CHAPTER XXII
The Return of the Exiles
Agnes M. Lawson
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to Bible Study
The Colorado College of Divine
Science
Denver, 1920.
The history
of the Return introduces us to a new
people, the Hebrew nation has changed
into the Jewish Church. We hear no more
of idolatry, that phase of the national
childhood being over, so we may call it
the end of the first period of life.
Broadly speaking there are three great
periods to individual and national life.
The first, the development of the
national life, is in the individual the
development of the physical life; the
childhood period. In the second period we
find the growth of the mental life, the
systematizing of knowledge, the learning
of co-operation, organization, and the
turning to highest ideals; the manhood
period. The third is the spiritual life,
in biblical pages the Christian era, the
reign of spiritual man.
We enter now
on the second period of Jewish history,
dealing with a new people, the Jews,
broadened by contact with other nations,
a chastened and disciplined people. As in
our childhood period physical prowess is
the great goal to be striven for, in the
nation it is national power. But growing
side by side with the physical man was
the mental man, to bring the physical
into subjection, and the restraining
power of the national life were the
prophets. These have now such ascendancy
in the new life that around their written
words a church and national organization
grows. As the dethronement of the
national life came with the captivity so
the physical man is dethroned when the
mental man takes possession by
subordinating the body to mental
discipline. In the third period, the
Real, the spirit, comes into dominion,
and both the body and the intellect are
reduced to servitude, which however is
joyous, spontaneous service.
These people
are not going out under great warriors to
conquer, they are reconstructionists with
the zeal of hardy pioneers, animated with
the intense love for the traditions and
historic places of their race. The waste
places are to be rebuilt as foretold by
their prophets, and their literature and
religious ceremonies will be
systematized, and the nation reorganized.
They do not work under taskmasters, but
voluntarily yield themselves to scribes,
teachers and rulers. Well seasoned and
disciplined lives confront us now,
marching forward with definite purpose
and constructive ideals to retain all
that is their inheritance to rebuild on
the old national sites, and await there
the fulfillment of their prophecies.
The great
National and Prophetic literature is
changed to Ecclesiastical Histories and
ceremonies. The national history is
re-written by the churchmen and called
Chronicles. Haggai, Zechariah, Ezra and
Nehemiah are the names which stand out
most conspicuously at this period;
different men from the preceding period
because the times are different. Men make
the times, and in turn the times make the
men. Great men answer the call of the
needs of their own periods, supply it and
therefore become the mirror in which we
see the consecutive steps of history.
Great
spiritual ideals come from youth rather
than manhood, so we find that the great
prophets belong to the past rather than
the mid-period. This period is
interesting for its discipline, accuracy
and active work rather than for any new
ideals or dynamic climaxes. These belong
to the third, the spiritual period, in
which all the ideals of youth culminate.
“The first shall be last” and
so in mid-time, we eliminate, separating
the wheat from the chaff, and establish
in consciousness the true, and
“wait” for the promised
Messiah, the Real of us to descend upon
us and take possession of its own.
Fifty years
after the fall of Jerusalem, 538 B.C., in
the first year of his reign over
conquered Babylon, Cyrus permitted all of
the Jews who wished to do so to return to
Jerusalem. He also gave them the vessels
which had been taken from their temple.
Many Jews had grown rich in Babylon and
held influential positions who did not
wish to return and face the hardships and
privations of what would be pioneer work;
but they contributed liberally to their
returning countrymen under the leadership
of a descendant of the former reigning
house of Judah, Zerubbabel.
The company
came to Jerusalem and immediately began
work on the temple, by laying the
foundation of it. Work on it was stopped
by the jealousy and interference of the
Samaritans, a mixed race of portions of
the lost ten tribes who had intermarried
with the heathen nations about. These
people still called themselves followers
of Moses, but were largely idolatrous.
The foundation lay for sixteen years, and
in 520 B.C. the zeal of the city and
temple builders received an impetus from
two complementary yet wholly different
characters, Haggai and Zechariah. These
men set themselves to the task of
rebuilding the temple; Haggai, from the
practical standpoint of a business leader
who stimulates to actual work, is the man
of the hour.
Haggai, with
that faculty which all practical people
have, knows when the opportunity comes to
do a thing it should be accepted. Darius
had attained the throne of Persia, there
was some doubt as to his actual right to
it, and he was kept so busy with this
affair that the province of Judah is left
much to itself. At this opportune time,
Haggai, with the old direct method of
pre-exilic prophets raised his voice,
“Thus speaketh the Lord of Hosts
saying: This people say, It is not time
for the Lord’s house to be built.
