Topical Studies
What the Bible says about
Babylonian Captivity
(From Forerunner Commentary)
1 Kings 12:24
This event took place during the reign of Rehoboam, son of Solomon, approximately two hundred years before Isaiah lived. To finance his massive building projects, Solomon had taxed the people heavily during his reign. Following his death, the ten northern tribes appealed for relief from the heavy tax burden, but Rehoboam refused. The Israelites returned home in rebellious anger. Rehoboam sent the head of that day's Internal Revenue Service to either collect some overdue revenues or negotiate. The Israelites assassinated him. Fearing the northern ten tribes' secession, the Jews raised an army and prepared to go to war against their northern brethren. At that point, God directly intervened by sending a prophet to deliver the message contained in verse 24. God says He was personally maneuvering events to bring about His will. He wanted to divide Israel and Judah into two separate kingdoms with two separate histories—a situation that exists to this day. Israel was later scattered in captivity by Assyria. Judah followed Israel into captivity over one hundred years later but at the hands of Babylon. If God scattered Israel, why can He not scatter the church if somewhat similar conditions to Israel and Judah's appear in the church (Leviticus 26:33)? Should we presumptuously assume that the church is exempt from God's chastening? Moreover, why could He not scatter it for any number of other purposes He might have in mind?
John W. Ritenbaugh
God's Sovereignty and the Church's Condition (Part One)
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2 Kings 17:5-8
God was thorough. He just wiped them all out of the land of Canaan and sent them into the cities of the Medes and into Assyria—exiled. And in a way, they are still in exile. God has led them to the lands that He was holding for them. The descendants of Israel who went into exile do not know that their homeland is back in Canaan. They have never gone back. That is a detail of how thorough God's exile of Israel was—they forgot everything. Just as He prophesied in Deuteronomy 28, the Israelites went into other lands and took gods of wood and stone and completely forgot their past.
Richard T. Ritenbaugh
How to Survive Exile
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2 Kings 17:6
Israel was defeated by Assyria even before Babylonian Empire arose to full strength, and it was taken captive to Assyria. But not long thereafter, they migrated, along with the Assyrians, settling eventually in central and northwest Europe. They began arriving and settling there long before Rome continued the Babylonish system. Another migration began when the Jews were defeated by Babylon and taken in captivity into Babylon.
John W. Ritenbaugh
Where Is the Beast? (Part Two)
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Nehemiah 8:13-18
Nehemiah 8 records a significant festival period in Judah's history. This occasion begins on the Feast of Trumpets during the rebuilding of Jerusalem's wall following the reestablishment of those Jews who chose to return from their Babylonian captivity. They had good cause for their emotional response to keeping this Feast of Trumpets in this particular location and time under the stresses they had already endured, all the while knowing that those stresses were not yet over. This was in all likelihood the first Feast of Trumpets observed in seventy years, and who knows how long the Jews had not observed it before they went into captivity? Their joy continued, as verses 13-18 relate the first keeping of the Feast of Tabernacles in the land in a long time. "Not since the days of Joshua the son of Nun had the children of Israel done so" probably means the Feast of Tabernacles had not been kept with the combination of all the elements in their right proportion to constitute a great Feast. They were obedient, in the right place, in the right attitude, with the right emphasis. The books of Kings and Chronicles provide records of the feasts being kept by Israelites during the period between Joshua and Ezra, but they did not always keep them consistently or correctly, especially in attitude and purpose. However, we can see that Ezra understood the Feast of Tabernacles to be a spiritual bonanza whose fruit was rejoicing.
John W. Ritenbaugh
Amos 5 and the Feast of Tabernacles
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Nehemiah 9:13-14
Nehemiah had returned to where the people who had been liberated from the captivity in Babylon were. He is now giving them a run-down of their history and what occurred to send them into captivity in the first place. He is reminding them that God showed them one way to live.
