Lecture 24 is entitled Israel's Return from Exile, where we left off. And the last lecture was pretty depressing. Well, the northern and the southern kingdoms were destroyed and conquered and exiled. The North by Syria in the year 5, excuse me, 722, and the south in 586 by Babylon.
And so they were completely scattered to the four winds because of their sins. And yet we ended the lecture last time off with all these prophecies of hope that God would regather them again, bring them back to the land, circumcise their hearts, that heart surgery that they need so much that they would love the Lord and not turn away from him. And so that's what we're picking up now to look at the return from exile, at least for a remnant of Jews who were in Babylon. So Babylon is gone on the world seeing the world powers.
Babylon has had its time in the sun. Persia is the new empire in charge now around 539, King Cyrus of Persia, conquerors Babylon. And now in fulfillment of multiple prophecies, the Jews are going to be allowed to return back to Jerusalem to rebuild. And they do all of this by edict of King Cyrus.
So the Persians were very, very generous when it came to their religious freedom policies. They really wanted to let people worship how they pleased. And they believe that if they did this, that people would be less inclined to revolt. There would be fewer uprisings that people could just live and worship their own gods.
And by extension, perhaps if the Persians let their peoples worship their own gods, maybe the Persians, especially the Persian kings, would be blessed by these peoples' gods as well. So that's a little bit of a back story as to why maybe Cyrus would be doing this. But really it's because God is moving Cyrus' heart according to his own providence. And so I actually want to start off reading.
We're going to be covering the period of exile is covered by Ezra and Nehemiah. Let me just read the first four verses for you. And we're going to unpack this and look at how this edict of Cyrus was prophesied many hundreds of years prior. And Isaiah then we'll see Jeremiah as well.
Let's just decide here. Chapter 1 verse 1, In the first year of Cyrus, King of Persia, that the word of the Lord by the mouth of Jeremiah might be accomplished. The Lord stirred up the spirit of Cyrus, King of Persia, so that he made a proclamation throughout all his kingdom and also put it in writing. Thus says, King of Persia, King Cyrus, Persia, the Lord of the God of heaven, has given me all the kingdoms of the earth and has charged me to build him a house at Jerusalem, which is in Judah.
Whoever is among you of all his people may his God be with him and let him go up to Jerusalem, which is in Judah and rebuild the house of the Lord, the God of Israel, he who is the God in Jerusalem, and let each survivor in whatever place he adorns be assisted by the minivest place with silver and gold with goods and beasts, besides free will offerings for the house of God, which is in Jerusalem. All right, this is a pretty generous, pretty striking passage here. There's a number of things here we have to look at. First before, I mean here, Ezra says that the word of the Lord by the mouth of Jeremiah might be accomplished.
Lord stirred up Cyrus's heart, but I actually want to look at Jeremiah in just a second, but I want to look at Isaiah. Isaiah, the prophet Isaiah, administered during the reign of A has and Hezekiah in Jewish tradition has it that he was martyred by King Manasseh. I remember that horrible wicked king of the south Manasseh. Isaiah might have been sought into by this wicked king.
So it was all during that period before Josiah and Josiah's sons were the ones who were ultimately conquered by Nebuchadnezzar. So we're talking a couple hundred years prior to these events. Isaiah prophesied Cyrus by name to be God's instrument and bringing the people back to Jerusalem, which is a powerful, powerful story. So I have it here on your note so you can go to Isaiah, end of Isaiah chapter 44 into chapter 45.
And this is what it says, thus says the Lord of Jerusalem, she shall be inhabited. And of the cities of Judah, they shall be built and I will raise up their ruins, who says of Cyrus. So here Isaiah is prophesying Cyrus by name. He is my shepherd, he shall fulfill all of my purpose, saying of Jerusalem, she shall be built and of the temple, your foundation shall be laid.
Thus says the Lord to his anointed to Cyrus, whose right hand I have grasped, to subdue nations before him and uncover the loins of kings, to open doors before him that gates may not be closed. I call you by your name. I surname you, though you do not yet know me, you do not know me. I am the Lord and there is no other besides me, there is no God.