Then came the word of the Lord by Haggai
the prophet saying, Is it time for you
yourselves to dwell in ceiled houses,
while the house of the Lord lieth
waste?” And the encouragement of
the leader, not the driver is in his
words: “Yet now be strong, O
Zerubbabel, saith the Lord; and be
strong, O Joshua, son of Jehozadak, the
high priest; and be strong, all ye people
of the land and work; for I am with you.
The silver is mine and the gold is mine.
The latter glory of this house, shall be
greater than the former, saith the
Lord.”
Zechariah,
“Whose mystic visions are as
untranslated into prose as those of
Percival in Tennyson’s ‘Holy
Grail’” (Abbott), a priest
who makes his appeal to the imagination
of the people, is a splendid combination
with the practical layman, Haggai; such
complementary characters should always
work side by side. The practical man
needs the vision of the seer, or he works
around in a circle with no expanding
models; the seer must have the power to
get his vision over into expression, else
they fall still-born by the way. This
prophet shows in his work the influence
of Ezekiel, and of Babylonian art with
its mystic imagery.
Zechariah
gives us the secret of work, which does
not waste but increases our power. Work
by his method and we astonish ourselves
with accomplishment. In fact, we never do
anything except what we do under this
rule; everything else will fail, a
useless expenditure of force. When we
blindly rush ahead in the human way, we
do not make, we mar.
“Not by my might, nor by my power,
but by my spirit, said the Lord of
Hosts.” And the easy way to the
goal, simple receptivity, he also sees:
“Be silent, all flesh, before the
Lord, for he is waked up out of his holy
habitation.”
His mystic
name for the Messiah is “The
Branch.” “In that day shall
ye call every man his neighbor under the
vine and under the fig tree.”
Pre-exilic prophets had seen the great
day of the Lord, to be destruction, when
the Lord would overthrow wickedness; but
Zechariah sees the breakdown of national
borders and differences in creeds; in the
great day when the Fatherhood of God and
the brotherhood of man is an established
fact, which holds the race in unity and
peace. Under this inspiration the Temple
was completed.
A singular
instance of pre-vision was
Jeremiah’s. He had predicted the
return of the exiles in seventy years,
and the Temple was actually built in the
seventieth year from the destruction of
the old one. If the second temple was not
a magnificent royal edifice--and those
who remembered the former glory wept at
this deficiency--it was surely more
acceptable to the democratic Jehovah,
built by the voluntary co-operation of
prophet, priest, governor and people.
In 458 B.C.
rose another great leader, who formed a
company of exiles desiring to return to
Jerusalem. In this character we have a
priest and a scribe, one who was deeply
rooted in piety, unwavering in faith, a
strong leader and an active worker. Ezra
“was a ready scribe in the law of
Moses,” and the reigning king,
Artaxerxes, granted him permission to
return with a company he had formed. He
collected large sums of money, freewill
offerings, with many vessels of gold and
silver, and “two vessels of fine
brass as precious as gold.”
There was a
long and dangerous journey before the
exiles whom Ezra had gathered, and who
met at “the river which runneth to
Ahava.” “Then I proclaimed a
fast there, at the river Ahava, that we
might humble ourselves before our God, to
seek of him a straight way for us, and
for our little ones, and for all our
substance. For I was ashamed to ask the
king for a band of soldiers and horsemen
to help us against the enemy in the way:
because we had spoken unto the king,
saying, The hand of our God is upon all
them that seek him, for good; but his
power and his wrath is against all them
that forsake him. So we fasted and
besought our God for this and he was
entreated of us.”
It was a
naive confession, and Ezra’s faith
carried them through to Jerusalem to
safety. Ezra became a great power here,
so great indeed that he induced the Jews
who had married foreign women to put away
those wives. No one without intense zeal
could wield a power like this. Heathen
women had been responsible largely for
the fall of the old kingdoms, and this
precaution was considered necessary to
keep the faith pure. Many hardships and
wrongs remained to be adjusted and as the
demand always creates the supply, we come
to another great character, Nehemiah.
