Free from Bondage, It’s Time to Rebuild
Americans remembering March 12 515BC
Khen Lim
Image source: Biblical Authorship
Following the post-Davidian period where the nation
partitioned into Israel to the north and Judah to the south, the people of God
capitulated to one sinful ruler after another. The northern kingdom of Israel,
in particular, produced some of the most wicked rulers the Bible could
describe. Judah was not much better – with the exception of exemplary kings
like Uzziah, Jotham, Hezekiah and Josiah, pretty much the rest were like their
northern cousins.
Invariably, after Zedekiah, the evil son of Josiah’s rule,
around 586BC, Judah and her capital, Jerusalem, finally succumbed to the Neo-Babylonian
Empire and a fair portion of its Jewish population was exiled to Babylon.
As
long as 135 years earlier, in 721BC, Israel was already captured by the
Assyrians right after Hoshea ascended to the throne. Forty-seven years later,
in 539BC, the Babylonians themselves were brought to their knees by a coalition
of Medes and Persians.
Unlike before, the new conquerors believed that the captives,
including the Jews from Judah, should be given the opportunity to rebuild their
own homes, meaning that they were allowed to return to the southern kingdom and
fulfil their pledge to rebuild their destroyed temple.
Yet, even seventeen long
years later, that pledge languished and construction of the temple was poor
enough that God had commanded His prophets, Haggai and Zechariah, to rebuke His
people for their indifference and negligence.
