Hebrew Exiles In Babylon example essay topic

The Hebrew Exiles in Babylon: Why So Many Chose to Remain When Jerusalem fell to the conquering Babylonians in 587 BC, most of what was important to the Hebrew people was gone. They lost their holy city, the Temple was destroyed, and the David ic monarchy ended (Beasley 221). Following the destruction of Jerusalem, the Babylonian king, Nebuchadrezzar, deported most of the population to other cities, including Babylon. These exiles remained there for about fifty years until the Persian forces, under king Cyrus, took the city of Babylon in 539 BC.

The Persian policies concerning captured and exiled peoples were quite different than those of the Babylonians, and because of this King Cyrus allowed the exiles to return to Jerusalem in 538 BC to rebuild the city and the Temple. However, even though the exiles were allowed to return to their ancestral homeland of Judah, many of the people chose not to return but to remain in the recently conquered city of Babylon. There are many contributing factors concerning why these Hebrew exiles chose to remain. Even so, it is difficult to understand why a people, who were located in Palestine for over a millennium and who had such strong religious beliefs and practices, would choose to abandon the location of their now destroyed sacred Temple and ancestral home after being exiled for only fifty years. One contributing factor for the exile's choice to remain in Babylon was the quality and level of social life that they experienced while in Babylon.

Many of them maintained their identity and status within the Babylonian settlements. This suggests a well-developed social structure among the Hebrew exiles (Blenkinsopp 152). They also had the benefit of personal freedom and the ability to manage their own community life. An example of this are the "elders of the diaspora", who aided the leader of the exiles, ex-king Jehoiachin, in conducting community affairs. The presence of elders among the Hebrew exiles suggests that the settlements within Babylon governed themselves similarly to pre-exilic urban existence, even to the point of maintaining gatherings for decisions and the hearing of prophets (Smith 97). The exiles were also allowed to live according to their own customs, were able to purchase property, and could even own slaves (Hayes 483).

Some of the exiles may have actually had other Hebrews as slaves since the their laws allowed them to work off a debt by temporary enslavement, or bond servitude, to other Hebrews (Grabbe 25). Another reason for the choice of some of the exiles to remain behind instead of returning to Jerusalem in 538 BC was that many of the Hebrew exiles were involved with the reconstruction and adornment of Babylon. Nebuchadrezzar, who had only recently become ruler of the Babylonian Empire in 604 BC, decided that this "new" Babylon should surpass anything in the fallen Assyrian Empire. Many of the exiles who were brought to Babylon were craftsmen and artisans (2 Kings 24: 14, 16), and so could be profitably employed in the rebuilding and improvement of the capital city. These workmen helped to make Babylon the most elegant of its day, and its beautiful gardens and architecture surpassed anything previously from Assyria (Whitely 71-72). It must have been a source of great satisfaction to some of the Hebrew exiles to know that they were an important part in the reconstruction of Babylon.

In addition to the more rural occupations, there is also sufficient evidence written in discovered archives of the time that the Hebrew exiles were involved in the mercantile life in Babylon. Since many of the great highways of the time converged on Babylon, thus forming it into the center of commerce in the Near East, it is not surprising to find that some of the exiles became active in trading and loaning in this "land of traffic" (Whitley 73). The Mura shu tablets are a significant testimony to the commercial activities of the Hebrews in Babylon. These personal business records from a Hebrew family firm in Nippur (Grabbe 59), dating from 464 BC to 405 BC, confirm the extent to which the exiles had established themselves in Babylonian business by the early fifth century (Whitley 74).

The Hebrews' reactions concerning their religion to the exilic period also played a major role in their decision to remain in Babylon, instead of returning to Jerusalem in 538 BC after the decree of King Cyrus of Persia. Because of the Babylonian conquest of Jerusalem and the destruction of their Temple, many of the exiles believed that the Babylonian gods, particularly the chief deity Marduk, had been victorious over Yahweh (Beasley 223). The Babylonian religion seemed to be dominate, especially to those exiles whose faith was not large enough to believe that the disaster at Jerusalem was the direct outcome of the will of Yahweh himself (Ackroyd 43). Those exiles who continued to be faithful to Yahweh and their religion also had to make changes to their religious practices. One such change was the appearance of synagogues in the Babylonian settlements. In order to compensate for the loss of their temple, and to continue their worship traditions, the exiles most likely formed a network of meeting places, such as large houses, to serve as a type of "synagogue" for prayer and education (Blenkinsopp 152).

