PSALMS OF THE HEART 3

 

Art: By The Rrivers of Babylon by Gebhard Fugel 1920

Book Three (Psalms 73-89): Grapples with crisis, national pain, and the Babylonian exile.

The seizure of Jerusalem by Babylon in 586 B.C. was horrific:

“The siege lasted for eighteen months, during which time the people of Jerusalem were starved to the point of cannibalism (see Lamentations 4:8-10). As the final defences broke down and the Babylonians became victorious, King Zedekiah and his army fled toward the Jordan River but were captured. He was forced to watch as his family was murdered, and then the Babylonians put out his eyes and took him captive to Babylon.

“The city was burned, Solomon’s temple was destroyed, and the kingdom of Judah came to an end. According to Jeremiah, the Babylonians took the remnant of the people captive to Babylon except for some who were left behind under Babylonian rule (see Jeremiah 39:8-10). Thus Nebuchadnezzar was able to control Judah by keeping the leaders in captivity, and some few of the people were allowed to remain behind to harvest the crops. The breakup and displacement of the Jews removed the threat of national revival. (Old Testament Student Manual Book 2: The Lasting Effects of the Fall and Captivity of Judah)

The Book of Psalms lets us experience this painful event in Judah’s history first-hand through the lamentation of Asaph:

“O God, the heathen are come into thine inheritance; they holy temple have they defiled; they have laid Jerusalem on heaps. How long, Lord? Wilt thou be angry for ever? Shall thy jealousy burn like fire? For they have devoured Jacob and laid waste his dwelling place. O remember not against us former iniquities; let thy tender mercies speedily prevent us; for we are brought very low. Help us, O God of our salvation for the glory of thy name; and deliver us, and purge away our sins, for thy name’s sake. Turn us again, O God of hosts, and cause thy face to shine; and we shall be saved” (Psalm 79:1,5,7,8,9; Psalm 80:7).

I literally cried reading this. There is a great lesson to be learnt in repentance and that is that even forgiveness of our sins cannot wipe away consequences. They serve a mighty purpose, the memory of suffering through them deters a return to former sins:

“The captivity had a profound effect on Judaism. Scholars almost universally agree that the Jews never returned to image worship after the captivity. The fall of Jerusalem was a great turning point in Israel’s religious life. From earliest times the sin of idolatry had existed in Israel, and the prophets of every age had combated it. After the fall, idolatry eased to be a problem for the Jews.

“The captivity seemed to impress upon the minds of the Jewish people that the God of Israel was, indeed, a jealous God. The prophets had been right in their warnings of the doom and destruction that would follow if the people did not repent and follow their God and Him only. The nation, as a whole, accepted the verdict that God’s wrath had been poured down upon them for the sin of image worship. They reached the conclusion that only the God of Israel should be worshipped. Henceforth, Israel became a very zealous nation for its God. This zeal took the form of devotion to Jehovah’s law, which led over the years to the creation of numerous rules of conduct that went beyond the law itself. This has been described as building “a hedge around the Law to render its infringement or modification impossible” (Alfred Edersheim, The Life and Times of Jesus the Messiah, 2 Vols.; Old Testament Student Manual 2: The Lasting Effects of the Fall and Captivity of Judah)

The captivity of Judah was like a cleansing fire that brought the nation to its senses which purged the sin of idolatry from their very being. The Messianic Psalm 89 echoes the mercy, greatness, justice and judgment of the Holy One of Israel and Judah’s vision of the coming of Messiah to restore the throne of David through Christ, God’s Firstborn.  What hope such words must have been to the suffering of the souls of Judah’s nation in the midst of their repentance:

“I will sing of the mercies of the Lord forever: with my mouth will I make known thy faithfulness to all generations. For who in the heaven can be compared unto the Lord? Who among the sons of the mighty can be likened unto the Lord? The heavens are thine, the earth also is thine: as for the world and the fulness thereof, thou hast founded them. Justice and judgment are the habitation of thy throne: mercy and truth shall go before thy face. For the Lord is our defence and the Holy One of Israel is our king.” (Psalm 89:1,6,11,14,18)

The scars of sin do not last forever. The sin is purged when sin is discarded and our hearts are turned to Him who can make us whole again. He is our Saviour, our Redeemer, our all…

- CATHRYNE ALLEN 

EZRA THE SCRIBE

 

 

The prophet Jeremiah preached to the Kingdom of Judah for 40 years attempting to avert the impending captivity that eventually left Judah's land desolate. So steeped in sin and idolatry, Judah, like Ephraim and the 10 tribes, lost sight of the God they once promised to worship and serve.

