Unit 7 · Prophets, Exile and Return

The word prophet can sound like a fortune-teller. In the Bible it means something different. A prophet is a messenger. The text says God gives the prophet words, and the prophet says them out loud. Many prophets begin with the same line: "Thus says the LORD." That line tells the crowd whose message it is.

Prophets did not usually speak to quiet, friendly people. They spoke to kings, to priests and to crowds in the street. Often the message was hard to hear. It said: you are treating people badly, and trouble is coming unless you change. Sometimes the message was comfort: you are not forgotten.

Jewish tradition calls the second part of the Hebrew Bible the Nevi'im, which means Prophets. Christians read the same books in the Old Testament. Both count Isaiah, Jeremiah and Ezekiel as the three long books of prophets. Then come twelve shorter ones. In this chapter you will meet several of them.

Elijah lived in the northern kingdom, Israel, about 2,800 years ago. The king was Ahab. The book of 1 Kings says Ahab and his queen, Jezebel, worshiped a god named Baal. Elijah said there was only one God to worship. He told the king that no rain would fall until he said so. Then he hid.

After a long dry time, Elijah came back. He asked the king to meet him on Mount Carmel. 1 Kings 18 tells what happened. Elijah faced 450 prophets of Baal. Each side built an altar and laid wood on it. The rule was simple: whichever god sent fire from the sky was the real God.

The story says the prophets of Baal shouted all day, and nothing happened. Elijah even teased them. Then Elijah poured water on his own altar three times. He prayed one short prayer. The text says fire fell and burned up everything, even the water. The people fell down and said, "The LORD, he is God." Then the rain came.

After the fire on Mount Carmel, Queen Jezebel was angry. She said she would kill Elijah. The bold prophet ran for his life. 1 Kings 19 says he went far south into the desert. He sat under a tree and said he wanted to give up. The story says an angel brought him bread and water. Then he walked forty days to a mountain called Horeb.

On the mountain, the text says, a great wind tore at the rocks. But God was not in the wind. Then the ground shook. But God was not in the earthquake. Then came a fire. But God was not in the fire. After the fire came something very quiet. The King James Version calls it "a still small voice."

Readers have loved this story for a long time. Some say it teaches that the biggest, loudest thing is not always the most important. Jewish and Christian readers both point out that Horeb is another name for Mount Sinai, where Moses met God. Elijah, the text says, went back to work after that quiet moment.

Amos was not a priest or a prince. His book says he was a shepherd from a small town called Tekoa. He lived about 760 BCE, around the time of Elijah’s great-grandchildren. The northern kingdom, Israel, was rich then. The book of Amos says the rich lived in fancy houses while the poor were sold for the price of a pair of shoes.

Amos walked north and spoke in the town of Bethel. His message was sharp. He said God did not want fancy songs and big festivals from people who cheated the poor. He said that justice should flow like a river that never dries up. A priest named Amaziah told Amos to go home. Amos said he was only saying what he was sent to say.

Amos is the first of the Twelve, the shorter books of prophets. His words are short, strong and often like poems. Jewish and Christian readers still quote Amos when they talk about fairness. In 1963, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. used a line from Amos in his most famous speech in Washington.

Isaiah lived in Jerusalem, the capital of the southern kingdom, Judah. He spoke about 740 to 700 BCE, a little after Amos. The book of Isaiah says he saw a vision in the Temple. He saw God on a high throne, and he felt small and unclean. The text says a burning coal touched his lips, and then he was ready to speak.

Like Amos, Isaiah said that fairness came first. In the very first chapter of his book, he tells people to stop doing evil and learn to do good. He tells them to help the orphan and speak up for the widow. In that time, a child with no father and a woman with no husband had no one to protect them. Isaiah said God would.

Isaiah also spoke to kings about war. The great empire of Assyria was growing. Isaiah told King Hezekiah not to panic and not to trust in Egypt’s army. The book of Isaiah is long, with 66 chapters. Many scholars think later writers added to it during and after the exile. Jews and Christians both read Isaiah, and sometimes read the same verses in different ways.

Prophets wanted people to remember. So they did not talk in a flat voice. Much of their message is poetry. Hebrew poems say a thing, then say it again in a new way. Amos said justice should roll like water, then said fairness should flow like a stream. Two lines, one idea. That helps the words stick.

Prophets also used pictures in words. Isaiah said sins as red as blood could become white as snow. Jeremiah watched a potter shape wet clay and said God could reshape a people the same way. These pictures came from everyday life: farms, kitchens, city gates and markets.