I clothe you, though you do not know me, that men may know from the rising of the sun and from the west that there is none besides me. I am the Lord and there is no other. Well, there's so much happening here. It's incredible.
The first thing I want to point out here is that Cyrus, okay, keep in mind, he is a Persian king. He's a Gentile foreign king. And yet Isaiah says the Lord looks at him as one, his shepherd and to his anointed one. And remember the anointed one in Hebrew is the Messiah.
That Cyrus is the Lord's anointed Messiah, shepherd. This is really dynamite here. If you think about the fact that back in Judah, who was God's special king, who was after God's own and who was a shepherd and that's David, right? And David was the anointed one, the shepherd.
It's so interesting that King Cyrus, this pagan Gentile king, is in a certain sense being depicted as a new David. That God has stirred up this Gentile king, even though this Gentile king Cyrus doesn't know, doesn't yet talk, doesn't have a covenantal relationship with God, God still uses him as is anointed to shepherd his people. And not just to shepherd his people as we saw in this edict, so build a house in Jerusalem, which is what David wanted to do and ultimately saw him and did do. So it's really, really striking here that Cyrus is being depicted in such positive images, images that were used of David himself, shepherd, anointed, building the temple.
So it's pretty amazing. And not only that, but towards the end of this passage I read to you in the notes in Isaiah 45, the opening verses of 45, God says, I do this, I clothe you though, you do not know me that men may know, right? So men may yet, everybody would see and understand that there is no God besides Yahweh, there's only one God in God, in God ways his name. This is all Exodus language as well, right?
This is the purpose of the plagues way back in Exodus. The plagues were a smackdown against Pharaoh and all the Egyptian false gods. Why? So that all would, Yahtah, all would know that there was only one true God.
So all of the stuff, the Exodus themes just are everywhere. If you open your eyes and you see it, God wants to bring his people back to the land and he's going to do it so that way everyone can see that God will, God loves his people, he'll vindicate his holy name and he'll even use this pagan king Cyrus, which of course was prophesied a couple hundred years before he was even born. Now actually I have to say on this point, you know, a lot of skeptics would say, this is, this is too much, right? This is, this is too much for Isaiah to have prophesied Cyrus by name.
It's impossible. How in the world could he have done this? A couple hundred years prior to Cyrus. So he couldn't do it.
So it must have been that this particular passage was written after the events of the return from exile and they basically put Cyrus's name into the text here in order to kind of garner some credibility with Isaiah as a prophet because it's impossible that Isaiah could have done it. How? How could he have done this? And my response has always been to such critics.
Well, he's a prophet. He's a prophet of God for goodness sakes. If you believe that there is a God in Israel and that there's a God of the creator of the known, visible and invisible of all things that seem unseen and who has entered into history through the incarnation of Christ and there are miracles and they're all prophesied, well then absolutely this is possible that God is encouraging his people long before the events take place so that they would have trust and hope in him once again. But sure if you're going to throw everything out because you think miracles are impossible and prophesy is impossible and maybe God doesn't even exist, which unfortunately a lot of scholars in academia that's where they find themselves.
Well, then yeah, you're going to start chopping up Isaiah into all these different sections and you're going to start saying it was written after the exile because it's impossible for you to believe in prophecy. So there's a little peb of mine. No, God gave Isaiah the spirit of prophecy to tell this beforehand. So that way everyone when they read it they would know God still is in charge.
All right, I'm going to get off close that little tangent right there. Let's move on. So that's Isaiah. Now let's get to Jeremiah here because verse one chapter one verse one talks about how the word of the Lord by the mouth of Jeremiah might be accomplished.
And this is why Cyrus then allows the people to come back. Well, what is this all about? Well, Jeremiah prophesied twice. It's one prophecy given twice in chapter 25 and 29 of his book.
He prophesied the return from exile after 70 years. So here in your notes I have it for you. Jeremiah 25 verses 11 and 12. This whole land shall become a ruin in a waste and these nations shall serve the king of Babylon 70 years.
Then after 70 years are completed, I will punish the king of Babylon and that nation for their iniquity. And there's another verse very similar but a little bit more jam-packed here chapter 29 verse 10. For thus says the Lord, when 70 years are accomplished or completed for Babylon, I will visit you says the Lord plans for welfare and not for evil to give you a future and a hope. Then you will call upon me and come and pray to me and I will hear you.
