In this gripping episode, we journey through Jerusalem’s turbulent 7th century, witnessing the rise of Babylon and the fall of Assyria. Discover how internal crises sparked major religious reforms led by King Josiah and the prophet Jeremiah, with the discovery of Deuteronomy playing a crucial role. Despite these efforts, Jerusalem’s fate takes a dramatic turn, culminating in its fall to Babylon and the transformative exile that profoundly shaped the Hebrew Bible. Join us as we unravel themes of faith, leadership, and resilience that continue to echo through the ages.
Transcript
Last time we reached a point where the northern kingdom had vanished into the black hole of history. But Jerusalem had survived the onslaught of the Assyrian attack.And having welcomed all of the refugees from the north, after the fall of the north. We have seen this great amalgam of traditions that will eventually give us the Bible as we know it.Whatever about the prophet Isaiah and his proclamation of the inviolability of Jerusalem, of Zion, which is simply another name for Jerusalem.
The seventh century, the six hundreds. Were a time of great threat and great instability in Jerusalem. Because a new imperial power had appeared on the radar screen. Having broken the power of Assyria we now find that the dominant imperial power is Babylon. And again, for efficiency and ferocity, they were hard to beat. So, through this seventh century, the six hundreds, the dominant imperial power is Babylon. And that again will prove fateful for the city of Jerusalem.
Through this century, the six hundreds. There was the sense that there needed to be drastic reform in Jerusalem, religious reform. That the real threat, and this was what the prophets were saying. The real threat wasn’t from outside, it wasn’t Babylon. The real threat was from within. It was their disobedience of God, their faithlessness, their refusal to accept and obey the Torah, the law of God, which was the great liberating law that God had given His people, precisely as a way of Exodus, a way out of the house of slavery.
And what the prophets are saying is that insofar as you turn away from this law that God has given as a path of liberation, you’re going to find your way into the world of death and the world of slavery. So, take your pick. So, there was a serious attempt at reform and renewal right through this century.
Now, it took a very precise shape. First of all, those who were pushing the reform decided to educate the crown prince, whose name was Josiah. And to make sure that he was persuaded of the need for reform and renewal. And that when he became the king, he would push reform. And that’s exactly what happened. Josiah, when he eventually becomes king, is very much a man of reform and renewal. So that was the first piece of the strategy.
The second piece of the puzzle or of the strategy was to have a prophet who would work with the king on this project of reform and renewal. And the prophet in this case was Jeremiah. Jeremiah in many ways inherits the prophetic traditions of the northern kingdom, but they take root in the south, in him, and monumentally so. So, he is the second crucial piece of the reform strategy. You have the king, Josiah. You have the prophet, Jeremiah. And then you need a text for the program of renewal and reform. And that text is the book we know as Deuteronomy.
Deuteronomy is a Greek title, which means simply the second law. Now the claim was that it was found in the temple mysteriously. Who knows exactly what its origins are? But whatever its origins, it became the charter of reform and renewal. Now, reform and renewal weren’t just religious, in some narrow sense. They were religious, but that also meant they were political and military. Because you can’t distinguish those three things; Political, military and religious are all intertwined, interconnected in deep and crucial ways.
So that was the strategy, get the right king, get the right prophet speaking on behalf of God, and have the text and the speaker in the book of Deuteronomy is always Moses. So, God through Moses, God through Jeremiah, and God through Josiah.
Now the project of reform and renewal was only partially successful. Eventually it will become a religious triumph, but that’s beyond the exile, more of which to come. But politically and militarily, it begins to falter with the death of King Josiah in battle. So, there is one crucial piece of the puzzle that is now lost. Those who succeed Josiah to leadership no longer listen to the voice of the prophet Jeremiah, who becomes a voice crying in the wilderness and eventually is rejected, persecuted, and threatened with death. So, they don’t listen to the voice of the prophet. And also, the text no longer becomes the charter that frames leadership and the crucial decisions that the leaders have to make. As the threat of Babylon grows greater.
Now, eventually what happens, and Jeremiah is still living at this time. There is a first conquest of Jerusalem by Babylon in 597 BC. So, we’re now in the five hundreds, 597. And the Babylonians were fairly sure that what happened in 597 would teach Jerusalem such a lesson that they would, as it were, pull their head in. This was the first transportation of people from Jerusalem to Babylon.
Now, this was standard practice in the ancient world. That a victorious people would take the conquered people and transport them to another part of the kingdom or the empire. This was to undermine local loyalties and to create a new kind of unity within the empire or the kingdom. So, there was nothing unusual about this.
So, it would have been some of the leadership groups were taken from Jerusalem to Babylon in 597. But that was only a prelude to what was coming. Because what happened in 597, and despite the continuing prophecy of Jeremiah, did not, teach Jerusalem a lesson. They continued to provoke in all kinds of ways, political and military, the Babylonians. So, in 587, ten years later, Babylon decides for the final solution. They again lay siege to Jerusalem. And not only lay siege, they take the city and they put it to the torch. The temple is destroyed, the city is largely destroyed, and a much more massive transportation of at least the leadership groups happens in 587, the Babylonian exile.
