The Hebrew Exiles In Babylon
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The Hebrew Exiles in Babylon:
Why So Many Chose to Remain
When Jerusalem fell to the conquering Babylonians in 587 BC, most of what was important to the Hebrew people was gone. They lost their holy city, the Temple was destroyed, and the Davidic monarchy ended (Beasley 221). Following the destruction of Jerusalem, the Babylonian king, Nebuchadrezzar, deported most of the population to other cities, including Babylon. These exiles remained there for about fifty years until the Persian forces, under king Cyrus, took the city of Babylon in 539 BC. The Persian policies concerning captured and exiled peoples were quite different than those of the Babylonians, and because of this King Cyrus allowed the exiles to return to Jerusalem in 538 BC to rebuild the city and the Temple.
However, even though the exiles were allowed to return to their ancestral homeland of Judah, many of the people chose not to return but to remain in the recently conquered city of Babylon. There are many contributing factors concerning why these Hebrew exiles chose to remain. Even so, it is difficult to understand why a people, who were located in Palestine for over a millennium and who had such strong religious beliefs and practices, would choose to abandon the location of their now destroyed sacred Temple and ancestral home after being exiled for only fifty years.
One contributing factor for the exiles choice to remain in Babylon was the quality and level of social life that they experienced while in Babylon. Many of them maintained their identity and status within the Babylonian settlements. This suggests a well-developed social structure among the Hebrew exiles (Blenkinsopp 152). They also had the benefit of personal freedom and the ability to manage their own community life. An example of this are the “elders of the diaspora”, who aided the leader of the exiles, ex-king Jehoiachin, in conducting community affairs. The presence of elders among the Hebrew exiles suggests that the settlements within Babylon governed themselves similarly to pre-exilic urban existence, even to the point of maintaining gatherings for decisions and the hearing of prophets (Smith 97). The exiles were also allowed to live according to their own customs, were able to purchase property, and could even own slaves (Hayes 483). Some of the exiles may have actually had other Hebrews as slaves since the their laws allowed them to work off a debt by temporary enslavement, or bond servitude, to other Hebrews (Grabbe 25).
Another reason for the choice of some of the exiles to remain behind instead of returning to Jerusalem in 538 BC was that many of the Hebrew exiles were involved with the reconstruction and adornment of Babylon. Nebuchadrezzar, who had only recently become ruler of the Babylonian Empire in 604 BC, decided that this “new” Babylon should surpass anything in the fallen Assyrian Empire. Many of the exiles who were brought to Babylon were craftsmen and artisans (2 Kings 24:14,16), and so could be profitably employed in the rebuilding and improvement of the capital city. These workmen helped to make Babylon the most elegant of its day, and its beautiful gardens and architecture surpassed anything previously from Assyria (Whitely 71-72). It must have been a source of great satisfaction to some of the Hebrew exiles to know that they were an important part in the reconstruction of Babylon.
In addition to the more rural occupations, there is also sufficient evidence written in discovered archives of the time that the Hebrew exiles were involved in the mercantile life in Babylon. Since many of the great highways of the time converged on Babylon, thus forming it into the center of commerce in the Near East, it is not surprising to find that some of the exiles became active in trading and loaning in this “land of traffic” (Whitley 73). The Murashu tablets are a significant testimony to the commercial activities of the Hebrews in Babylon. These personal business records from a Hebrew family firm in Nippur (Grabbe 59), dating from 464 BC to 405 BC, confirm the extent to which the exiles had established themselves in Babylonian business by the early fifth century (Whitley 74).
The Hebrews reactions concerning their religion to the exilic period also played a major role in their decision to remain in Babylon, instead of returning to Jerusalem in 538 BC after the decree of King Cyrus of Persia. Because of the Babylonian conquest of Jerusalem and the destruction of their Temple, many of the exiles believed that the Babylonian gods, particularly the chief deity Marduk, had been victorious over Yahweh (Beasley 223). The Babylonian religion seemed to be dominate, especially to those exiles whose faith was not large enough to believe that the disaster at Jerusalem was the direct outcome of the will of Yahweh himself (Ackroyd 43). Those exiles who continued to be faithful to Yahweh and their religion also had to make changes to their religious practices. One such change was the appearance of synagogues in the Babylonian settlements. In order to compensate for the loss of their temple, and to continue their worship traditions, the exiles most likely formed a network of meeting places, such as large houses, to serve as a type of “synagogue” for prayer and education (Blenkinsopp 152).
Furthermore, the Persians under, King Cyrus, held a much more liberal stance toward the religious policies of conquered or exiled peoples than the Babylonians previously had imposed on the Hebrew exiles. A good example is the inscription on the Cyrus Cylinder set up early in his reign, which indicated a policy of generosity and respect toward other religions within his empire, and contained his decree that allowed the Hebrews to return to Jerusalem and rebuild the Temple (Grabbe 57). A version of his decree is found in the book of Ezra that states;
Thus says King Cyrus of Persia: The Lord, the god of heaven, has given me all the kingdoms of the earth, and he has charged me to build him a house at Jerusalem in Judah. Any of those among you who are of his people–may their God be with them!–are now permitted to up to Jerusalem in Judah, and rebuild the house of the Lord, the God of Israel–he is the God who is in Jerusalem; and let all survivors, in whatever place they reside, be assisted by the people of their place with silver and gold, with goods and with animals, besides freewill offerings for the house of God in Jerusalem (Ezra 1:2-4).
Another interesting cause for the exiles choice to remain in Babylon may be the simple fact that the Babylonian Diaspora in 586 BC was not the first time the Hebrew people had been exiled. Tiglath-pileser III, the king of Assyria during the reign of King Ahaz, had deported around twenty eight thousand Israelites