When the Jews reviewed their history, it looked like a long slide downhill. consistently, they had responded to God's love by grumbling against him, by disobeying his law, by worshiping idols. Finally, after centuries of warning, punishment had come. Jerusalem was flattened. The survivors marched off in chains toward the other end of the world.
They had not merely lost a battle. They had lost, seemingly, their place in God's heart and their future as his special people.
But hope for a new start came in exile. When Persian emperor Cyrus took power, he offered Jews a chance to return to their land and rebuild their temple. Some jumped at the chance. They took the long journey to a homeland most of them had never seen (you can read about the trip in the first chapters of Ezra). The wanted not merely to rebuild; they hoped somehow to escape the downward, anti-God trend that had plagued their nation from its beginning.
Hope Begins to Fade
They found a disheartening scene. Their once-beautiful city was a ghost town. Everything of value had been destroyed. Fertile fields were overgrown. The region was almost empty of people.
The small band of returned exiles built an altar on the grounds of the ruined temple. But soon they grew discouraged about actual rebuilding. They had enough trouble finding shelter and eking out a living from the land. When their non-Jewish neighbors fought against rebuilding |