Which is one of the two catastrophes that really are the womb of the Bible. The Bible, the Old Testament as we have it is really born of this catastrophe, the Babylonian exile. When the whole show seemed to collapse, where was God now? Because in the ancient world, if you beat me in battle, it was because your god beat my god in a battle in heaven. So, if the Babylonian god had proved, Marduk, had proved stronger than the God of Israel, wouldn’t you back, Marduk? Go and worship him, forget the God of Israel, he’s useless. And that’s what happened, to some extent.
So, this was, it wasn’t just a political and military crisis of the first order. It was also a religious and theological crisis of the first order. Where is God in the midst of the catastrophe? That’s the question that drives the Old Testament. But it also will, as we will see in a later podcast, it also drives the New Testament, where it will be another destruction that prompts the same question.
Now, the Babylonian exile lasts for about fifty years. And you see traces of it monumentally throughout the Hebrew Bible. And in the Psalms, for instance, by the streams of Babylon we sat and wept when we thought of you O Zion, if I ever forget you Jerusalem, let my tongue cleave to my mouth, and so on.
But they didn’t just hang up their harps on the poplars there and sing the songs of Zion. They got their noses over their sacred texts. Which they had brought with them into exile. And they rummaged through the sacred texts, the embers. Looking for a spark of hope for the future. Is there a future to hope in? Is really the same question as, where is God in the midst of the catastrophe when everything seems to have fallen apart?
So there begins then, this massive process of rereading, revising, reediting the sacred texts in the search for a hope in the midst of what seemed hopelessness. And the Bible is always a proclamation of a hard won hope in the midst of all that seems hopeless. In that sense, it’s not cheap hope or cosmetic hope.
Now, eventually, Babylonian power begins to wane, and a new imperial power begins to appear on the horizon. This time, it’s Persia, led by an extraordinarily charismatic and powerful figure known as Cyrus, sometimes Cyrus the Great. Eventually, the Persian army defeats the Babylonian army in battle. And that’s the end of Babylonian power.
Now, when Cyrus arrives in Babylon as the conqueror, he finds these exiles. And he decides that if they wish, they can return to their homeland. He has no desire to keep them in exile. So here was the invitation. Now, of course, the Prophets, people like Ezekiel, see this as the intervention of God, not just Cyrus, that Cyrus was being used by God to lead the people back to Jerusalem.
So, Cyrus then says, if you want to go home, you can go home. Now, there was no great rush. Because many of the exiles had, in fact made quite good lives in Babylon. So, some did decide to go home, but many decided to stay in Babylon. And that’s why we have, even in much later centuries, we have a large and important Jewish community in Babylon that produce a text, an important text like the Babylonian Talmud. So, some go home, and they would have been driven by a religious motivation.
Now, this is about 537 BC. It happened in waves, in fact. So, it’s not quite as neat as I’m suggesting. Nothing ever is in Jerusalem. So, when they get home to Jerusalem, what they find is a depressing sight. The city is in ruins and has been for fifty years. And you see this in biblical texts where they say, you know, they wept at the sight of the city destroyed, the temple destroyed, the jackals prowl, and so on.
So, they look at the ruins of Jerusalem. And the question is, where do we start? So, it was a depressing prospect. And again, prophets appear at this time to say, come on, stir yourself for the rebuilding, the task of rebuilding. It may be difficult, of course it is. But it’s not impossible. So, as they begin, slowly, slowly to rebuild the city. But they have to rebuild the community first of all. And that involves a religious rebuilding. So, in other words, it’s not enough just to rebuild the fabric of the city. They have to rebuild the community out of which the city arises, as it were.
Now, they decide to rebuild the temple. But this, of course, is much harder than ever it had been under King Solomon, in part because they don’t have the same wealth, they don’t have the same population. And eventually the temple that they rebuild. People who had known the old temple of King Solomon when they saw this second temple, they wept. Because it seemed so poor by comparison with what they had known. But the rebuilding of the temple was crucial. Because this was again a reassertion of the belief that Jerusalem was the place where God had made his home.
Now, one of the things after the exile is that the monarchy, the Davidic monarchy. Now there was the kings who looked back to David, that it vanished forever. So, the king, there was no king after the exile. Nor was there an Ark of the Covenant. We don’t know what happened to the Ark of the Covenant, but it seems to have vanished at the time of the Babylonian exile. And this again would have been standard practice. Before the destruction of the temple by the Babylonians, they would have taken from the temple anything of value as the trophies of victory. And surely the Ark of the Covenant, which was the only thing in the Holy of Holies in Jerusalem. The Holy of Holies was the inner sanctum of the Jerusalem Temple, and only the high priest could enter there on one day of the year and make atonement for the sins of the people.
