1. Scripture Studies Chapter 13 Conquest and Exile

2. Conquest and Exile “Behold, the days are coming, says the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Judah, not like the old covenant I made with their fathers when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt, a covenant which they broke...” (Jeremiah 31:31-32)

3. Conquest and Exile Many people misunderstand the role of a prophet A prophet’s job is to speak the truth even when it’s not popular A prophet’s job is to speak the truth especially when it’s not popular

4. Conquest and Exile A prophet’s job is to warn in advance of coming difficulties and offer concrete moral solutions

5. Conquest and Exile Isaiah 6:1-8 Isaiah 7:10-17 2 Chronicles 33:1-13 2 Chronicles 34:14-33 Jeremiah 31:31-34 Daniel 3:1-30

6. Conquest and Exile To grasp the full meaning of Christ the Messiah, we must study the foundations of Messianic thought and prophecy found in the writings of Isaiah Isaiah speaks of a leader, sent and anointed by God

7. Conquest and Exile Isaiah speaks of a Messiah (in Hebrew, “the anointed one”) This leader would deliver the Jewish people from the cycle of sin and conflict in which they were caught And bring them to a state of peace and uprightness in the sight of God

8. Conquest and Exile For Christians, the prophecies of Isaiah comes to full realization in Jesus Christ Isaiah 7:14 But Isaiah’s prophecies also speak of people and events in Isaiah’s own time

9. Conquest and Exile Isaiah’s perspective is shaped by four major periods in Jewish history The combined attack of Israel and Syria against King Ahaz in Judah The Assyrian attack of the area around Jerusalem The Babylonian invasion and exile The return to Jerusalem under King Cyrus of Persia

10. Conquest and Exile The Assyrian conquest marked the end of the Northern Kingdom of Israel All the leading citizens (I.e., the potential troublemakers) were deported Those who remained were mostly poor farmers

11. Conquest and Exile Most of the Ten Tribes of the Northern Kingdom were dissolved Only Zebulun and Naphtali remained in their homeland In addition to deporting the leading citizens, the Assyrians resettled the empty cities of central Israel

12. Conquest and Exile The new settlers brought their gods with them But after a while they learned to worship the God of Israel They supposed him to be a territorial deity who needed to be appeased

13. Conquest and Exile They intermarried with the Israelites who had been left behind They worshipped God, but also worshipped the foreign gods from the Assyrian Empire They settled in the towns around Samaria and were called “Samaritans”

14. Conquest and Exile All that was left of the old kingdom of David was Judah, the Southern Kingdom It included the tribe of Judah, the tiny tribe of Benjamin, and the Levites who had not lived in Israel

15. Conquest and Exile While Israel was declining, Judah was enjoying a temporary rebirth under good King Hezekiah Hezekiah was determined to do what was right in the sight of God He had as his guide one of the greatest prophets of all time: Isaiah

16. Conquest and Exile Hezekiah was a serious reformer He pulled down pagan altars and “sacred poles” He tore down the high places” where people worshipped God in the wrong way

17. Conquest and Exile He even destroyed the bronze serpents Moses had erected in the wilderness, because people had begun to worship them as gods

18. Conquest and Exile Isaiah was Hezekiah’s spiritual guide He had been a prophet through the reigns of three previous kings But during their reigns, the people of Judah had been increasingly seduced by the evil practices of the Canaanites

19. Conquest and Exile Isaiah was sent to call Judah to repentance And to warn of the destruction to come if Judah did not repent But Isaiah was not just a prophet of doom

20. Conquest and Exile He also looked forward to a time when Jerusalem would be the spiritual capital of the world Many scholars today think that the Book of the prophet Isaiah was the work of at least three individuals The first part (Chapters 1-39) is probably the work of Isaiah himself

21. Conquest and Exile The rest was compiled later on, by people responsible for collecting prophecies attributed to Isaiah, especially for the exiles living in foreign lands The book as a whole was put together by a very talented editor The same themes run all through it

22. Conquest and Exile One of the main themes is repentance But God made unconditional promises to David At some time to come, the impossible-sounding promises will come true

23. Conquest and Exile Isaiah 11:1-2, 10-11 Even though only a remnant remained in Galilee, something great awaited them Isaiah 9:1-3, 6

24. Conquest and Exile During the reign of Ahaz, the wicked pagan king, the future did not look promising for Judah Isaiah 7:10-36 But even after the reign of the good king Hezekiah, things got worse

25. Conquest and Exile When Hezekiah died, Manasseh became king Manasseh reversed most everything good that Hezekiah had done He brought back all the foreign gods He even burned his own sons as sacrifice to the false gods

26. Conquest and Exile He massacred his own citizens and forced the worship of the one true God underground The Assyrians attacked and took Manasseh away in chains But then... 2 Chr 33:12-13

27. Conquest and Exile The Prayer of Manasseh is preserved in non-canonical sources. When he came back to Jerusalem, Manasseh took away all the pagan altars and threw out all the foreign cults He hade sacrifices and reigned a long time

