By: Obed Pineda
Four hundred years… from the day that king Solomon dedicated the Temple of the Lord at Jerusalem (cf. 2nd Kings 8), to the arrival of Babylon’s captain of the guard Nebuzaradan who burned it all down (cf. 2nd Kings 25:8-10), four hundred years had transpired. The journals of ancient world history explain that the rise of the mighty Babylonian Empire began to cement with the Battle of Carchemish in 606 B.C., when Nebuchadnezzar’s armies successfully obliterated the Assyrians and their Egyptian allies (cf. Jeremiah 46:1ff). A little over a century earlier (721 B.C.) the Assyrian kingdom had destroyed and taken captive the northern kingdom of Israel, resettling the land with foreign peoples because “the children of Israel had sinned against the Lord their God, who had brought them up out of the land of Egypt, from under the hand of Pharaoh king of Egypt; and they had feared other gods” (2nd Kings 17:5-41). Thus, when Babylon finally triumphed in eliminating their Assyrian enemies at Carchemish, king Nebuchadnezzar captured Judah’s king Jehoiakim and deported him along with other members of Judah’s royal family (Daniel and his three friends being among them) to Babylon, while also taking some of the Temple’s treasures with them as well (cf. 2nd Kings 24:1-7, 2nd Chronicles 36:9-10, and Daniel 1:1-7). This was the first of three deportations of Jewish exiles to Babylon that would commence the 70 years of captivity that had been prophesied by Isaiah (cf. Isaiah 39:5-7) and Micah (cf. Micah 4:9-10) a century before, and finally by Jeremiah approximately two decades before it all began (cf. Jeremiah 25:1-11). Regrettably, neither witnessing the fall of their Israelite brethren to the north, nor the many warnings issued by the prophets of the Lord were able to persuade the children of Judah to turn away from their wicked ways (cf. Jeremiah 7:1ff, 26:1ff). Their hearing had been dulled immensely because they had chosen to “trust in lying words that cannot profit” (Jeremiah 7:8). When Jeremiah spoke these words, he was making reference to the fact that the Jews had wrongfully placed their entire trust in Solomon’s Temple, saying “The temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord are these” (Jeremiah 7:4). What the prophet was exposing was their false and misguided hope that the presence of Jehovah God was still with them, in the temple at Jerusalem. It is very likely that one reason the destruction of Israel did not pierce their hardened hearts is because they considered it as a righteous punishment for Jeroboam’s building of other temples and establishing priests who were not from the tribe of Levi (cf. 1st Kings 12:25-13:10). In other words, they would have attributed their kinsman’s demise to not having the presence of the Almighty with them. Hence the motive for the Lord inspiring Jeremiah to speak out against Judah’s false confidence that the temple still standing in Jerusalem meant that God still held them in good favor (cf. Jeremiah 7:8-12, 26:2-6). The merciful Father allowed His temple to remain after Babylon’s first deportation, allowing His children another opportunity to make straight their crooked paths, but they refused to heed His prophet’s words. Thus in 597 B.C. “Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon came against the city [Jerusalem], as his servants were besieging it. Then Jehoiachin king of Judah, his mother, his servants, his princes, and his officers went out to the king of Babylon; and the king of Babylon, in the eighth year of his reign, took him prisoner” (2nd Kings 24:11-12, addition mine). In this second deportation of the people of Judah, Ezekiel was among those taken captive to the Babylonian region “by the River Chebar” (Ezekiel 1:1-2). God had now allowed Nebuchadnezzar to carry away into his kingdom ten thousand captives that included the noble class of Judah, the priests (Ezekiel being one of them), the remainder of the elders, and the prophets in conjunction with “the costly articles from the house of the Lord” (2nd Chronicles 36:10, cf. Jeremiah 29:1-2). Each time the Babylonian king arrived to Jerusalem, the temple that Solomon had built for the Lord was denigrated more and more by him. There is no doubt that the Lord had permitted this to demonstrate to His people that their reliance was to be on Him and not the temple itself. Although they pointed their accusatory finger at Israel for abandoning the house of the Lord to worship at Jeroboam’s temples, the house of Judah, too, was guilty of idolatry. They not only worshiped other gods before the eyes of the Lord (cf. Jeremiah 25:3-9, Ezekiel 6:1-7), but they also had the audacity to present themselves before God thinking they would still be welcomed by Him into His presence (cf. Jeremiah 7:8-19, Ezekiel 14:1-11). The worst tragedy in this revelation is that the house of the Lord had been desecrated by them when they transformed it into another one of their idols. Lamentably, this was not the first (nor the last) time Israel had committed this horrid sin. Years prior, before Israel crowned her first king and the tabernacle still stood as the house of the Lord, they were engaged in battle with the Philistines, “encamped beside Ebenezer” (1st Samuel 4:1). The prophet Samuel had already pronounced God’s judgment against Eli and his house because of the wicked sins of his sons, Hophni and Phinehas (cf. 1st Samuel 3:10-21), and Israel had lost four thousand soldiers in a defeat to the Philistines (1st Samuel 4:2). The people wrongfully surmised that the reason for this blow was because the Ark of the Covenant had not accompanied them to battle, and therefore the presence of God was not on the battlefield. Their solution was to bring the Ark to battle (accompanied by Hophni and Phineas who were the ministering priests at Shiloh) and thus this would bring them victory over their enemies (cf. 1st Samuel 4:3-5). Curiously, the Bible illustrates that the mindset of the Israelites, God’s chosen people, was no different from the Philistines, an idolatrous nation, who fearfully concluded that “God has come into the camp” after they heard that the Ark had arrived to Israel’s camp (1st Samuel 4:6-8). This comparison made by Holy Writ is crucial to understand. One can see why the idol worshiping nation of the Philistines would react superstitiously since they were ignorant of God’s omnipresence. The Israelites, on the other hand, were aware of God’s omnipresent nature and yet held the same ignorant understanding as their enemies did. What this comparison illumines is that Israel’s sin had darkened their understanding of God, thus reverting them to a carnal mind no different from their enemies. Hence, when news arrived to Eli that the Philistines had utterly destroyed Israel in battle, that the priests Hophni and Phineas had perished also, and that they had captured the Ark, he was so startled by the final revelation that “Eli fell off the seat backward by the side of the gate; and his neck was broken and he died, for the man was old and heavy” (1st Samuel 4:18). Sadly, this lesson was forgotten, as evinced by their perception of the temple. To be continued…