You will seek me with all your heart and I will be found by you. I will restore your fortunes and gather you from all the nations and all the places where I have driven you. And I will bring you back to the place from which I sent you into exile. Now this is a great, great verse because there's of course all this new Exodus prophecy.
I'm going to gather you back again, restore your fortunes, bring you into the land. I have plans for welfare and not for evil. And this is all fantastic. And there's a timeline.
The first chapter of the chapter is going to be the time of your exile. And 70 is significant for a number of reasons. And what I really like the angle here, where if you look at seven, which is the number of covenant and 10 is the number of completion or totality or perfection. So you got seven times 10 is 70.
So basically in this context, 70 is the symbolic typological number that represents the complete or total perfection of the covenant curses that are endured by God's people. It is a time of punishment. It's their quote unquote timeout. They're in the timeout corner for 70 years.
We say to our kids, hey, you were bad. So you're going in the timeout corner for your five-year-old kid. So you're sitting in the corner for five minutes. That's your punishment.
But Israel has got to go to the timeout corner way in Babylon for 70 years. And then the number 70 represents this period of the total purification of the covenant curses or the enduring of the covenant curses. And I think that makes a lot of sense. And if you look at that in context with Isaiah, now looking at Isaiah again, well, Isaiah, let me just back up a second and say Isaiah is roughly, you could say it's debated, everything's debated, but it's divided into two main halves.
Chapters 1 through 39 is the book of woes. It's all these prophecies doom and gloom because Israel, Judah, they're not repenting their rebelling against God. And all these bad things are going to happen specifically exile. But then all of a sudden you've got the book of consolation that begins in chapter 40 that goes to the end of the book.
So two nights halves, the book of woes, the first half of the book of consolation. Well, the book of consolation, the second half of Isaiah, it opens up chapter 40 verse 1 saying this, comfort, oh, comfort my people says your God, speak tenderly to Jerusalem and cry to her that her warfare is ended, that her iniquity is pardoned, that she has received from the Lord's hand double for all her sins. So it then begins to talk about how the Lord will bring them back and then there's the suffering servants songs and all this great stuff. So I really think that this makes sense because the 70 years in exile is this period of enduring the covenant curses.
And then Isaiah says, okay, your iniquity is pardoned, you receive double for all your sins. Okay, so I really think that that's important there to keep in mind. That's why we have 70 years. And there's a lot of other theories as well, but I like this a lot.
All right, so how do we calculate these 70 years? And I think there are two ways to calculate this, both of which are super important and they shed light on one another. Keep in mind at the last lecture, we talked about how there's a double exile. There's an exile from the land and there's an exile from God and they're two sides to the same coin.
When you're exiled from God, you're exiled from the land and vice versa. When you're exiled from the land, you're exiled from God. They both come together. When we calculate the approximate 70 years here, when the scholars, you know, like the argument debate and tweak it to get as perfectly to 70 as possible, there are ways to do that, but just roughly speaking, we can get to 70 very, very easily, keeping in mind that double exile and the solution to the double exile.
So when you notice what I have in here is a little letter A, you can look at it from 605 to 538 BC, which is about 67 years. So what would this be? 605 is the first wave of exiles we talked about in the last lecture and 538 is the first return when Cyrus gives this edict for people to go back. So from the first exile to the first return, you've got approximately 70 years.
And that would represent the solution of the people's exile from the land. Okay? They're coming back to the land after 70 years. All right.
The other way to look at this and again two sides of the same coin from 586 to 515 BC is 71 years. So this would be from the destruction of the temple in 586 when Nebuchadnezzar came and mowed everything down to the rededication of the new temple, which we'll see here later on in our lecture. That is so from the destruction of the temple to the dedication of the new temple, you've got 70 years and that represents the solution of the people's exile from God. Now the temple is rebuilt and they can recommence the worship of God, the sacrifices and observance of the law.
So that's really, really important. I think that's super dynamite where you can see that double exile is being resolved here, both in 70 years to come back to the land and simultaneously to come back to God and to worship him appropriately. All right. So I hope that makes sense there for you.