 

It would seem they needed the experience of captivity to awaken them to their true God. The 10 tribes came to their senses quickly and were led by the hand of the Father into obscurity until such time that He would bring them back (3 Nephi 17:4). Judah on the other hand became a very zealous nation for its God whilst in captivity to Babylon. They realised that the prophets were right all along and that they needed to abandon image worship and return to the one true and living God.

 

So zealous were they in their devotion to Jehovah's law that they became slaves to the numerous rules of conduct that went beyond the law itself. Out of this zeal different religious factions were born such as Pharisees and Sadducees which ensured strict observance to the overwhelming number of laws and rules that were invented. Up until the Babylonian captivity, scriptures were only read on special occasions and on the sabbath. Once Judah was taken into captivity this changed and scriptures began to be taught to the general public on regular basis by another factious group called scribes.

 

Over time the Jews in Babylon began to adopt the language and culture of the Chaldeans forgetting the Hebrew language. This necessitated the assistance of scribes who read and interpreted the scriptures to them. "Through the years, each religious group - scribes, Pharisses, Sadducees and others referred to the written word, quoted it, enlarged upon it, interpreted it, and in other ways continued to add to what their fathers had established. The commentaries, explanations, interpretations, and inferences became known as ‘oral tradition’.

 

In time, these traditions, written and oral, took on so much importance that they often overshadowed the law and became a stumbling block for the Jews" (Old Testament Student Manual, 1 Kings - Malachi, p. 262). This is the condition in which the Saviour found the Jews when He made His appearance as the awaited and promised Messiah.

 

Ezra, a scribe and a captive in Babylon, was charged by the Persian king, following the completion of the second temple, to teach the Jewish people in Jerusalem of the law and then set up a judgment system for the lawbreakers (see Ezra 7:25-26).

 

Under King Artaxerxes I (465-424 B.C.), Ezra and Nehemiah led the second wave of Jewish exiles back to Jerusalem. Nehemiah, a royal cup bearer to the King, and a man of unselfish patriotism and personal integrity assumed the position of Jerusalem’s governor. Together with Ezra, a righteous and dedicated priest, they succeeded in restoring and reviving a Jewish community in Jerusalem and effected great reforms amongst the congregation.  

 

The spiritual reformation of Jerusalem became the first and greatest importance. During the span of three generations between the first and second group of returned exiles, many of the people including the priests and the Levites had intermarried with people of different cultures and religions (Ezra 9:1,2). Ezra was devastated to say the least when he learnt of this and offered a heart rendering prayer to God for forgiveness of the direct violation of God’s command against inter-marriage at the time of the entry into the promised land (Ezra 9:6-15).

 

Inter-marriage carried a serious risk of idolatry and spiritual decay for God’s chosen people. So acute was Ezra’s awareness of this that in his grief he refused to eat, tore his clothes and cast himself down before the temple. Makes you want to weep and weep the people did before him acknowledging that they had trespassed against God and were willing to renew their covenant with Him by promising to put away their ‘strange’ wives (Ezra 10:1-16). As a woman who was a single mother for 20 years, I don’t know how I feel about this. I have always wondered what happened to those poor women and their children who were left husbandless in the worst time and place to be so. 

The situation does make twos things obvious here: 1.There is a consequence to pay for every sin and 2. Repentance comes at a high price. Either way, disobedience is not worth it…..

- CATHRYNE ALLEN 

(Artist Unknown)