πᾶσα ἡ θεία γραφὴ διδάσκαλός ἐστιν ἀρετῆς καὶ πίστεως ἀληθοῦς. All Divine Scripture is a teacher of true virtue and faith. S. ATHANASIUS. LECTURE XIV HAGGAI AND ZECHARIAH Who hath despised the day of small things?—ZECHARIAH iv. 10. I the Exile WITH unwavering faith the prophets who watched The limits of the ruin of the Temple and the destruction of Jeru- predicted. salem proclaimed that this catastrophe was not destined to result in a frustration of the divine purpose for the chosen people. Jeremiah, while he foretold the inevitable certainty of the impending judgement, fixed the limits of it. Thus saith Jehovah : After seventy years be accomplished for Babylon, I will visit you, and perform for you My good word, to cause you to return to this place. For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, saith Jehovah, thoughts of peace, and not of evil, to give you an hereafter and a hope (Jer. xxix. 10, 11). Ezekiel, as he gazed in spirit from the land of his banishment upon the deserted ruins of the Temple, saw rise before him the vision of a nobler building and a more perfect order of worship. Cyrus the deliverer. As surely as he had beheld the departure of the divine glory from the desecrated Temple and city, so surely he beheld its return to dwell in the Holy Place once more (Ezek. xi. 23; xliii. 2 ff.). The seventy years of the Babylonian supremacy were drawing to their close, when the strains of the greatest poet-prophet of Israel rang out in the ears of the waiting exiles: Comfort ye, comfort ye My people, saith your God. Speak ye comfortably to Jerusalem, and cry unto her, that her time of service is accomplished, that her punishment is accepted; that she hath received of Jehovah's hand double for all her sins (Isa. xl. 1, 2). Already the deliverer was in full career of conquest. As Nineveh had fallen before the power of Babylon, so Babylon yielded to the advance of Persia, and Cyrus became supreme monarch in Western Asia.2 One of his first acts was to issue the proclamation which permitted the Jews to return to Jerusalem and rebuild the Temple (Ezra i. 1-3). 1 Seventy years is named as the duration not of the Exile but of the Babylonian supremacy (Jer. xxv. 11, 12; xxix. 10). It is obviously a round number, but from the battle of Carchemish (B.C. 605) to the capture of Babylon (B.c. 538) was very nearly seventy years. Only fifty years intervened between the destruction of Jerusalem (586) and the first Return (537). 2 See above, p. 356. According to the Annalistic Tablet of Cyrus recently discovered, "Nabonidus fled, and the soldiers of Cyrus entered Babylon without fighting." Nabonidus had rendered himself unpopular by his religious policy, and Cyrus was welcomed by the Babylonian priests and people as a deliverer. The siege ascribed to the reign of Cyrus by Greek and Roman historians really took place in the reign of Darius. See Sayce, Records of the Past. new series, vol. v, pp. 144 ff. This permission was in accordance with his general policy. It is not improbable that he had received help in the conquest of Babylon from the conquered peoples who had been transported thither by the Babylonian kings, and discerning in the presence of such peoples a source of weakness to his empire, he determined to restore them to their old homes. The statement of Josephus (Ant. Jud. xi. 1, 2) that Cyrus had read the prophecies of Isaiah, and was inspired with an ambition to fulfil them, rests upon no sure foundation, and is probably nothing but that historian's own conjecture. It cannot indeed be either proved or disproved; and it is certainly possible that Cyrus was aware that the Jews in exile regarded him with eager expectation as their appointed deliverer. But even if he was acting unconsciously, he was none the less the chosen instrument of Jehovah for carrying out His purposes of mercy toward His people. The account of the actual circumstances of the The Return Return is disappointingly meagre, and we are left to fill in many details by inference or conjecture. The response to the invitation was by no means universal. But the Return was distinctly a national act. All the families settled in Babylon seem to have taken part in it. With one or two possible exceptions, those who accompanied Ezra eighty years later belonged to the same families as those who followed Zerubbabel. The new community was intended to represent all |