Israel in the Exile

The land is conquered, the Davidic monarchy is left in ruins, the people are taken from the land, and they are left in a depressed and discouraged state. We can imagine the question on their mind at this time would be, what has happened to God? Is He not on the throne anymore? What about all of the promises to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob? What about the promises in the real estate covenant that we would have this land in perpetuity forever and ever? What about the promises to David that there would be a seed of David on the throne forever and ever? What about our position and our future and all the glorious things God has promised us? What are we to do?

The people were not left without a witness. At the time of the Babylonian captivity there were three Jewish communities that survived and to understand that is to understand some material that prepares us for the New Testament period. There is a group that leaves Israel and goes down to Egypt. The prophet who goes with them is Jeremiah. There is a tremendous colony of Jews that survives into the first century period in Egypt. Then there is another small group, mostly lower class peasants who have no skills, not training, who are left in the land. Then there are the middle and upper class artisans, craftsmen, scholars, aristocracy which had been hauled off into captivity in Babylon. At the end of the seventy years of Babylonian captivity they do return to the land, but they don’t know that. In 586 BC as they are being taken off in chains to Babylon it seems that everything they had hoped for, desired, and relied upon in terms of God’s Word had been lost. But they do have a document in their hands and that is the prophecy of Isaiah. Isaiah wrote some 150 years before this and had prophesied this very captivity. He prophesied their attitude, Isaiah 40:27 ^NASB “Why do you say, O Jacob, and assert, O Israel, ‘My way is hidden from the LORD, And the justice due me escapes the notice of my God’?” Notice the despair that is there.

Then the solution that Isaiah has for them: Isaiah 40:28 ^NASB “Do you not know? Have you not heard? The Everlasting God, the LORD, the Creator of the ends of the earth Does not become weary or tired. His understanding is inscrutable. [29] He gives strength to the weary, And to {him who} lacks might He increases power. [30] Though youths grow weary and tired, And vigorous young men stumble badly, [31] Yet those who wait for the LORD Will gain new strength; They will mount up {with} wings like eagles, They will run and not get tired, They will walk and not become weary.” They can turn in the scroll of Isaiah to 48:20 where Isaiah prophesies that there is a return from Babylon: ^NASB “Go forth from Babylon! Flee from the Chaldeans! Declare with the sound of joyful shouting, proclaim this, Send it out to the end of the earth; Say, ‘The LORD has redeemed His servant Jacob’.” So they have the scroll of Isaiah in their hands, they know that there is a future and can take comfort from the Word of God to handle their adversity.

In order to understand the background of what takes place during the exile two major books deal with the exile: Daniel and Ezekiel. Daniel deals with the question, is God still sovereign over human kingdoms? We have to understand why this discipline has taken place, that it is related to the five cycles of discipline and because Israel has been involved in gross idolatry God had removed them from the land as he promised.

In the last part of Isaiah, chapters 40-66, there is tremendous comfort for the Jews. In chapters 40-48 there is the promise of deliverance, the promise that there will be everlasting punishment and judgment for the wicked, and that God will eventually give His victory. In the midst of this is the Cyrus oracle. Two hundred years prior to his coming—Cyrus unites the Media-Persian empire in roughly 540 BC—Isaiah gives the specific promise, Isaiah 44:28 ^NASB “{It is I} who says of Cyrus, ‘{He is} My shepherd! And he will perform all My desire.’ And he declares of Jerusalem, ‘She will be built,’ And of the temple, ‘Your foundation will be laid.’” It was Cyrus who when the Media-Persian empire conquered the Babylonian empire restored Israel to their land. Cyrus was also knows as Darius the Mede in Daniel chapter six. Then in chapters 49-57 Isaiah begins to look down the corridor of time to how God will deliver them through the Messiah. It is in this section that we have the great themes of the suffering servant, especially the key chapters 52 & 53 which focus on the coming of the Messiah who will die as a substitute for the sins of the world and for Israel, and provide redemption. Then in chapters 58-66 the theme focuses on not only their future deliverance but also the ultimate victory of God over all the kingdoms of man and the establishment of the messianic kingdom. So with this in their hands they have a sense of what the future holds: that despite their despair, despite their suffering and everything that they have lost God is still in control of history.

