And work for the peace and prosperity of the city where I sent you into exile. [Jeremiah 29:7a (NLT)]
Jeremiah’s instructions to work and pray for the welfare of Babylon was a unique and completely unprecedented concept in the ancient world. Rather than praying for retaliation and Babylon’s collapse, God commanded them to pray for their Babylonian captors and work for the peace and prosperity of the land! Rather than rebels and a source of trouble and insurrection, the exiles were to become reliable and valuable members of the community. It seems they took God’s command to heart.
Mere youths when they were taken to Babylon, Daniel, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego were trained for royal service. Learning the culture, literature, and languages of Babylon (Sumerian, Assyrian, and Babylonian) was no easy task and learning the 600 to 1,000 symbols used in the writing of cuneiform was even harder. Nevertheless, Nebuchadnezzar found no others with the same abilities as the four Judean captives and they rapidly came to positions of power and influence. Calling Daniel chief among his “wise men,” Nebuchadnezzar kept him at court and put the other three in charge of the province of Babylon. Daniel continued to faithfully serve both Babylonian and Persian kings into his eighties.
The book of Esther tells of the Jewish woman who became King Xerxes’ queen. Her uncle Mordecai served as a palace official at the king’s gate. When he overheard a plot to assassinate the king, Mordecai reported it to Esther who reported it to the king and the plot was foiled. Later, Mordecai served as Xerxes’ prime minister.
Consider the men who led the exiles back to Judah. We don’t know what Sheshbazzar and Zerubbabel did in captivity and, since people seemed to have both Babylonian/Persian and Hebrew names, they may have been the same man. In any case, he/they most likely served the king in an official capacity because Cyrus entrusted him/them with all the Temple’s treasures and tasked him/them with rebuilding Jerusalem’s temple and serving as Judah’s provincial governor. 80 years later, after faithfully serving as a scribe in the court of Artaxerxes, Ezra led the second group of exiles back to Judah. Prior to rebuilding Jerusalem’s walls and serving as Judah’s governor, Nehemiah ensured the health and safety of King Artaxerxes by acting as his cup-bearer.
While these people faithfully served their pagan captors, they never forgot their God. Daniel and his friends refused to defile their bodies by eating food prohibited to Jews and they willingly risked their positions and lives to stay true to Jehovah. Daniel continued to openly pray to Jehovah even when it was prohibited and his three friends refused to bow down to an idol. As loyal as Mordecai was to Xerxes, he was more loyal to God’s law and refused to bow down to Haman as if he were a god. Esther displayed her Jewish faith when she told Mordecai and the people to fast and pray before she broke Persian law by approaching the king. Although Sheshbazzar/Zerubbabel, Ezra, and Nehemiah were born in Babylon and never saw the land of their fathers, they knew Judah was their homeland and Jehovah their God.
Obedient to the Lord’s command to seek the welfare of their captors, the exiles accepted their 70 years of captivity and made the best of a bad situation. Having lost their Temple, the ability to make sacrifices, and their freedom, they never lost their God. They developed a system of synagogues, retained their Jewish identity, and continued to live out their faith. Surrounded by unbelievers, Daniel and the others lived, worked, and flourished in an ungodly culture. Nevertheless, they never allowed their pagan surroundings to undermine their relationship with the Lord. Although the Babylonians and Persians were their captors, they always belonged to God!
We may not live as captives in a foreign land but, like these Biblical heroes, we are surrounded by unbelievers in what also could be called an ungodly culture. The Judean exiles met the challenge, will we?
Jeremiah 29 consists of two letters written by the prophet to the exiles in Babylon. The first (29:1-28) was sent to the recently deported elders, priests, and prophets as well as to King Jehoiachin, his mother, and the officials, craftsmen, and artisans who’d been taken as Nebuchadnezzar’s captives several years earlier. Countering the message of the false prophets promising a quick return to Jerusalem from Babylon, Jeremiah bluntly told the exiles that Israel’s captivity would last seventy years. This was unwelcome news and, preferring to believe comforting lies rather than the painful truth, people accused Jeremiah of being crazy and a false prophet. The second letter in this chapter addresses one of his accusers.
In a cartoon drawn by Paul Noth, an enormous political billboard overlooks a pasture inhabited by a flock of sheep. Looking up at the picture of a grinning wolf in coat and tie saying, “I am going to eat you!” one sheep tells another, “He tells it like it is.” Would that all politicians were so forthright!
Joe Btfsplk was a character in Al Capp’s Lil’ Abner comic strip. With a last name that sounds likes what’s known as a “raspberry” or “Bronx cheer,” the poor man had a dark cloud of perpetual bad luck hanging over his head. Btfsplk no longer appears in the comics but I think his dark cloud of misfortune has settled over the head of a dear friend I’ll call JB (in honor of Capp’s luckless character). Since JB’s retirement, if something could go wrong, it has and, as soon as one challenge resolves, another one appears. When I saw the photos from his most recent mishap, JB looked as if he’d been tossed around in a giant rock tumbler filled with broken glass and boulders.
Several years ago, two friends joined the ranks of widowhood within a week of one another. Because her husband surrendered to cancer several months earlier by stopping all treatment, one woman was not surprised when she joined the club. The other woman, however, went to bed a wife and awoke the next morning to find herself a widow. Despite his looking the picture of health, her husband, having suffered a fatal stroke while she slept, lay dead on the kitchen floor.
After feeding a multitude with little more than a handful of food, Jesus sent the disciples across the Sea of Galilee to Bethsaida. He stayed behind to send the people home and then, exhausted, went into the mountains to pray. During the fourth watch (somewhere between 3:00 and 6:00 AM), Jesus looked out at the water and saw that the disciples were struggling against the wind and waves to keep the boat on course. Seeing their distress, he walked on the water toward them. Seeing Him walking on water, they thought Him a ghost and cried out in terror. Phantoms of the night were said to bring disaster and it was thought that the last thing a boatman saw before drowning in Galilee was a ghost on the water! It’s no wonder they were frightened at first.