John W. Ritenbaugh
Where Is the Beast? (Part Seven)
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Isaiah 44:28
Ezra 1:1-2 states that Cyrus issued a decree to free the Jews in the first year of his reign over Babylon. Since Cyrus conquered Babylon on October 12, 539 BC, the first year of this reign was 539-538 BC. God through Isaiah, then, named him at least 143 years earlier. What God did through Cyrus also fulfills a prophecy made through Jeremiah (Jeremiah 25:11-14) sometime during the century following Isaiah's death. Ezra distinctly says that God stirred up the spirit of Cyrus to perform this and that Cyrus claimed that God commanded him. Ezra 1:5 states that God also stirred the spirit of the Jews, Levites, and Benjamites to return to Jerusalem to build the Temple, confirming His sovereignty over the whole affair.
John W. Ritenbaugh
The Sovereignty of God: Part Five
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Jeremiah 3:12-13
Jeremiah, pleading for Israel to repent, to "acknowledge your iniquity" (verse 13), asks that his words be proclaimed "toward the north." Jeremiah, remember, lived at the time of Judah's fall to the Babylonians, some 130 years after the Kingdom of Israel had been forcibly moved out of its homeland. So, he was not writing to Israelites domiciled within a hundred miles north of Jerusalem—residing in and around Samaria. No, he is addressing a people living somewhere else further north.
Charles Whitaker
Searching for Israel (Part Eight): The Scattering of Ten-Tribed Israel
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Jeremiah 27:1-11
God told Jeremiah to make a number of wooden yokes for himself and for various neighboring kings. The yokes symbolized servitude to Nebuchadnezzar, and poor Jeremiah spent many days wearing a wooden yoke as an example. Through this visual aid, God was instructing Judah, and the other kingdoms, to submit to Babylonian rule. Even though doing so would be very humbling for Judah, it would be better for them than to resist Nebuchadnezzar, and thus God's will. He had already sent numerous prophets, with scores of warnings to repent and turn back to Him, and now the time of reckoning had arrived.
David C. Grabbe
Hananiah's Error
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Jeremiah 28:1-4
Previously, God told Jeremiah to make a number of wooden yokes for himself and for various neighboring kings (Jeremiah 27:1-11), which symbolized servitude to Nebuchadnezzar. Through this, God was instructing to submit to Babylonian rule. Even though doing so would be humbling for Judah, it would be better for them than to resist Nebuchadnezzar, and thus God's will. But not everyone in Judah was ready to accept this reality. Even though God specifically warned against false prophets who spoke against submitting to Nebuchadnezzar (Jeremiah 27:9-10), this is exactly what happened in the case of an obscure prophet named Hananiah. Jeremiah had previously prophesied that Judah would be in exile in Babylon for a full seventy years (Jeremiah 25:11-12). He also foretold that Jeconiah (Coniah) would die in a foreign land (Jeremiah 22:24-26) and that the vessels of the Temple would remain there until the day that God brought them back (Jeremiah 27:19-22). Now, though, Hananiah came with a message that directly contradicted Jeremiah's prophecies. In Hananiah's vision of the future, Judah's restoration was just around the corner; everything would be back to normal within two years.
David C. Grabbe
Hananiah's Error
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Jeremiah 30:1-3
God refers to both kingdoms here—the descendants of the northern kingdom of Israel as well as the southern kingdom of Judah. The return of Israel will be the larger migration because, aside from the 70-year captivity in Babylon, some of the descendants of Judah have always resided in the Promised Land. Today, the State of Israel is predominately made up of the descendants of Judah. However, neither Israel nor Judah has truly possessed the land since the time of their respective captivities. Despite some of Judah having returned to the land, ever since the Babylonian captivity, she has only rarely and intermittently held sovereignty over it. After Judah was taken into captivity, Babylon ruled the Promised Land under Nebuchadnezzar. Babylon later fell to the Medo-Persian Empire, which then became sovereign over Jerusalem and the Promised Land. Because of their vassal status, the Jewish captives that returned from Babylon had to ask permission from Cyrus and Darius, the Persian kings, to rebuild the wall and the Temple. The Jews enjoyed a measure of peace, but their freedom depended on the favor of the ruling Persian emperor. After Alexander the Great conquered Medo-Persia, the Greeks became the new overseers of the Land of Promise. Jews under the Maccabees gained a measure of independence until Rome took control of the area. Thus, during the time of Christ, Jews lived in the land and even worshipped in the Second Temple, but they did not really possess the land because it was under Roman jurisdiction. Since the collapse of the Roman Empire, notwithstanding some temporary Crusader holdings, the Promised Land has been under the sway of various Arab and Muslim nations—notably the Ottoman Empire—down to modern times. Even now, the state of Israel does not control all of the land. Jerusalem is a divided city, and the Israelis have not dared claim all of the Temple Mount for themselves, because they know that it would result in an all-out war with the Muslims. Even though the Jews regained a considerable amount of land when it declared statehood in 1948, gaining even more during the Six Day War, the ownership is endlessly argued. Judah is not truly sovereign yet. It does not yet "possess" the land in the fullest sense of the word.