That is a prophecy that was two hundred years old but God is not silent during this period. He continues to reveal Himself through Ezekiel with the promise of the future great millennial temple and in Daniel which focuses on God’s sovereignty over the nation. Daniel was written specifically to show to the Jews that God is sovereign and is in control despite the overwhelming power of the present human kingdom. Each of the sections of Isaiah outlined—40-48, 49-57, and 58-66; three sections of nine chapters each—ends with the refrain, “There is no peace for the wicked.” The final verse of Isaiah is: “Then they will go forth and look On the corpses of the men Who have transgressed against Me. For their worm will not die And their fire will not be quenched; And they will be an abhorrence to all mankind.” This is a description of eternal judgment in the lake of fire. So there is assurance that God is still on the throne and that His justice will eventually win out.

When we come to Daniel one of the issues revolves around its date. Daniel has some of the most detailed predictive prophecy in the Old Testament. Because of that Daniel is one of the books in the Old Testament that is most attacked by religious liberals. At the very core of religious liberalism is the assumption that God really doesn’t act in human history, that God has not revealed Himself in history, and that there is no such thing as real supernaturalism in history. They have an anti-supernatural assumption and base everything on human reason. On the basis of their assumptions they attack the veracity of the Scriptures, and one of the favorite places to start is Daniel. They basically come against Daniel on four issues. The first is the date of Daniel, the second is the language of the book, they also say there are a number of historical blunders in Daniel, and then they late date Daniel—it can’t be prophecy, it must be history.

What we know for sure is that Daniel certainly was a historic person who went into captivity in Babylon in 605 BC as a young man. He lived another 70 plus years and eventually died in approximately 530 BC. The book covers much history in the first section but it also covers prophecy. When we come to the first issue of why the date of Daniel is important the issue is, was it written in 586-539 BC or 165 BC? This is significant because the sovereignty of God is at stake. When we look at Daniel we see that it is a book that portrays God as a God who is in control of history, and because He is in control of history the past, the present and the future He can accurately predict. You can’t accurately predict what you can’t control. If this book is not prophecy but history then we can’t really be sure that God is in control. Secondly, it relates to the nature of the Bible. If the Bible gives real prophecy as we believe then we can be sure that it comes from God. On the other hand, if it is simply history (and one that has mistakes in it) then we can’t really trust the Bible. Everything in the Bible, all the great doctrines from redemption to the spiritual life, are all based on historical events. That is why when we come to 1 Corinthians 15 Paul says if Christ has not physically and bodily come out of the grave in resurrection then are the most deceived, the most to be pitied of all people, because then Christianity is false. Christianity is based on history, on the fact that on a certain date and a certain time the tomb was empty and Jesus Christ rose from the dead. There has to be historical reality or it is meaningless. Finally, the person of Jesus Christ is challenged. In Matthew chapter twenty-three Jesus assumes the validity of the traditional viewpoint that Daniel lived and wrote in the sixth century BC. If Jesus is wrong about Daniel then Jesus is fallible; and if Jesus is fallible then He is not impeccable; if He is not impeccable then He is not the God-Man and He can’t die on the cross for our sins. This is a crucial issue.

The date of the earliest manuscript of Daniel: At Qumran at the Dead Sea seventeen different MSS of Daniel were discovered. (The handwriting in each of these is different, indicating different scribes) One of the more significant fragments covers the end of chapter one and beginning of chapter two where the language shifts from Hebrew to Aramaic. By looking at that what we can see is that based on how the letters were written it can be dated somewhere between 125 BC and 200 BC. This is not a substantive argument in the sense of disproving what the critics say because the liberals want to date Daniel at 165. But the point is that the liberal is inconsistent at this point because he has MSS from Chronicles, Psalms and Ecclesiastes that are all dated in this 140-170 BC period. The older liberal view was that was when they were originally written, but once they discovered at the Dead Sea documents with that date on them they had say that couldn’t be the original so they couldn’t be the originals so those MSS had to be at least 100 years older. But when it comes to Daniel they are not consistent.