After the exile, with the temple rebuilt, the Holy of Holies was empty. There was nothing in it. Because the Ark had disappeared. So that when Pompey, for instance, the Roman general, conquers Jerusalem in 63 BC, he storms up onto the Temple Mount. Keen to see what’s there. And he goes through the first chamber of the temple building, and then the second chamber, and then the Holy of Holies lay beyond that, with its great curtain.
So, he storms through the curtain, and to his astonishment, in the Holy of Holies, the inner sanctum, there was nothing. Pompey couldn’t believe it, not even a statue. And that in itself is a fascinating insight into Jewish religion. That the epicenter of the Divine Presence was, in fact an absence. Because Jerusalem had to discover the presence of God in the midst of what seemed to be the absence of God. You know, again, where is God in the midst of the catastrophe? So that interplay of presence and absence is something that is, thematic really in the whole of Scripture.
So, the king has vanished forever. And at this stage, what happens to, the promise made to David and his dynasty of an eternal throne is referred to the end time. The word that is sometimes used is it becomes an eschatological hope. It’s referred to the end time. That at the end time there will appear an ideal Davidic king. But in other words, ambition is abandoned for the historical and political arena. In that sense, the Davidic monarchy vanishes into a black hole. But the hope attaching to the Davidic dynasty is referred to an end time. Now Christianity sees that Jesus is the ideal Davidic king. So, Christianity makes a great deal of that hope referred to an end time. And attaches it to the figure of Jesus.
The leadership of this community, which is now, more of a religious community than it is, a political and military community. The leadership passes to the high priesthood. Who at this time puts on top of the high priests’ turban, he wore a kind of a headdress that was like a turban. The royal diadem is now worn by the high priest. That’s because there is no king. So, the high priest becomes the one who is the promoter of unity among this now much smaller community.
So, through this post-exilic period, down to the New Testament. You have a succession of empires. We’ve seen already Assyria, then Babylon, and then Persia. But in the fourth century, in other words, the three hundreds. Another power appears on the horizon, and this time it’s Greece, led by the extraordinarily charismatic and successful Alexander the Great. And in 333 BC, he wins a crucial battle, really decisive in terms of history, against Persia. So, the power of Persia is broken in this part of the world. And the new imperial power becomes Greece from 333 onwards.
Alexander dies in his early thirties. And he leaves no heir. So, he had built up a massive empire. But with his early death, the question was, well, who takes over now? And there was a struggle for power of course. So, that three of the generals of Alexander, each takes a third of the Empire. One takes Egypt, one takes Greece, and one takes what was called Syria. That area, we know as the Holy Land and further east.
So, that Jerusalem is now part of Syria. And under, basically Greek rule. And this is where the Greek language becomes the imperial language of the time. And that’s why we have the New Testament in Greek, what they call Koine Greek, which means common Greek, the Greek that was spoken in the marketplace and in the streets. It wasn’t the classical Greek of the great literature, but it was an ordinary, everyday spoken Greek, much simpler than classical Greek. But that’s the Greek that we have in the New Testament.
Now, another point of crisis will come when one of these Greek rulers from the city of Antioch, which was the capital of the Syrian part of the empire, of which Jerusalem was part, decides that he will insist upon pagan religion and prohibit the practice of Jewish religion. And to make his point, he sacrifices it is said, he sacrificed a hog on the altar of the Temple in Jerusalem. Greater horror than which the Jews could not imagine. So, at this there is a rebellion against Greek power. A reassertion of Jewish military power again, and this time against all the odds, and led by those who are called the Maccabees or the Maccabees, which means the hammers. They wage a guerrilla warfare which is successful.
So, there is a period then of independence. It doesn’t last for terribly long. Because eventually Greek power will wane. Sounds familiar, doesn’t it? And a new imperial power will rise to the occasion and dominate this part of the world. And this, of course, is Rome.
Now again, no one had seen anything like the Roman army in terms of discipline, power, brutality, and just sheer efficiency as a killing machine and as a winner of battles, it was, unique. So, they cut a swathe through this part of the world. And they take Jerusalem as part of their military campaign. And this is under the general who’s known normally as Pompey or Pompey the Great. And he it was who stormed on to the Temple Mount, as I have said, and discovered that there was nothing when he expected something and something extraordinary, there was nothing.
This then takes us to the very threshold of the New Testament period. Where you have Rome as the dominant power. But Rome worked through often, not always. But in this case, Rome followed a policy of working through a puppet king. And this is where King Herod enters the scene. He was king of the Jews. But, although he had a Nabataean background, he was only half Jewish, in fact. But Herod was completely in the pocket of the Romans. And so, he was a puppet king. But he was an absolutely extraordinary builder.
And it’s at that point that we really do, come to the world of the New Testament. Because Herod builds, in part, to state his credentials, and to say, I’m the real thing. He builds the temple with a magnificence that took people back to the glory days of Solomon. So, Herod builds the temple, and that is the world into which Jesus is born. The temple of King Herod, with all its glory. And the dominance of the Romans. So, we’ll rest it there. And in the next podcast, we will explore Jerusalem in the world of the New Testament and beyond.