Some
thirteen or fourteen years had elapsed
since the return under Ezra, when the
word comes to Nehemiah, the cup-bearer to
the king of Persia: “I was in
Shushan, the palace, when Hanani, one of
my brethren came, he and certain men out
of Judah; and I asked him concerning the
Jews that had escaped, which were left of
the captivity, and concerning Jerusalem.
And they said, The remnant that are left
of the captivity there in the province
are in great affliction and reproach; the
wall of Jerusalem is also broken down and
the gates thereof are burned with fire.
And it came to pass when I heard these
words, that I sat down and wept, and
mourned certain days; and I fasted and
prayed before the God of heaven, that
keeps covenant and mercy with them that
love him and keep his commandments: let
thine ear now be attentive, and thine
eyes open, that thou mayest hearken unto
the prayer of thy servant, which I pray
at this time, day and night, for the
children of Israel, thy
servants.”
Marvelous
and speedy is the answer to direct
prayer: “And it came to pass in the
month of Nisan, in the twentieth year of
Artaxerxes the king, when wine was put
before him, that I took up the wine, and
gave it to the king. Now I had not been
beforetime sad in his presence. And the
king said unto me, Why is thy countenance
sad, seeing thou art not sick? this is
nothing else but sorrow of heart. Then I
was sore afraid. And I said unto the
king, Let the king live forever: why
should not my countenance be sad, when
the city, the place of my fathers’
sepulchers, lieth waste, and the gates
thereof are consumed with fire? Then the
king said unto me, For what dost thou
make thy request? So I prayed to the God
of heaven. And I said unto the king, If
it please the king, and if thy servant
have found favor in thy sight, that thou
wouldst send me unto Judah, that I may
build it. And the king said unto me (the
queen also sitting by him), For how long
shall thy journey be? and wilt thou
return? and I set him a time.”
Nehemiah
receives all necessary letters from the
king to his foresters for lumber and
other needful aids; also a military
escort of the king’s own soldiers.
He comes to Jerusalem and becomes
governor of the province. An
indefatigable worker is he, going about
at night alone and acquainting himself
with the conditions of the city; its
ruined walls and the debris so great that
: “There was no place for the beast
that was under me to pass. And the rulers
knew not whither I went, or what I did.
Then said I unto them, Ye see the evil
case that we are in, how Jerusalem lieth
waste, and the gates thereof are burned
with fire: come let us build up the wall
of Jerusalem that we be no more a
reproach.
Much he has
to contend with, but he is a liberal and
sagacious governor. He has singleness of
purpose and does not ask any one to do
what he himself is unwilling to do, or to
go where he himself does not lead the
way. He works well with Ezra the scribe,
and between them the ecclesiastical and
political organization is established.
The book of Nehemiah carries the history
of the Jewish people down to a later date
than any of the other historic books of
the Old Testament, 443 B.C. We must
therefore trace the rest of the history
by means of the miscellaneous writings
and through the history of other nations
with which they came into contact.
The
establishment of formal religions brings
protests against the abuses which
inevitably follow when the original
founders with their consecrated zeal have
passed away. So we come to the last
prophet in the Old Testament, Malachi.
This prophet’s name is unknown, he
receives his name from his title for the
Messiah, My Messenger. He is one of the
most advanced thinkers in the Old
Testament: he recognizes Jehovah as God
of the whole earth, and that even the
worship of heathen nations, if sincere,
will be acceptable to him. His trust in
God to make himself clear is absolute,
therefore formal religionists need not
misinterpret him.
He is worthy
of being the last prophet, before the
advent of the One who fulfilled all
prophecy. He exhorts us all to true
religion, and to the fulfillment of all
of our duties: “Bring ye the whole
tithe into the storehouse, that there may
be meat in mine house, and prove me now
herewith said the Lord of hosts, if I
will not open the windows of heaven, and
pour you out a blessing, that there shall
not be room enough to receive
it.”
And this
tribute to the Messiah is a fitting one
from the last great figure of the old
Dispensation to the One who opens the new
Dispensation: “Behold, I send my
messenger, and he shall prepare the
way before me: and the Lord, whom ye
seek, shall suddenly come to his temple:
and the messengers of the covenant, whom
ye delight in, behold he cometh, said the
Lord of Hosts. But who may abide the day
of his coming? and who shall stand when
he appeareth? for he is like
refiner’s fire, and like
fuller’s soap; and he shall sit as
a refiner and purifier of silver: and
they shall offer unto the Lord offerings
of righteousness.”
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