“And this whole land shall be a desolation and an astonishment, and these nations shall serve the king of Babylon seventy years…” … For thus says the LORD: “After seventy years are completed at Babylon, I will visit you and perform My good word toward you, and cause you to return to this place…” (Jeremiah 25:11; 29:10)
Even as He condemned Israel to go into exile, as He had warned their forefathers He would for their unfaithfulness to their God, the LORD promised that this exile would last for a limited time, and that He would bring them back to their land once again.
The Jews deported from Israel by Nebuchadnezzar after the destruction of the Temple in 586 joined the first wave of exiles dragged off with King Jehoiachin 11 years earlier. Together they organized themselves in Babylon as an almost autonomous community, structured according to their regions of origin in the land of Israel, and according to tribe and social status. In this way they preserved their national singularity – an island of believers in one God in the midst of a pagan sea.
A central belief nurtured by the devout among these Jewish exiles – kept alive, in fact, by the prophets Daniel and Ezekiel – was that they would return, the Temple would be rebuilt, and the Messiah would come.
In 539, Cyrus the Persian conquered Babylon to make Medo-Persia the largest empire ever known. In 538, the first year of his reign and 48 years after the destruction of Jerusalem, Cyrus decreed that those who believed in Yahoveh God should go up to the Jewish capital and rebuild the Temple.
In response to this decree, around 50,000 people embarked on the long journey back to Israel. Many more of the exiles chose to remain in Persia – a choice which might have cost them their lives if Queen Esther had not intervened to foil Haman’s genocidal plot against them.
Although the intent of Cyrus’ decree was specifically to permit the rebuilding of the tower, most of the returnees in the first wave came from the poorer strata of Babylonian Jewry, and they settled in the towns and areas from which they or their parents had been deported.
For this and other reasons, work on rebuilding the Temple did not begin until 516, precisely, as God had said, 70 years after the holy building was burnt to the ground.
A second wave of exiles returned to Israel under Ezra in 458 BC, and 12 years later, a third wave under Nehemiah, who rebuilt Jerusalem’s broken down walls in just 52 days.
The people of Israel had come home.
