that you would destroy us, leaving neither remnant nor survivor? 15 Lord God of Israel, you are righteous, for we survive as a remnant today. Here we are before you with our guilt, though no one can stand in your presence because of this.
In response Ezra and the leaders of Judah get everyone in Judah together in Jerusalem, confront them with the issue and the people agree to renew their covenant with God. They promise to send away all the foreign wives and their children so that Israel could once again be a spiritually pure nation. This was a terribly sad day, and we should feel for the women and children who were sent away. The result of sin is always heartache. It has to be said, that God did not command the Jews to divorce their wives and send them away. That was the plan the people themselves came up with, with a sincere heart trying to follow God’s law. Good Christian scholar disagree on whether this was actually God’s will for that time. Either way, the end result is the same: Israel now had both a temple in which to offer sacrifices, and a ”pure” Israel for whom the sacrifices could be offered. All that was left to restore and rebuild was the city wall.
Act 3: Rebuilding the Wall
The story now shifts to Nehemiah, who was a cup bearer to king Artaxerxes. A cup bearer was one of the king’s most trusted people. Nehemiah serving in Persia receives a report from Jerusalem that the city wall has been broken down. He prays and his prayer is answered. God once again stirs the heart of the King of Persia and he gives Nehemiah permission to go back to Judah to rebuild the wall of Jerusalem. Not only that, he also provides Nehemiah with a security detail and all the resources he needs to rebuild the city walls.
A few days after arriving in Jerusalem, he meets with the officials ruling Jerusalem and they agree to start rebuilding. When the people living in neighboring states realise that the rebuilding work is going well, they start plotting to attack Jerusalem to prevent them from completing the repairs. They knew that if Jerusalem could repair its walls, it would once again be a strongly defended city making Judah a strong nation again. Nehemiah and the officials devise a system whereby some of the builders would keep watch for enemy attack while the others built, and unlike normal builders all the wall builders had a sword at their side ready to defend themselves. Despite the setbacks, miraculously the wall of Jerusalem is rebuilt in 52 days!
Thus, the great rebuilding task was completed. The temple was complete, the spiritual life of Israel was back on track, and the city of Jerusalem was once again safe and secure. As with all the momentous occasions in Israel’s history, the people of God all come together again, and God’s law is read to them all. They celebrate the festival of booths, which was a festival that commemorates God bringing Israel out of the dessert after their 40-year journey. At the conclusion of the festival there is a national confession of sin, where the people of Judah confess how they had abandoned God in the past and again the people make a promise to God that they would uphold his law, that they would keep themselves pure, that they would do all their religious duties.
If this sounds familiar – it should. This is what has happened at every major movement in Israel’s history. Before Israel entered the promised land, Moses read the law and instructed the people to follow God only, and they agreed. Before Joshua died, the same thing happened. When Israel moved to a Monarchy, the kings of Israel were appointed to make sure Israel obeyed their vows. When Israel was destroyed, and Judah was carried off into slavery it was because they had not kept their side of the covenant with God. They had worshiped other Gods. Every time Israel made a promise to worship God alone and to follow him faithfully, they failed.
Would this time be different? After all, God had clearly been behind the rebuilding of Jerusalem with the way he softened the hearts of the kings and provided all the materials for the work that needed to be done. Surely Judah had learnt her lesson after 70 years in exile?
Well after Nehemiah finishes his work in Jerusalem he turns to the king of Persia. Some time later Nehemiah returns to Jerusalem. When he gets there, he discovers three things:
1. The temple is in disarray – the people had not been bringing their offerings and donations to the temples in order to support the work of the priests. As a result, the priests abandoned their posts to go work in the fields in order to support themselves.
2. The spiritual life of the people was in disarray – as Nehemiah goes through the city, he sees the people working on the Sabbath day as if nothing is wrong. This was a major violation of God’s law.
3. The people the wall was supposed to keep out, were living in the city. Nehemiah tells of how he saw the Jews who married women from Ashdod, Ammon and Moab living in the city. Their children could not speak Hebrew.
The rebuilding of the temple failed, the rebuilding of the spiritual life of the people failed, and the rebuilding of the wall failed. In other words, even the Exile itself failed to change God’s people’s hearts and turn them back to him. So now what?
That is a story for next time…