But there's more. There's more. We have these 70 years and that's important for the reasons that we discussed. It's prophesied by Jeremiah, Cyrus by name and Isaiah.
That's great. Well, there's another thing that happened with the prophet Daniel. Daniel, you remember, was hauled off into exile and he's ministering there in Babylon and he's hanging out one day praying and mourning the people's sins and then all of a sudden Gabriel, the Archangel Gabriel shows up. He didn't know what's going on.
So not too much. What do you have to? I'm just praying, praying here morning, my people's sins about this exile 70 years because Daniel sitting there reading the prophecy of Jeremiah and Gabriel says, I got some news for you, man. It's going to be not 70 years, but 490 years, 70 weeks of years before the true exile, our return from exile takes place.
70 times seven a week of years is seven years. Like we say, I mean, locally here in America, right? We have, hey, my wife tells me, hey, honey, go down and get me a dozen eggs. I know that's 12 eggs.
I'll give me three dozen eggs, right? That's 36 eggs. The expression here a week of years is a week is seven days. So a week of years would be 70 years.
When you have 70 weeks of years, you have 490 years. And this is what Gabriel tells him in Daniel chapter 9 verse 24. 70 weeks of years are decreed concerning your people and your holy city to what? Here's where we realize what kind of return from exile we're talking about to finish the transgression, to put an end to sin and to a note, a tone for a niquity to bring everlasting righteousness to seal both a vision and profit and to anoint a most holy place.
So the truth and return from exile that we're talking about is an exile. We're an exile to from God and from God's presence from heaven. We're enslaved to Satan and to sin and we're going to die because of our sinfulness. Well, God wants to free us from that and bring us from that exile, the spiritual exile.
So what Daniel is learning here is that there's going to be really 490 years of exile of a heart. Yes, there are going to be many Jewish people with Benjaminites and some Levites as we'll explain in a minute who are going to come back to the promised land. And that is true. That does happen, but it's just a remnant.
And you don't really resolve yet the whole issue of sinfulness. Their hearts are still very hardened and they are committing sins right left and sideways, as I'll share with you by the end of this lecture. So to truly, as the Archangel Gabriel says, finished transgression, put an into sin, a tone for iniquity, fulfill, complete, seal, vision and profit. That's going to be 490 more years.
Okay, so it's really, really interesting when we do a Bible study on Daniel, we'll talk about this in more depth. But so if I say right now, this leads perfectly to the time of Christ. That's why during the first century, it was a fever pitch for the expectation for the Messiah because everyone knew the prophecy of Daniel. They knew this was the moment when the Messiah is going to come and to forgive sin and to seal vision and profit, et cetera, et cetera.
So during the time of Christ, it is super intense. You've got very zealots popping up, you can try to be a cleanser and a sigh and all these things that are going on, it's pretty incredible because of Daniel's prophecy. So what I want you to understand is yes, Jeremiah says 70 years and that is going to take place, but the true return from exile where our hearts are going to be brought back to love the Lord our God with all our heart, soul and strength, that won't happen until the time of Christ as we will know. All right.
So before we move on here to look at the return of the Jews from Babylon, I have to throw in a bit of a typology here, again, because that's what makes scripture so alive, right? The New Testament is hidden in the old and the old is revealed in the new as we've seen so many times. Well, this 70 times seven, we've seen a couple of different instances. I want to zoom in on Matthew.
Chapter 18 is when Peter says to Jesus, kind of showing off a little bit, how many times should I forgive my brother if he sends against me seven times? He's thinking he's so magnanimous and so patient and so forgiven. And then Jesus, like I imagine, I'm looking at Peter saying, no, Peter, not seven times, 70 times seven, all right, 490 times, not 491. That's where we draw the line.
No, I'm joking, right? But 70 times seven is not a random number. It's a number that goes back to Daniel and it references the forgiveness that God has towards his people, the Israelites and the Jews and all of his children. This whole concept of Israel being in exile and then being brought back and regathered to God, that demonstrates the incredible mercy of our Lord, right?
And this is what Jesus is saying to Peter. You must reflect that. You must be as merciful to your brother who's sent against you as God has been merciful and forgiving to Israel who's been in exile these past 490 years.