28. Conquest and Exile Under Manasseh’s son Amon, Judah briefly returned to paganism He was assassinated, and Josiah became king During his reign, the lost book of Deuteronomy was found and promulgated

29. Conquest and Exile Josiah made a commitment to do what was right But his sons were worthless and Judah reverted to paganism One by one, Josiah’s sons were carried away by more powerful kings

30. Conquest and Exile Puppet kings were set up in their place Zedekiah ended up ruling as Nebuchadnezzar’s vassal Still there was no repentance Jerusalem suffered one raid after another

31. Conquest and Exile There were plenty of false prophets to flatter the king and tell him what he wanted to hear The great prophet Jeremiah was beaten and thrown down a well But he stuck to the truth, and Zedekiah consulted him in secret

32. Conquest and Exile Zedekiah decided to rebel against Nebuchadnezzar He was relying on help from Egypt This was the same mistake Hoshea (the last king of Israel) had made Jeremiah tried to warn him

33. Conquest and Exile Jeremiah was a powerful and respected prophet, even though he frequently gave prophecies against the king and said things people didn’t want to hear Jeremiah predicted total destruction, tantamount to the end of the world

34. Conquest and Exile Jeremiah was unflinching and resolute He railed against wrongdoing by the people and those in power alike Jeremiah saw a destruction so complete that the work of creation itself would be undone

35. Conquest and Exile But creation will not entirely be undone As with the Flood, a remnant will be saved Creation will begin anew, and Israel will be brought back together under a Davidic king

36. Conquest and Exile Jeremiah 23:3-6 There will be a new covenant Jeremiah 31:31-34 Israel will be forgiven and redeemed like an unfaithful bride Hosea’s own marriage was a metaphor for the sin of Israel

37. Conquest and Exile Hosea 3:1-2 No matter how unfaithful she had been, Hosea redeemed his wife from slavery and degradation God would do the same for Israel Ezekiel also foresaw destruction and redemption

38. Conquest and Exile Ezekiel 36:24-28 The punishment was not revenge but chastisement Ezekiel 36:31-32 Through the prophets, God forms his people with the hope of salvation

39. Conquest and Exile The Chosen People had been warned in Deuteronomy against returning to slavery in Egypt of their own free will Deuteronomy 28:58-68 The Chosen People were conquered, scattered, dispersed, in poverty, begging for jobs in Egypt

40. Conquest and Exile One of the lessons from the Babylonian exile is that God can bring good out of adversity They had strayed far from the commands of the covenant They were taken to Babylon, removed from the essential elements of their identity as a people

41. Conquest and Exile They gradually came to realize what had happened They remembered God’s promises of punishment for their infidelity They began to see the hand of God in it all, and to rediscover their religious and cultural heritage

42. Conquest and Exile Synagogue worship probably came into existence about this time to provide for communal worship in the absence of the Temple The ideas that emerged from this period of Jewish exile formed the basis for all subsequent Jewish history

43. Conquest and Exile Daniel: Heroic Stories of the Exile Nebuchadnezzar dreamed Daniel interpreted his dream

44. Conquest and Exile Nebuchadnezzar dreamed he saw an enormous statue with a head of gold The golden head was Nebuchadnezzar, the greatest of earthly kings

45. Conquest and Exile The breast and arms of the statue were silver After Nebuchadnezzar would come a kingdom inferior to his

46. Conquest and Exile The belly and the thighs of the statue were bronze After that would come another inferior kingdom

47. Conquest and Exile The legs were iron, the feet partly iron and partly clay Then a fourth kingdom would arise that would crush the first three, as iron crushes everything But the kingdom would be partly strong and brittle, like potter’s clay

48. Conquest and Exile Then, in Nebuchadnezzar’s dream, a rock was cut from a mountain by a human hand It struck the statue and broke it to pieces The rock then became a mountain and filled the entire earth

49. Conquest and Exile Daniel interpreted this to mean that God himself would set up a final kingdom which would never be destroyed But like the rock, it would fill the whole earth

50. Conquest and Exile Nebuchadnezzar’s dream was an outline of future history Nebuchadnezzar was very impressed with Daniel and Daniel became one of his top ministers

51. Conquest and Exile Daniel insisted that it was God, not Daniel, who had provided the interpretation of Nebuchadnezzar’s dream But Nebuchadnezzar didn’t understand the difference between the one true God and the other false gods

52. Conquest and Exile Then Nebuchadnezzar decreed that everyone should bow down to an idol he had made Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego (Daniel’s companions) refused to do so Nebuchadnezzar ordered them thrown into a fiery furnace

53. Conquest and Exile Daniel 3:24-25 The three were seen waling around in the fiery furnace, unhurt And there was a fourth individual with them, one like “a son of the gods”

54. Conquest and Exile Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego emerged from the furnace unscathed Stories like these encouraged the Jews to be faithful to God during their fifty-year exile in Babylon