Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, first came against Jerusalem in 605 BC. It was at that time that renown prophets of the Bible like Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and Daniel were taken into captivity. This began a long period of servitude for the Hebrew people, although the desolation of the Land did not begin for another 16 years. Nebuchadnezzar besieged Jerusalem in 589 BC and destroyed the Temple in 586 BC.

The Babylonian judgement was devastating to the Hebrew people, for it was a systematic curtailment of all aspects of God’s Covenant. That original Covenant given through Moses had promised they would be a separate and distinct people with individual blessings. The Covenant had promised safety in a Land flowing with "milk and honey." Finally it had promised the presence of God Himself where they could meet with Him for forgiveness of temporal sins and for guidance through the Priesthood, in the Temple filled with His glory. But the Babylonian judgement dramatically ended all of those things.

• First, the people were individually delivered into a condition of slavery. They no longer had a king, a government, a society, or any rights as a separate and distinct people.

• Second, they were physically uprooted from their homeland and families, dragged into an alien heathen nation who neither knew their God nor respected their culture.

• Third, the God of their fathers ceremoniously departed from Solomon’s Temple prior to its destruction, signifying His rejection of the entire nation.

Therefore what happened in the Babylonian Exile appeared to be the death knell for their Covenant with God. Their worst nightmare, predicted years earlier in (Deuteronomy 24.36-37), had become reality.

Consequently, Persia’s king Cyrus unprecedented decree permitting the Hebrews return to their Land was a miracle even to many Gentiles. This occurred shortly after his 539 BC defeat of the Babylonians and fulfilled prophecies given earlier by the prophets Isaiah (Isaiah 44.28) and Jeremiah (Jeremiah 25.12, 29.10). We are again indebted to those Old Testament Gentile kingdoms who kept such accurate records, because we now know that the first year of Cyrus was 538 BC, with the actual return apparently beginning in 536 BC.

The Bible indicates that this initial return occurred under the leadership of Zerubbabel (Ezra 1.1, 2.2). Nor was it the last, for a second one occurred 78 years later under Ezra in the 7^th year of a later king of Persia named Artaxerxes (Ezra 7.8). According to Persian records, this would be 458 BC in our calendar. Finally, a third return was made by Nehemiah to rebuild the walls of Jerusalem in the 20^th year of that same king Artaxerxes, i.e. 445 BC.

Many thousands of Jews eagerly returned to their Land during these three "Alijahs", but many more thousands chose to remain in the foreign lands where they had been forcibly taken. The Jews who did not return are the subject of the book of Esther. The Bible records that the events described in that book began to occur in the 3^rd year of Medo-Persian king Ahasuerus (Esther 1.1-3). That should have been the year 483 BC, so the story of Esther is placed between the first return under Zerubbabel in 536 BC and the second return under Ezra in 458 BC.

It would also be desirable to set dates for the rebuilding of the Temple following the Exile and for the writing of the books of Haggai, Zechariah, and Malachi, but these subjects are best reserved for a later section of this study.

Think for a moment about the importance of the results obtained so far in this study of THE BIBLE (CHRONOLOGICAL).

• It is possible to treat the Bible as an historical document, at least for a period of about 475 years in the Old Testament, from the beginning of the divided kingdom until the time of Nehemiah.

• Since the dates are directly linked to secular history independent of the Bible, it is possible to correlate Biblical happenings for that period with contemporary secular history to better understand them in light of the cultural and political situations in the world around.

• It is also possible to amplify what the Bible says happened with other archaeological facts as they become known.

Therefore this detailed chronology, seeming rather dull and uninteresting, is actually the basis for making the Bible come alive within the framework of real history in the ancient world.

REDEMPTIVE PLAN