This blog series is taken, more or less as is, from my latest book\u00a0<\/em>How The Bible Actually Works<\/a>. You can read the first posts in this series here,<\/a> here,<\/a> here,<\/a> and here<\/a>.<\/p>\n I trust no one will misunderstand my intentions. I don\u2019t mean to compare the loss of a child to anything, let alone a national tragedy that happened a distant twenty-six hundred years ago. But I also know modern Western Christians have a lot of trouble identifying the depth of panic and pain of the Babylonian exile, which one prophet compared to a mother losing her children: <\/p>\n Thus says the Lord: <\/em><\/p>\n A voice is heard in Ramah, <\/em><\/p>\n lamentation and bitter weeping. <\/em><\/p>\n Rachel is weeping for her children; <\/em><\/p>\n she refuses to be comforted for her children, <\/em><\/p>\n because they are no more. (Jer. 31:15)<\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n Rachel, the wife of Jacob in Genesis, is here symbolized Exile was the trauma of the Old Testament\u2014and we dare Moving to Babylon wasn\u2019t just a setback, an That promise was confirmed throughout Israel\u2019s story in a series of steps, beginning with the miraculous birth of Abraham\u2019s son Isaac (Gen. 17), Israel\u2019s deliverance from Egyptian slavery<\/a> and receiving the Law on Mt. Sinai (Exodus, Leviticus), the successful conquest of Canaan (Joshua), and the founding of the monarchy with God\u2019s chosen king, David, on the throne (1\u20132 Samuel). <\/p>\n Through all these stages, the Israelites had their share The first major crisis came around 930 BCE when God took The northern kingdom eventually fell to the Assyrians in 722 BCE, leaving only the rump state of Judah to the south. And so the bulk of the promised land<\/a> was no longer an Israelite possession, and the chosen people in the north were never heard from again.<\/p>\n The ancient promises were beginning to unravel. But at But imagine if an invading army took control of the But the worst was yet to come. In 586 BCE, after a decade The Temple, mind you. God\u2019s dwelling place.<\/p>\n Now the chosen people have no land, no king, and no The exile is Judah\u2019s tragic story, the reference point of the past, that How could God let How could God How could God turn What will happen to Are we no longer the chosen people?<\/p>\n The people of Judah did return from Babylonian captivity in 539 BCE, due How much longer before we have our own king again?<\/p>\n When will things finally What do we do in the meantime?<\/p>\n Yes, the Judahites were in a full-blown, centuries-long crisis that This This This This This Christians We need to give our crisis a narrative, something to tell I don\u2019t mean to suggest that nothing had been written But it was only in the wake of the crisis of God\u2019s Exile is the changing circumstance that brought the That\u2019s how the Bible was born. Out of crisis. And the question that drove these ancient writers and editors was the wisdom question we have been looking at all along: \u201cWhat is God up to today<\/em>, right here and now<\/em>?\u201d<\/p>\n Looking for more? Continue the conversation and grab a copy of\u00a0How the Bible Actually Works.<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n
\nas the \u201cnational mother,\u201d disconsolate, watching as her children, vulnerable
\nand defenseless, are plundered and pillaged and then taken a thousand miles
\naway to Babylon. Surely, these children are no more. <\/p>\n
\nnot underestimate its impact. <\/p>\n
\ninconvenience. The Israelites believed they owed their existence to God\u2019s
\nirrevocable promise to Abraham of countless descendants and a perpetual kingdom
\nof their own in a land of their own\u2014the land of Canaan (Gen. 12, 15). <\/p>\n
\nof rebellions and murmurings against God, and things rarely went as planned.
\nBut still, God stuck with them. God had made a promise after all.<\/p>\n
\nthe nation of Israel from David\u2019s grandson Rehoboam and divided it into the
\nnorthern and southern kingdoms (1 Kings 11-12). <\/p>\n
\nleast there remained a remnant, the nation of Judah.<\/p>\n
\nwestern two-thirds of the continental United States, deported many of its
\nresidents to South America, and erased state lines, leaving intact only the
\nstates east of the Mississippi River? Sure, we can see an upside (do we really
\nneed Texas and two
\nDakotas?), but the drastic change would be rather traumatic nonetheless and
\nresult in a lot of soul searching about what it means to be an
\nAmerican\u2014especially if you believe this is God\u2019s country (which it isn\u2019t, but
\nthat\u2019s another book).<\/p>\n
\nof struggle, the mighty Babylonians under their dreaded king, Nebuchadnezzar,
\nexiled a portion of the southern kingdom after destroying Jerusalem and burning
\nthe Temple to the ground.<\/p>\n
\nTemple. That\u2019s just another way of saying that God has abandoned them.<\/p>\n
\nmoment that would now color all others and that needed to be processed:<\/p>\n
\nthis happen?<\/p>\n
\nabandon us?<\/p>\n
\nhis back on a plan that goes back to Abraham?<\/p>\n
\nus now? <\/p>\n
\nto the policy of the conquering Persians of resettling the peoples that the
\nBabylonians had deported. So that\u2019s good news. But the Persian Empire did control
\nthe land of Judah for the next two hundred years, and during that time the
\nquestions shifted a bit:<\/p>\n
\nget fully back to normal?<\/p>\n
\nwould come to lodge itself deeply in the Jewish consciousness. And that crisis
\nwould have to be processed, so the Judahites did what anyone would have done
\nunder the circumstances: they told their story:<\/p>\n
\nis who we are.<\/p>\n
\nis where we came from.<\/p>\n
\nis what we believe of God.<\/p>\n
\nis where things went wrong.<\/p>\n
\nis our hope for a renewed future.<\/p>\n
\ncall that story the Old Testament.<\/p>\nDon\u2019t we too sooner or later want to tell our story when
\nfaced with tragedies and hardships? <\/h2>\n
\nourselves and others so we can make some sense of the pain and find hope for
\ntomorrow. We may tell our story to a friend over coffee or on a blog. We might
\njournal\u2014or even write a book or two. And the Judahites, in the centuries
\nfollowing the return from Babylon, created what would come to be called the
\nJewish Bible or Christian Old Testament.<\/p>\n
\ndown until this sixth-century national crisis of faith. Certainly, the
\nIsraelites long before had written stories, accounts of battles, court records
\nof kings, and poems and songs to express who they were, where they came from,
\nand how their God, Yahweh, is wrapped up in all of it. <\/p>\n
\nabandonment that they needed to tell their whole story\u2014to make sense of how broken
\ntheir past had been and how shattered it had become as they wept by the waters of Babylon
\n(as Ps. 137 puts it).<\/p>\nWithout the crisis of exile, the Bible as we know it
\nwouldn\u2019t exist.<\/h2>\n
\nancient Judahites to their knees and forced them to engage their past and reimagine God for their
\npresent and future. The ancient Judahites, who would later come
\nto be called Jews, had
\nto tell their story. They had to account for the crisis, to process it, and to
\nmove forward to a better future.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/thebiblefornormalpeople.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/01\/ENNS_HowBibleActuallyWorks2_3D.png\")
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