Exile and Return

The exile begins with young men from Judah's nobility taken into the palace of Nebuchadnezzar and given new names: Daniel becomes Belteshazzar, and Hananiah, Mishael and Azariah become Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego (Daniel 1:6–7). They refuse the king's food, then the king's furnace, then the king's decree; Daniel interprets a dream no one else can read, survives a night with the lions under Darius, and receives visions of kingdoms rising and falling (Daniel 2–7). Ezekiel prophesies to the settlements by the Chebar canal, and sees a valley of dry bones stand up as an army (Ezekiel 37).

When Cyrus of Persia takes Babylon he issues a decree: the house of God in Jerusalem may be rebuilt (Ezra 1:1–4). Sheshbazzar and then Zerubbabel, with the high priest Jeshua, lead the first return and lay the foundation, and the old men who remembered the first temple weep aloud (Ezra 3:12). The work stalls under local opposition until the prophets Haggai and Zechariah stir the builders, and the temple is finished in the reign of Darius (Ezra 6:14–15).

Not everyone goes home. In Susa, Esther is taken into the harem of Xerxes and becomes queen; her cousin Mordecai refuses to bow to Haman, and the plot to destroy the Jews of the empire is turned back on its author (Esther 3–7). "Who knows whether you have not come to the kingdom for such a time as this?" (Esther 4:14) is the whole book in a sentence.

Two later missions finish the era. Ezra the scribe comes up from Babylon with the Law in his hand and confronts the community over intermarriage (Ezra 7–10). Nehemiah, cupbearer to Artaxerxes, hears that Jerusalem's wall is broken down, asks for leave, and rebuilds it in fifty-two days against the mockery of Sanballat, Tobiah and Geshem, with families like Eliashib's and the sons of Hassenaah each taking a section (Nehemiah 2–6). Ezra reads the Law from a wooden platform while the Levites explain it, the people covenant together, and Malachi closes the Old Testament promising a messenger still to come (Malachi 3:1).