Dancing in the Kingdom- Table of Contents
Dancing In the Kingdom – Part 1 – Shadows of the Kingdom – Chapter 1 – Prelude
Exile and return
[Bible references: Jeremiah, Lamentations, Ezekiel, Daniel, Esther, Ezra, Nehemiah]
When Assyria captured the Northern kingdom, they took most of the inhabitants and scattered them throughout the empire and replaced them with people from elsewhere in the empire. The result was that the 10 northern tribes were integrated into the Assyrian empire and were never heard from again as a people group.
Babylon overran the Assyrians and also captured the Southern kingdom. The practice of the Babylonians was to take the best and brightest, bring them to their capital and train them to work for the Babylonian empire. A couple of the prominent people taken were Daniel and Ezekiel.
Since it was primarily the people of Judah that were captured and the other kingdoms had essentially disappeared, the people of Israel now became known as Jews. It was while in captivity, that the Jews got serious about preserving their culture. It was while in captivity that they worked on 1) identifying which writings they had would be considered as scripture and 2) developing cultural patterns that would allow them to preserve their identity. It was in captivity that synagogues developed as a way of continuing to worship without the availability of the temple. Interestingly, it also showed how they knew that they could function under the Law of Moses without a temple and therefore without the system of animal sacrifices.
The Babylonian kingdom was then overrun by the Persian empire. The policy of the Persian empire was to allow the captured peoples that were exiled to Babylonia, to return to their homeland. The first returnees rebuilt the temple that was destroyed by the Babylonians, although the new temple was not as grand as it had been before. Later, Ezra would return to re-establish the Law and then Nehemiah would return to rebuild the wall around Jerusalem.
Observe
Read Jeremiah 18:1-10. How does God interact with our decisions?
Dancing In The Kingdom 