Don't Know Much About the Bible - Kenneth C. Davis [103]
BIBLICAL VOICES
But the army of the Chaldeans pursued them, and overtook Zedekiah in the plains of Jericho; and when they had taken him, they brought him up to King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon, at Riblah, in the land of Hamath; and he passed sentence on him. The king of Babylon slaughtered the sons of Zedekiah at Riblah before his eyes; also the king of Babylon slaughtered all the nobles of Judah. He put out the eyes of Zedekiah, and bound him in fetters to take him to Babylon. The Chaldeans burned the king’s house and the houses of the people, and broke down the walls of Jerusalem. (Jer. 39:5-8)
(In the Christian Old Testament, the book of Jeremiah is followed by Lamentations [see page 210], a collection of sad songs commemorating the destruction of Jerusalem in 587 BCE. The Hebrew Bible places Lamentations among its third section, Writings. Most scholars agree that Jeremiah did not write Lamentations.)
YOU CAN GO HOME AGAIN
EZRA, NEHEMIAH
Then Ezra the priest stood up and said to them, “You have trespassed and married foreign women, and so increased the guilt of Israel. Now make confession to the Lord the God of your ancestors, and do his will; separate yourselves from the peoples of the land and from the foreign wives.” Then all the assembly answered with a loud voice, “It is so; we must do as you have said.” (Ezra, 10:10-12 KJV)
* Mixed marriages: kosher or not?
The American novelist Thomas Wolfe may have been mistaken when he famously titled his work You Can’t Go Home Again. For the exiled Jews in Babylon—or at least some of them—returning home was very possible. For others, Babylon had proven to be more than a nice place to visit—they wanted to stay.
The books of Ezra and Nehemiah deal with the history of Judah after the return from Exile in Babylon. The books not only describe the reconstruction of the Temple but the restoration of a “godly remnant” whose mission was to restore and uphold the true faith. Considered a single book until around 300 CE, when the material was divided into two parts, the books known as Ezra and Nehemiah were thought to have been written by the same person who wrote Chronicles. Although there are some discrepancies regarding the precise dates when Ezra and Nehemiah made their trips to Jerusalem, the time frame of the Return to Jerusalem, often called the “Post-Exile,” is well within the bounds of documented “history,” unlike many other earlier periods in the Bible. The biblical accounts have been supported by Persian and other Near Eastern archives.
Ezra opens with the decree of Cyrus, the king of Persia, following his capture of Babylon in 539 BCE, that those who want to may leave Babylon and return to Jerusalem to rebuild the Temple. Unlike other “foreign” kings and Pharaohs of the Bible who were usually viewed as scoundrels, sinners, and murderers, Cyrus gets pretty good reviews from the Bible’s composers. Founder of an extensive empire that lasted more than two hundred years, Cyrus was an extraordinary leader. Under Cyrus and his successors, much of the ancient Near East, from India to Egypt and the borders of Greece, was brought under one ruler, a feat neither the Egyptians nor earlier Babylonian empire builders had accomplished. Even the later Greek writers, who had no great love for the Persians—classical Greece’s archrival—considered Cyrus a model ruler. Unlike other ancient conquerors who attempted to enforce their own religions and practices on conquered peoples, Cyrus and his successors permitted the “captive nations