Constructing Exile

The Emergence of a Biblical Paradigm

John Hill

• Publisher: Cascade Books
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781725255012
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Biblical Criticism & Interpretation

What happens to a community when it is destroyed by a foreign power? How do survivors face the future? Is it all over for them? In Constructing Exile, John Hill investigates how the people of ancient Judah survived invasion and destruction at the hands of the Babylonians. Although some of them were deported to Babylon, they created a new identity for themselves, and then, once they were back in Judah, they tried to recreate the past. Hill examines the way that later generations used the experience of the Babylonian invasion to interpret the crises of their own times. He shows how by the time of Jesus exile had become an image Judaism used to understand itself and its story.

Chapter 1

Introduction

When I googled the word “exile” I got about 148 million hits! Exile was a keyword for various thing such as a TV series, a band, a theme in music and literature. Most commonly however it referred to the experience of physical displacement, a fate of countless millions in our world today. If we live, as I do, in a country that was colonized by European powers in the last three hundred years or so, we live with indigenous peoples who have been forcibly moved off their land, and given few if any rights. In Australia, not only were our first peoples deprived of land, our federal constitution did not even recognize their existence until 1967. They became exiles in their own land. World Wars I and II, and the conflicts of this century too, created populations of exiles that numbered in the millions. No wonder the theme of exile has so permeated the arts and literature of so many cultures.

Exile is also a central theme of the Old Testament. A little over 2,500 years ago a small Middle Eastern country was invaded and conquered by a nearby superpower of the time. So, the Babylonian invasion of Judah and the forced displacement of some of its population was nothing to be wondered at. Right up until the recent past, human history has given us countless examples of large and powerful nations conquering smaller and less powerful ones. However, what is to be wondered at is how the effect of the events associated with 587 BCE have reverberated down through the ages. In the centuries that followed, the complex of events often referred to as the Babylonian exile, or just simply the exile, have been foundational in the development of both Second Temple Judaism and Christianity. The Babylonian exile morphed from a series of historical events into a paradigm or an interpretive lens, which later generations would use to look at, and understand the events of their own era.

Studying the exile is not just about the past. The biblical texts reveal that, in today’s world, we confront similar issues to those faced by the people of Israel in the aftermath of the Babylonian invasion. They had to come to grips with the collapse of their society and seeming impotence of their god. They searched for an explanation of why such a disaster happened. Those who were taken into exile had to make decisions about how to live in an alien culture, and to discern where their future lay. Those who survived the disaster and stayed in Judah had to contend with a different society, and struggled with issues about belonging to, and exclusion from, the community. These are familiar issues for the displaced and dispossessed of today. My aim in this book is to highlight these issues as I trace the development of the paradigm of exile.

In recent years there has been an explosion of literature on the Babylonian exile and its aftermath. So, why another book? The mountain of literature available means that for undergraduate students and non-specialist readers a study of the exile can be a daunting task.1 So, my aim here is to make the extensive recent research on the exile more accessible, while acquainting readers with some of the newer approaches to the topic.

RECENT DEVELOPMENTS IN RESEARCH ON THE EXILE

Until relatively recently biblical scholars showed only a sporadic interest in the topic. This was due in part to the paucity of historical information available in the nineteenth century and most of the twentieth. Another factor was a prejudice about the state of Judaism in the Second Temple period. The situation began to change with the 1968 publication of the late Peter Ackroyd’s magnificent study, Exile and Restoration: A Study of Hebrew Thought in the Sixth Century BC. In it he challenged a long-standing negative attitude of scholars to the Jewish religion, the belief that in the sixth century BCE and beyond, it was in decline, was characterized by legalism, and lacked the inspiration of the great prophets and spiritual drive of earlier centuries. The subtitle of Ackroyd’s work is an indication of his attitude: the period was a rich and creative era, as we have now come to realize.2

The early years of the current millennium saw the publication of new historical and archaeological data, which has given us a better picture of the sixth and fifth centuries BCE. In comparison to earlier periods such as the eighth century BCE and that of the Assyrian Empire, the data about the neo-Babylonian and early Persian periods is not as extensive. However, publications such as the Judah and the Judeans Series, edited by Oded Lipschits and others, have given us a better understanding than was previously possible.3 We have become more aware of the impact of the exile on the development of the Hebrew Bible, and also on the New Testament’s understanding of the mission of Jesus.4

The study of contemporary events in our world, such as the forced displacement of people and mass migration, have also contributed to the growth in studies of the Babylonian exile. Scholars have used insights from trauma and migration studies to better understand the effects of the Babylonian invasions of Judah and the forced displacement of its inhabitants. The collections of essays in Interpreting Exile and The Prophets Speak on Forced Migration provide good examples of the approach.5

EXILE AND RESTORATION?

