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God’s policy for the Jewish People

God’s word—I will bless those who bless you and curse those who curse you.

33AD Jesus was crucified- remember when Jesus was going to the cross and saw the Jewish women weeping, he told them not to weep for him, but to “weep for yourselves, your children and your children’s children”. Jesus was actually prophesying Israel’s future..

After the crucifixion the CHURCH exploded, many Gentiles become followers of the Way (which was the name for the early Christians) then there was an attempted division between the Jews and the Gentiles who were converts. The Jewish Christians discussed whether the Gentiles who had been converted to Christianity, had to be circumcised and be converted to Judaism BEFORE becoming Christians. James, the brother of Jesus, who at the time was the leading Rabbi, after seeking the Lord and the council of other elders gave a profound teaching in Acts 15. This was the first attempt of division between the Jews and Gentiles.

JEWISH HISTORY

37 years after Christ’s crucifixion in 70 AD there occurred the first Jewish revolt against Rome. The Jewish state comes to an end in 70 AD, when the Romans begin to actively drive Jews from the home they had lived in for over a millennium. But the Jewish Diaspora ("diaspora" ="dispersion, scattering") had begun long before the Romans had even dreamed of Judaea. When the Assyrians conquered Israel in 722, the Hebrew inhabitants were scattered all over the Middle East; these early victims of the dispersion disappeared utterly from the pages of history. However, when Nebuchadnezzar deported the Judaeans in 597 and 586 BC, he allowed them to remain in a unified community in Babylon. Another group of Judaeans fled to Egypt, where they settled in the Nile delta. So from 597 onwards, there were three distinct groups of Hebrews: a group in Babylon and other parts of the Middle East, a group in Judaea, and another group in Egypt. Thus,597 is considered the beginning date of the Jewish Diaspora.

During Judah's first hundred years of independence, the kings enjoyed mixed success. At first they were able to, initially greatly expanding the country by conquering its neighbors, but ultimately they were being unable to prevent rebellions from reducing the kingdom to its original size. It was the Assyrian monarch, Sargon II (721-705 BC), who first forcefully relocated Hebrews after the conquest of Israel, the northern kingdom of the Hebrews. Although this was a comparatively mild deportation and perfectly in line with Assyrian practice, it marks the historical beginning of the Jewish diaspora. This chapter in the Jewish diaspora, however, never has been really written, for the Hebrews deported from Israel seem to have blended in with Assyrian society and, by the time Nebuchadnezzar II conquers Judah (587 BC), the southern kingdom of the Hebrews, the Israelites deported by Sargon II have disappeared nameless and faceless into the sands of northern Mesopotamia. As in Israel, the Assyrians provoked a split within Judah between those favoring the appeasement of the enemy and those who wanted to fight. Like its northern neighbor, Judah tried to do a little of both and ultimately could not stop the superior forces of Assyria. The Assyrians besieged Judah in 701 B.C. and were on the verge of overwhelming Jerusalem when they mysteriously withdrew, and Judah retained its independence.

Before the Assyrians could attack again, they were conquered by a new power that burst on the scene, the Babylonians under King Nebuchadnezzar. While the former kingdom of Israel fell under the king's rule, Judah remained defiant. When an expeditionary force failed to quell the unrest, Nebuchadnezzar led his army into Jerusalem and captured the city in 597 B.C. He deported thousands of Jews who had been part of the ruling elite and who might be tempted to lead a future rebellion. Nebuchadnezzar appointed twenty-one year old Zedekiah, a descendant of King David, to serve as king.

Zedekiah did not turn out to be the puppet Nebuchadnezzar expected and mounted a new revolt. This time Nebuchadnezzar destroyed the countryside and, after an eighteen-month siege, razed Jerusalem. In the typically grisly fashion of the time, Zedekiah's sons were murdered in front of him and then Zedekiah's his eyes were gouged out. A handful of Judeans fled to Egypt, some poor, elderly, and sick peasants remained in Judah, and the rest of the population was deported to Babylon. It was 586 B.C.; Judah had outlived Israel by 136 years, but the days of the Jewish kingdoms appeared to be over.

The Babylonians ruled the world in the sixth century B.C. Yet, afterwards, in the course of about half a century, they ceased to exist. This is remarkable enough, but it is even more astounding that their successors, the Persians, had did not existed before! In 560 B.C., Cyrus the Great became the king of Persia, a small state in the Middle East, and within 30 years had replaced the Babylonian empire with his own.

Cyrus also unexpectedly told the Jews that they could return to their homeland. While he was probably motivated primarily by the desire to have someone else rebuild Palestine and to make it a source of income for the Persian Empire, the impact on the Jews was to reinvigorate their faith and stimulate them to reconstruct the Temple in Jerusalem. The Second Temple was completed on the very site of the first Temple in 516 B.C.

Though Cyrus allowed the Jews freedom to practice their religion, he would not permit them to reestablish the monarchy. Instead, Cyrus sent Zerubbabel, a prince of the house of David, along with 42,360 other exiles to establish what essentially became a theocracy, with Zerubbabel as High Priest.

Over the next 150 years, Judea flourished as the Jews rebuilt Jerusalem and developed the surrounding areas. The Persians resisted any Jewish efforts to restore the monarchy, but allowed them a high degree of autonomy under the High Priest, whose power was partially checked by the Sanhedrin, the Jewish Court, and the Popular Assemblies.

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This site was last updated Monday June 07, 2004 03:54:19 PM -0400