Sometimes a prophet acted out the message. This is called a sign-act. Jeremiah wore a wooden yoke, the kind put on an ox, to show that Babylon would rule over Judah. Ezekiel lay on his side for many days to stand for the years of wrongdoing. People might forget a speech, but they would not forget a man wearing a yoke.

After King Solomon died, the kingdom had split in two. The north was called Israel, with its capital at Samaria. The south was called Judah, with its capital at Jerusalem. The prophets Amos and Hosea had warned the north. The book of 2 Kings says most of its kings did what was wrong.

To the northeast lay a huge empire called Assyria. Its capital was Nineveh. Assyria had a strong army and a habit of moving whole peoples from one land to another. In 722 BCE, the Assyrian army captured Samaria. 2 Kings 17 says many people of Israel were carried away to far cities. Others were brought in to take their place.

The northern kingdom never came back. Later people spoke of the "lost tribes" of Israel. Judah, in the south, was still standing. Twenty years later Assyria came for Jerusalem too. The book of 2 Kings and the book of Isaiah both say the city was surrounded but not taken. Judah had a little more time.

About a hundred years after Samaria fell, a new empire rose: Babylon. Its king was Nebuchadnezzar. Jeremiah lived in Judah then. His book says he began speaking when he was young, in the days of good King Josiah. Josiah had found a book of the law in the Temple and led the people back to it. But Josiah died in battle, and the kings after him did not listen.

Jeremiah said Babylon was coming and that fighting it would not work. Nobody wanted to hear it. Jeremiah 36 says he spoke his words to a scribe named Baruch, who wrote them on a scroll. King Jehoiakim had the scroll read to him. He cut off each piece and threw it in the fire. Jeremiah simply had Baruch write it all again, with more added.

Later, Jeremiah 38 says, the leaders dropped him into an empty water pit. He sank in the mud. A servant from Africa named Ebed-melech pulled him out with ropes and old rags. Jeremiah is sometimes called the weeping prophet. His book has anger in it, but also great sadness for his city.

2 Kings 25 tells the end of the kingdom of Judah in plain words. The army of Babylon surrounded Jerusalem. Food ran out. The wall was broken. The last king, Zedekiah, tried to escape at night and was caught. Then a Babylonian officer burned the Temple that Solomon had built, the king’s palace and every big house in the city.

This happened in 586 BCE. Many people were marched away to Babylon, hundreds of miles to the east. This is called the exile. A first group had been taken about ten years earlier, and Ezekiel was among them. The poorest people were left behind to work the land. Jeremiah stayed with them for a time.

The book of Lamentations is a set of sad poems about the fallen city. Jewish tradition reads it aloud each year on the day called Tisha B’Av, which remembers the Temple’s fall. Christians read it too. For both, this was the hardest moment in the Bible’s history story so far. The prophets had said it would come. Now it had.

Babylon was a great city with wide walls and gardens. But to the people from Judah it was a strange place. They had lost their homes, their Temple and their king. Psalm 137 gives their feelings a voice. It says they sat by the rivers of Babylon and cried when they remembered Zion, which is a name for Jerusalem.

The psalm says their captors asked them to sing one of the songs of Zion. The people answered with a question: how can we sing the LORD’s song in a strange land? They hung their harps on the willow trees. Then the singer makes a promise never to forget Jerusalem.

Psalm 137 ends with angry words against Babylon. Jewish and Christian readers have handled that ending in different ways. Some skip it in worship. Others say it shows how honest the psalms are about pain. Either way, the psalm shows that the exiles did not lose their story. They kept writing and singing.

Ezekiel was a priest. He was taken to Babylon in the first group, before the Temple fell. His book says he lived by a river called Chebar with other exiles. There, the text says, he saw strange and powerful visions. He saw wheels full of eyes. He saw a scroll he had to eat. He saw a new Temple, measured room by room.

His most famous vision is in Ezekiel 37. The text says he was set down in a valley full of dry bones. A voice asked him, "Can these bones live?" Ezekiel said only God knew. He was told to speak to the bones. As he spoke, the bones rattled and came together. Skin covered them. Then breath came, and a huge crowd stood up.

The text explains the picture. The bones are the people of Israel, who said, "Our hope is lost." The vision says they will live again and go home. Jewish readers have read this as a promise to the whole people. Many Christians read it that way too. Some also read it as a picture of new life after death. It is a message of hope in the darkest part of the story.