The titles of Ackroyd’s study, and the collection in his memory, raise a question about terminology, which we need to address here. The terms in question are “exile” and “restoration.”

While the expression “the exile” can be a useful shorthand way of referring to the later years of the neo-Babylonian period, it can be misleading. Only a section of Judah’s population was deported to Babylon, while others fled to neighboring countries in the face of the invasions, as well as in their aftermath. So, alongside of the community of exiles in Babylon and their descendants, there was the diaspora—literally, the scattering of people from Judah into other countries. Furthermore, biblical texts such as Lev 26:32–35 and 2 Chr 36:21 portray the land of Judah as totally empty of inhabitants after 587. As chapter 2 of this book will show, this portrait of an empty land is not historical. There was a forced migration of people from Judah to Babylon, but it did not involve the majority of Judah’s population. So, to borrow the title of an essay by Philip Davies, we need to ask: “Exile? What Exile? Whose Exile?” Our study therefore is not just about the historical reconstruction of events in the sixth and fifth centuries BCE, but also includes how these events were interpreted, to what purpose, and by whom.

The exile of some Judahites to Babylon was not an isolated event, but happened in the context of the Babylonian conquest of Judah and the destruction of much of its infrastructure. So, when we consider the exile, we need to pay attention not only to the Babylonian conquest of Judah, but also to its impact on those who were not exiled. In the books of Jeremiah and Ezekiel, the threat of exile is often found along prophecies of invasion and destruction of the land. So, a study of exile includes a number of aspects. Besides the historical investigation of the neo-Babylonian conquest, there are the more obvious issues such as the fate of those deported to Babylon, the length of their exile, and their return to Judah. There is also the critical question of how the different biblical traditions interpreted the significance of the exile. It is clear then that in studying the exile, we are doing more than just looking at historical events. We are dealing with a construct, a series of events that has been overlaid with various levels of meaning.

Similarly, the term “restoration” is a construct, and a similar critique is needed for it. “Restoration” is used to refer to events that happened in the aftermath of the Persian conquest of Babylon.6 It implies that “the exile” is over, and can be interpreted as saying that the society and institutions of pre-587 Judah have been put back in place. As we will see, there was no complete restoration of the society and institutions of the Judah that the Babylonians invaded, and no simple return to the homeland. So, again we need to ask: “whose restoration?” “what was restored?” and “whose point of view does this term represent?”

A further caution is also in order. In many texts exile is presented in completely negative terms. It is portrayed as a form of punishment by Yhwh for the sins of Judah. Its positive counterpart is restoration. The hope expressed in the biblical texts is that Yhwh will bring the exile to an end, and then lead those deported back to a rebuilt homeland, and a renewed relationship between them and him. While this understanding is very common, especially in the prophetic books of the time, we can also find another view, where those deported or their descendants make a home for themselves in the land of exile, and show no desire to journey back to the land of their ancestors.

OUTLINE OF THE BOOK

Chapter 2 is where our study begins. It looks at the historical events of the sixth century BCE in Syria-Palestine that gave rise to the Babylonian exile. There I investigate the invasions of Judah by the Babylonians under Nebuchadnezzar II, together with the destruction of infrastructure, and the subsequent deportations of a segment of its population. The chapter examines the critical questions of the number of people deported, the extent of the devastation caused by the Babylonians, and the nature of the society left in Judah after 587. The chapter sets the scene for what follows in chapter 3.

Chapter 3 is about responses to the disaster. Here we look at the book of Lamentations, with its outpouring of grief and confusion at what had happened. We also look at the explanations for the disaster found in the Deuteronomistic history and the books of Jeremiah and Ezekiel.

In chapter 4 the sc...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
• ABBREVIATIONS
• Chapter 1: Introduction
• Chapter 2: The Disaster of 587 and Its Aftermath
• Chapter 3: Responses to the Disaster
• Chapter 4: The Community in Babylon and the Emergence of Hope
• Chapter 5: The Early Persian Period
• Chapter 6: The Unended Exile
• Chapter 7: Conclusion
• Bibliography