David C. Grabbe
The Second Exodus (Part One)
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Jeremiah 37:4-5
Jerusalem enjoys a brief respite from siege while the Babylonians engage an Egyptian army hired by Judah. Jeremiah may have sought to use this occasion to escape, for verse 12 tells us that he "went out of Jerusalem to go into the land of Benjamin to claim his property there among the people." He could hide in anonymity among the general populace. God, however, acts to keep him in Jerusalem, the center of the action. The authorities arrest him as he leaves the city, accusing him of "defecting to the Chaldeans" (verse 13). Since the Babylonians have already left the area, the accusation of defection is clearly a ruse, an excuse to imprison him (verse 15). After "many days" in a dungeon (verse 16), Zedekiah, solicitous of one empowered to tell the future, orders him transferred to the "court of the prison" (verse 21)—a real upgrade.
Charles Whitaker
Servant of God, Act One: Going Around, Coming Around
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Lamentations 1:10-16
The book of Lamentations opens with Jerusalem being depicted as a princess who had it all, but due to calamity, she is widowed and has become a slave. She is Jerusalem personified, which the armies of Nebuchadnezzar have destroyed. Most of her people are dead, and her life seems to be overwhelmed and consumed by death, particularly the death of her inhabitants. The reader is expected to know that her sins are what brought on this disaster. Her destruction was a judgment from God because she refused to repent. As a result, all her people are either dead or in Babylonian captivity. She tells us that even the few survivors are starving and miserable. They have nothing because they have bartered it all away for what little food remains in the area. So Jerusalem is in a deep state of grief. She experiences the kind of mourning that occurs just after a calamity strikes. A person cannot think straight because of the magnitude of what has just happened. Nothing makes sense. No one and nothing can bring comfort because shell shock has set in. She is reeling from the destruction, chaos, and death that has just ruined her world, and her mind cannot piece together the reasons—not at this point. Only later in the book, in chapters 3 and 5, does the author begin to find perspective, tentatively acknowledging the lessons God wants His people to learn. That is how grief works; that is its pattern. Modern studies have found that grief is a lengthy process. It is not just something that happens and quickly recedes. Instead, it is a process a person must move through in stages, each of which takes time. In this way, a grieving person can get a handle on what he or she is feeling and how it affects daily life. It takes considerable time to come to terms with what has happened. The book of Lamentations illustrates this process.
Richard T. Ritenbaugh
Those Who Mourn
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Ezekiel 2:3
The book of Ezekiel is addressed to the house of Israel, with Judah included within greater Israel. But the context of the book as a whole is primarily addressed to Israel, which was already in captivity when Ezekiel was written. Israel and Judah went into captivity at separate times; Judah went into captivity one hundred and twenty years after Israel did. However, the message in Ezekiel was written while the cause of their captivity was continuing in Judah. Ezekiel 20 exposes what caused them to go into captivity: idolatry and Sabbath breaking. What caused Israel and Judah to go into captivity at separate times was still going on! Since Judah went into captivity a hundred and twenty years after Israel, and Ezekiel was a Jew in Babylonian captivity, Ezekiel's message never reached the house of Israel! The main body of Israelites had already begun their lengthy migration toward the northwest. Therefore, what we see in the book of Ezekiel is an account by God, through the prophet of 1) past history; 2) events occuring even as Ezekiel wrote; and 3) what is prophesied to happen, things being fulfilled today.
