Continued from Monday 2/27

The History

Nehemiah, royal cupbearer to the Persian king, was born to the tribe of Judah and may have been a native of Jerusalem. At that time (5th century b.c.e.), Judah was a province of the Persian Empire. The history of how this came to pass is complicated. As related in Chapter 11, the united kingdom of Israel had split into two states, Israel in the north and Judah in the south, in the 10th century b.c.e. Both kingdoms were able to maintain their autonomy, despite the conflicts they had with each other, because their neighbors were relatively weak. But in the 8th century b.c.e. the Assyrians conquered Israel and deported many Israelites into captivity. At the beginning of the 6th century b.c.e. the Babylonians, having destroyed the Assyrian empire, took control of Judah. The Babylonians razed the Temple at Jerusalem and carried away the Ark of the Covenant (which disappears from history at this time), essentially severing the living connection between the Jews and God. Nebuchadnezzar II, the Babylonian king, ordered the deportation of most of Judah's people to Babylon. This period of exile, when the Jews were enslaved in Assyria or Babylon or were forced to flee to Egypt or other lands, is known as the First Diaspora, or Dispersion. In the mid-6th century b.c.e. the Persian Empire, under King Cyrus the Great, conquered Babylonia and most of western Asia, including all of Israel. Cyrus permitted a number of Jews to return to Jerusalem, and under the leadership of Sheshbazzar, they began to build the Second Temple.

When Artaxerxes I became king of Persia in the 5th century b.c.e., he granted Nehemiah's request to return to Jerusalem in order to help in the rebuilding of the city. Beginning in 446b.c.e., Nehemiah governed Jerusalem for about thirteen years, restoring the traditional religious observances and continuing the reforms begun by Ezra, his predecessor. When Nehemiah returned to Persia, however, Jerusalem quickly fell back into corruption and idolatry. At this point the prophet Malachi began to exhort the Jews to return to the Law, and Nehemiah rushed back to Jerusalem after an absence of only two years, shocked at the quick decline in the moral state of his people and determined to bring them back to God. He was able to maintain public order and worship and remained in his post as governor until his death in about 413 b.c.e. Afterward, Judah became a part of Syria, under the administration of the high priest.