The second issue the liberals always bring up is the language of the book and they base this on the fact that there are certain Persian words that are used in the book. What they basically argue is if Persian words are present in a book that was written before the Persian period then that would indicate a Persian influence and should have been much later. But Daniel lived at least five years into the Persian period. When he was cast into the lion’s den by Darius, that was during the Persian period. Daniel probably wrote this at the later part of his life and it just stands to reason that he would use a few Persian words. Not only that but the Persian words that are used are technical words for official administration in the kingdom. So he is using the technical verbiage that he would use as the Prime Minister of the land during his last ten years under the Persian period and it stands to reason that he would be familiar with this vocabulary. Another argument that is brought out is that there are Greek words used in the MS and since Greece doesn’t become a major player for another 200 years obviously that had to be written after that period. The problem with that is that they are really only talking about three Greek words and they are names for three of the musical instruments used in Daniel chapter two. There is evidence from archaeology that from 450 BC, a little later than Daniel from Egyptian documents, of the use of Greek words for money and other things. We also know from archeological discoveries in Babylon that Nebuchadnezzar used Greek architecture to build his palace. Obviously there was trade between Greece and Babylon and there was trade of ideas. This shows that it would not be strange for musical instruments from Greece to find their way into Babylon.

The liberals also argue that there are historical blunders in the text. Jeremiah 46:2 ^NASB “To Egypt, concerning the army of Pharaoh Neco king of Egypt, which was by the Euphrates River at Carchemish, which Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon defeated in the fourth year of Jehoiakim the son of Josiah, king of Judah.” Remember that Nebuchadnezzar defeated Egypt at Chachemish and then went down and invaded Judah in the fourth year of Jehoiakim. Daniel 1:1 ^NASB “In the third year of the reign of Jehoiakim king of Judah, Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon came to Jerusalem and besieged it.” Jeremiah says it was in the fourth year of Jehoiakim; Daniel says it was in the third year. There appears to be a real conflict here and so the liberal comes along and says it is a pious forgery and the forger couldn’t even get the date right. A solid explanation which also substantiates the historicity of the text is that in the calendar we mark our new year in January, but in the ancient world they marked the calendar at the coming of the autumn rains which is roughly equivalent to our October, and that was the month Tishri. If somebody came to the throne in Judah in, say, March of 509 then 509, 508, 507 and 506 would be considered his first four years. His first year, whether it was a month, six months or twelve months, is called his accession year and that is the year he comes to the throne and is his first year of reigning. That is how things were handled in Judah, but in Babylon they did not use accession year dating, so that period from March until October was not considered the first year; that didn’t begin until October of 508. The point is, if you were writing in the second century BC in roughly 165 BC you would not know anything about how the Babylonians counted time, so you would use a Judean basis of measurement and say that this occurred in the fourth year. But if you were living in Babylon and had been there for sixty or seventy years as Daniel had, and you spoke the language and were the Prime Minister of the land, you would be telling time according to the Babylonian method. You would say it is the third year. This also indicates that the writer indeed was in Babylon and understood all of their system.

Another conflict that is brought up sometimes is that in Daniel chapter five and the scene of the great banquet, Cyrus invades the city. Daniel was called into to interpret the handwriting on the wall. But all of the ancient historians never mention Belshazzar. How do we know that he existed historically? For years the liberals said this was somebody who had just been made up. It wasn’t until excavations at Babylon ion the early part of the 20^th century it was revealed that Belshazzar was the son of Nabonitus. All of these historians mentioned Nabonitus as the last king, but what they discovered through archaeology was that Nabonitus had a co-regency with his son Belshazzar, and Belshazzar was left to rule while Nabonitus took early retirement and built a villa on the northern coast of Egypt and no longer functioned as the king. The liberals just assumed that they were right and the Bible was wrong. This is consistently what happens when there are attacks on the veracity of the Bible; eventually archeology substantiates the Bible.

Then another thing they attack is the idea of the fourth king. In Daniel the fourth king is Rome, and that would truly be predictive prophecy even if it was written in 165 BC. So what the liberals do is come along and say that the second kingdom in Nebuchadnezzar’s dream figure of chapter two is the Medes and the third is the Persians. The second kingdom is the Media-Persona kingdom, and everywhere in the book, especially later when Daniel runs foul of Darius, Darius says the laws of the Medes and the Persians can’t be broken. Darius defeated the Medes in 540 and they merge as one empire, the Media-Persian empire, and it is the Media-Persian empire that defeats the Babylonians, not the Medes. So the liberals have to play fast and loose with history in order to substantiate their contention that there is no real prophecy here.