The book of Psalms is the Bible’s songbook. It has 150 songs. Some are happy, some are sad, some are angry, and some are quiet. Jewish tradition puts Psalms in the third part of the Tanakh, the Writings, called Ketuvim in Hebrew. Many psalms carry the name of King David at the top, and tradition remembers David as a singer and harp player.

Psalm 23 is the most famous psalm of all. It is short, just six verses. It begins by saying the LORD is the singer’s shepherd. A shepherd leads sheep to green grass and still water. The psalm says the singer will not be in need. Even in a dark valley, the singer says, I will not be afraid, because you are with me.

Then the picture changes. The singer is at a table, a guest at a feast, with a full cup. The psalm ends with the hope of living in the house of the LORD forever. Jews say this psalm at some meals and at funerals. Christians read it at funerals and in church. People who have never opened a Bible often know its first line.

Not every psalm is quiet like Psalm 23. Many are loud. Psalm 100 tells all the earth to make a joyful noise. It tells people to come into God’s gates with thanks. In simple words it says: know that the LORD is God, he made us, we are his people and his sheep. It is only five verses long, and it is sung in synagogues and churches to this day.

Psalm 150 is the last psalm in the book. It is like a grand finish. Every line begins with the word praise. It names the instruments: trumpet, harp, drum, strings, flute, loud cymbals. It sounds like a band playing all at once. Its last line says that everything that breathes should praise the LORD.

Psalms like these are called praise psalms. Others are called laments, sad songs that cry out for help, like Psalm 137. Some psalms give thanks. Some are for a king’s coronation. Some were sung on the walk up to Jerusalem for a festival. The book has a song for almost every feeling a person can have.

If you open the book of Psalms, you will see it is split into five parts. Book One runs from Psalm 1 to Psalm 41. Book Two goes to Psalm 72. Book Three ends at Psalm 89, Book Four at Psalm 106 and Book Five at Psalm 150. Each book ends with a short blessing, often with the word amen, which means "truly" or "so be it."

Many readers, Jewish and Christian, have noticed something. Five is also the number of books in the Torah. Old Jewish teaching says the five books of Psalms match the five books of Moses. Whether or not that was the plan, the shape helps. It shows the book was put together with care. It grew over a long time, from many singers.

Not all psalms are by David. Some name other singers, like Asaph or the sons of Korah. Some name no one. Psalm 90 is called a prayer of Moses. Some psalms were clearly written in the exile or after it. So the book of Psalms grew the way a hymnbook grows, with new songs added as the years went on.

A proverb is a short saying that packs a lot of wisdom into a few words. "Look before you leap" is an English proverb. The Bible has a whole book of them, 31 chapters long. The book of Proverbs names King Solomon at its start. Tradition remembers Solomon as the wisest king. Some parts of the book name other wise teachers too.

Most proverbs come in two lines. Often the second line is the opposite of the first. One says a soft answer turns anger away, but harsh words stir it up. Another says a wise child makes a father glad, but a foolish one makes a mother sad. The two lines make you think about the choice.

The first chapters of Proverbs are like a parent talking to a child. Listen. Be careful about friends. Work hard. Do not be like the lazy person who will not get out of bed. The book says the start of wisdom is respect for the LORD. The last chapter praises a strong, wise woman. She runs her house and helps the poor. Jewish families sing that poem on Friday nights.

The book of Job begins with a good man who has everything: a big family, many animals, good health. Then, in one terrible day, he loses it all. His animals are stolen. A storm kills his children. Then he gets painful sores from head to foot. Job sits in the ashes. He did nothing wrong. So he asks: why?

Three friends come to sit with him. At first they say nothing for seven days. Then they start to talk, and they say the wrong things. They say Job must have done something bad, because bad things only happen to bad people. Job says that is not true. He wants to ask God himself. Most of the book is this long argument, written as poetry.

At the end, the text says God speaks to Job out of a storm. God does not explain why Job suffered. Instead God asks questions: where were you when I made the earth? Can you make it rain? Job says he is too small to understand. Then the text says God gives Job a new family and new health. Jewish and Christian readers have argued for a very long time about what the book means. Many say its point is that the question is real and honest.

The book of Daniel is set in Babylon during the exile. It says Daniel and three friends were taken from Judah as boys and trained to serve the king. They were given new names: Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego. Daniel 1 says they would not eat the king’s rich food. They asked for vegetables and water for ten days, and they ended up healthier than the others.

