Stephen Ojapah MSP
Comfort, comfort my people, says your God. Speak tenderly to Jerusalem, and cry to her warfare is ended, that her iniquity is pardoned, that she has received from the Lord’s hand double for all her sins. (Isaiah 40:1-2). The book of Isaiah is centered on the Babylonian exile, which began in 586 BC. At that time King Nebuchadnezzar II of Babylon destroyed Jerusalem and the temple and then enslaved the Jewish people. The exile ended in 539 B.C. When Cyrus f Persia allowed the Jews to return to Jerusalem and to rebuild their temple. The book of Isaiah makes it clear that Nebuchadnezzar was God’s instrument to punish the Jewish people for their sins, and Cyrus will be Yahweh’s instrument to set them free.
When Nebuchadnezzar destroyed the Holy Temple, he exiled 10,000 of the brightest and most promising of the Jewish nation (including Daniel Mishael and Azariah), leaving behind the labourers to work the fields. The Jewish people who remained in Israel under the rule of King Zedekiah began rebelling against Nebuchadnezzar. The prophet Jeremiah begged the king to end this foolish rebellion and submit to Nebuchadnezzar before it was too late, but his warning fell on deaf ears. The remainder of the Jews in Israel were crushed and sent into exile: “By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down, we also wept, when we remembered Zion” (Psalm
137)
The Roman Empire brought the final blow for Jewish sovereignty in Israel and the final exile for the Jews, one that has lasted for nearly 2,000 years and has not yet ended. The Jewish people during that time were split into four factions: the Pharisees, Sadducees, Sicarii and Zealots. Some of these groups began rebelling against the mighty empire. The Emperor Nero saw this as treason and sent his best general, Vespasian, along with his son, Titus, and 60,000 Roman soldiers to quell the revolt. Finally, in the year 3829 (69 CE), an oppression that started with heavy taxes ended with mass murder. The Jewish people were butchered and slaughtered, their homes ransacked and the Holy Temple burnt to the ground. And since then, the Jewish people have been persecuted and exiled.
In the year 1096, the First Crusade destroyed Jewish communities across Europe and in Israel. In 1144, the first recorded blood libel took place. In 1190, Jews were massacred in England during the Third Crusade. A public burning of the Talmud took place in Paris in 1242. In 1290, all Jews were expelled from England. The Spanish Inquisition occurred in 1478. In 1648, Jews were massacred by Chmielnitzki’s forces (what is known as gezeirat tach v’tat). In 1918, over 60,000 Jews were killed during the Russian revolution. Finally, during the Holocaust: six million Jews were slaughtered.
In chapters 1-39 of the book of Isaiah, the scriptures outlined the punishment that Judah could expect as a result of relying on alliances with other nations rather than placing their trust in God. Jerusalem and the temple would be destroyed and the people would experience a lengthy
exile. That has happened. The exile has lasted nearly fifty years. The Jews are living in servitude, as they had done in Egypt so many years earlier. Most of the Jews who lived in Jerusalem have died in exile, and a new generation has been born in servitude.