Furthermore, the Persians under, King Cyrus, held a much more liberal stance toward the religious policies of conquered or exiled peoples than the Babylonians previously had imposed on the Hebrew exiles. A good example is the inscription on the Cyrus Cylinder set up early in his reign, which indicated a policy of generosity and respect toward other religions within his empire, and contained his decree that allowed the Hebrews to return to Jerusalem and rebuild the Temple (Grabbe 57). A version of his decree is found in the book of Ezra that states; Thus says King Cyrus of Persia: The Lord, the god of heaven, has given me all the kingdoms of the earth, and he has charged me to build him a house at Jerusalem in Judah. Any of those among you who are of his people-may their God be with them! -are now permitted to up to Jerusalem in Judah, and rebuild the house of the Lord, the God of Israel-he is the God who is in Jerusalem; and let all survivors, in whatever place they reside, be assisted by the people of their place with silver and gold, with goods and with animals, besides freewill offerings for the house of God in Jerusalem (Ezra 1: 2-4). Another interesting cause for the exile's choice to remain in Babylon may be the simple fact that the Babylonian Diaspora in 586 BC was not the first time the Hebrew people had been exiled.

Tiglath-pileser, the king of Assyria during the reign of King A haz, had deported around twenty eight thousand Israelites from Galilee in 733 BC. Also, Sennacherib, the king of Assyria during the reign of King Hezekiah, claimed to have exiled or displaced over two hundred thousand people from Judah (Hayes 480-81). This number is most likely exaggerated considering the total population of Judah at the time. Also, just about a decade prior to the destruction of Jerusalem, Nebuchadrezzar deported around ten thousand people from the city in 597 BC. One scholar has estimated that over the three centuries in which Assyrian deportation were practiced, some four and one half million people were forcibly uprooted and exiled (Smith 29). Significantly, it is clear that both the Assyrians and the Babylonians deported entire families as a whole, thus removing a major incentive for the exiles to return to their homeland, and helped to encourage them to settle in the conquering people's land (Smith 30).

Finally, the bleak and desolate condition of Jerusalem, after its destruction by Nebuchadrezzar, was also a contributing factor in the exile's choice to remain in Babylon. Most of the city was utterly destroyed, the Temple laid in ruin, and the city walls were torn down. Repair and restoration of the city was exceptionally slow and difficult considering that there was little money with which to hire laborers, and mostly just the most rudimentary tools were available for reconstruction (Newsome 83). Most of the upper class citizens were gone along with the priests and Levites, leaving only the poor and lower class in Jerusalem. The country was small and surrounded by neighbors who were hostile at times. The economy was largely agrarian, and skilled workmen and manufacturing were at a minimum in the early part of the post-exilic period.

And the best of the farmland, especially the southern area of Judah, was no longer within the borders of the province (Grabbe 121). The remnants of the royal palace languished nearby, which contained the royal archives for the scrolls and parchments of the time, before its destruction in 587 BC. Only a few were found to have survived the devastation, but these were removed and deposited in a library, previously the home of an official of state, where other royal records and accounts were also being held (Newsome 84). This devastation of their homeland and city did not give the exiles much of a reason to return, especially when compared to the greatness and power of Babylon at the time.

In conclusion, the choice of many of the Hebrew exiles to abandon their homeland of Judah and to remain in Babylon following the post-exilic period was not an easy or simple decision for them to make. Many different factors, such as economic, religious and political, had to be considered by the exiles in order to reach a decision. These includes such factors as their social life experienced while exiled in Babylon, their employment during the reconstruction of Babylon, their involvement in Babylonian and Persian economics, their religious reaction to the destruction of the Temple, the Persian's liberal stance toward other's religions, the history of other Hebrew exiles over the past few centuries, and the desolate condition of Jerusalem they faced if they returned. These are only a few of the total possible problems and factors that affected the choice of many of the Hebrews during the Babylonian exile and immediately following during the post-exilic period.

Bibliography

Ackroyd, Peter, Exile and Restoration. Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1968.
Beasley, James R., et al., An Introduction to the Bible. Nashville: Abington Press, 1991.
Blenkinsopp, Joseph, A History of Prophecy in Israel. Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 1996.
Hayes, John H. and J. Maxwell Miller, ed. Israelite and Judean History. Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1977.
Grabbe, Lester L., The Persian and Greek Periods. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1992.
Vol. 1 of Judaism From Cyrus to Hadrian. 2 vols. 1992.
Metzger, Bruce M., and Roland E. Murphy, ed. The New Oxford Annotated Bible. New York: Oxford University Press, Inc., 1994.
Newsome, James D., By the Waters of Babylon. Atlanta: John Knox Press, 1979.
Smith, Daniel L., The Religion of the Landless. Bloomington: Meyer-Stone Books, 1989.
Whitley, Charles Francis, The Exilic Age. Westport: Greenwood Press, 1975.