Daniel 3 tells of a huge golden statue. King Nebuchadnezzar ordered everyone to bow to it when the music played. The three friends would not bow. The king had them thrown into a furnace so hot it killed the guards. The story says the king looked in and saw four men walking in the fire, not three. The friends came out without even the smell of smoke.

In Daniel 6, a later king, Darius, is tricked into making a law: pray to no one but the king for thirty days. Daniel keeps praying at his window, three times a day, as he always did. He is thrown into a den of lions. The story says the king could not sleep. In the morning, Daniel was alive. The text says an angel shut the lions’ mouths. Jewish and Christian readers tell these as stories of courage.

The book of Esther takes place in Persia, the empire that came after Babylon. The king is called Ahasuerus. Esther, a Jewish girl raised by her cousin Mordecai, becomes his queen. She keeps her people a secret. Then Haman, the king’s top helper, plans to kill all the Jews in the empire on one day, chosen by casting lots. The Hebrew word for lots is pur.

Mordecai begs Esther to go to the king. She knows she could die for going uncalled. But she goes. At a dinner she tells the king the truth: she is Jewish, and Haman’s plan will kill her too. The king is furious with Haman. Haman ends up on the very gallows he built for Mordecai. The Jews are allowed to defend themselves, and they are saved.

Jews remember this story every spring at the holiday of Purim. In the synagogue the whole book is read aloud from a scroll called the Megillah. Every time Haman’s name is read, people shake noisemakers and stamp their feet to drown it out. Children dress in costumes. Families give food to friends and gifts to the poor. Esther is one of two books in the Bible named for a woman. The other is Ruth.

Babylon did not last forever. In 539 BCE a new empire, Persia, took the city. Its king was Cyrus. Persia ruled differently from Babylon. The book of Ezra says that in his first year over Babylon, Cyrus sent out an order. Any of the people of Judah who wished could go home to Jerusalem and build a house for their God. He even gave back the Temple’s gold and silver cups.

Not everyone went. Some families had lived in Babylon for fifty years, and it was home now. But the book of Ezra says about 42,000 people made the long trip back. They found Jerusalem in ruins. They built an altar first, then began the Temple. Neighbors tried to stop them. The work stopped and started. The second Temple was finished about 515 BCE.

Cyrus’s order is important for another reason. In the Hebrew Bible, the Tanakh, the last book is 2 Chronicles. Its very last verses tell of Cyrus letting the people go up to Jerusalem. So the Hebrew Bible ends with going home. Christian Old Testaments put the books in a different order and end with the prophet Malachi. The same books, ordered two ways, end on two different notes.

Ezra was a priest and a scribe. A scribe was trained to copy and explain the law. The book of Ezra says he came from Babylon to Jerusalem after the Temple was rebuilt. He brought scrolls of the Torah, the teaching given through Moses. His job was to teach it to a people who had grown up far from home.

Nehemiah 8 tells of a special day. All the people gathered in a square by the Water Gate. Ezra stood on a wooden platform. He opened the scroll, and everyone stood up. He read from early morning until midday. Helpers walked among the crowd and explained the words so that everyone understood. Men, women and children old enough to understand were all there.

The text says the people cried when they heard the words. Ezra and Nehemiah told them not to cry. This day was holy, they said. Go eat good food, drink sweet drinks, and share with anyone who has nothing. Then the people built leafy huts and kept the festival of Sukkot, as the Torah told them. Jewish readers see this day as a new beginning. Reading the Torah out loud is still the center of a synagogue service.

Nehemiah had a good job in Persia. He was the king’s cupbearer, the trusted servant who tasted the wine and stood beside the throne. But his book says he heard news from Jerusalem: the wall was still broken, and the gates were burned. He sat down and cried. Then he prayed, and he asked the king for leave to go and rebuild.

The king said yes and gave him letters and wood. Nehemiah rode to Jerusalem. On his first night he went out in secret and rode around the broken wall to see how bad it was. Then he called the people together. Nehemiah 3 lists family after family, each building the part of the wall near its own house. Priests, goldsmiths, perfume makers and their daughters all worked.

Enemies laughed at them and then threatened to attack. So the builders worked with a tool in one hand and a weapon in the other. Nehemiah 6 says the wall was finished in 52 days. The people then gathered for Ezra’s great reading of the Torah. The books of Ezra and Nehemiah close the Bible’s history of the return. The people were home, with a Temple, a wall and the Torah.