John W. Ritenbaugh
Sabbathkeeping (Part 2)
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Daniel 9:1-4
When Daniel prayed this, Judah had been scattered for about 70 years, and they were just about ready to go back to the Promised Land. God was just about ready to release them. Daniel was concerned due to what he saw in Babylon; it discomforted him. He likely saw some of the same conditions existing in Babylon that had caused the Jews to go into captivity in the first place almost 70 years before. His fears were justified because, when Ezra and Nehemiah went back to rebuild the Temple and then the wall around Jerusalem, very few Jews went back. In fact, it was such a small number by Ezra's count that he called a fast about it. He wanted to make sure that the people would be hidden on the way so that nobody would see them making the trip back to Judea and consider them "easy pickings." When the church was finally begun in AD 31, Peter went to preach in Babylon because there was still such a large colony of Jews there. Indeed, they stayed in the world—in Babylon—and continued to multiply. We can read between the lines of Daniel's prayer and understand that he was anxious over their return. Quite a number of commentators feel that this cannot be all Daniel prayed. Really, all that we have here is an outline of what he said, the high points. After praying it, Daniel went back to his office or to his home and jotted these things down so that they would be remembered. God undoubtedly inspired that. So we are actually seeing only the essence of what he said. He certainly went into a great deal more detail with God. When we pray for repentance, we go into detail about things that we personally know about—especially those things that happen in our lives and perhaps those things that happen within God's work, of which we were aware. We do nothing about them then, but we certainly can ask God to forgive them. Daniel begins by establishing between him and God that he, Daniel, understood that God is faithful. He keeps His covenant. He stands by Leviticus 26 and Deuteronomy 28. When something goes out of God's mouth, it does not come back to Him empty (Isaiah 55:11). There are no "hollow threats" with God! Do we understand that? His faithfulness is one of the things that makes Him God. He can always be depended upon. He is Jesus Christ—the same yesterday, today, and forever (Hebrews 13:8). "For I am the Lord, I do not change" (Malachi 3:6).
John W. Ritenbaugh
Avoiding Superficiality
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Daniel 9:2
The prophet Daniel was by this time an old man. He had been taken as a captive to Babylon when he was a young teenager, probably made a eunuch, and trained to serve in Nebuchadnezzar's court. Now, with the defeat of the Babylonians by the Medo-Persians, Daniel was in service to a new king and a new empire, Darius the Mede of the Persian Empire. If the prophet was removed from Jerusalem in 604 BC, the year of Nebuchadnezzer's first invasion, and assuming he was, say, 12 years old at the time, he was now approaching 80 years old (Darius' first year would be c. 537 BC). And the 70 years of the prophecy were just about up—in fact, they would expire in the next year or so. The prophecy, which Daniel found in "the books" (more correctly, "letters"), had been penned many years before by Jeremiah the prophet. It is found in Jeremiah 29:10: "For thus says the LORD: After seventy years are completed at Babylon, I will visit you and perform My good word toward you, and cause you to return to this place." Daniel 9:2 can be read as if Daniel was just coming to the understanding of the seventy years, but that may not be the case. He had probably had access to the letter from Jeremiah for several decades, and he had probably understood that the Jews' exile in Babylon would be only seventy years. However, he may not have known when to commence the count of years, since the Babylonian invasions had been successive and had not finished until about 586 BC. Should he count from 604 BC, from 586 BC, or one of the other incursions? It is likely that, with his access to the halls of power, Daniel had come to know that Cyrus planned to announce that the Jews could return to the land of their fathers in the next year or two. A little simple math told him that the 604 BC date was the one to begin with. The seventy years was almost complete. But that brought him up short. He realized that the Jews in Babylon were little better for their captivity than when they left Judah in chains. They were still full of sin. They had not repented of their idolatrous ways. So he falls on his knees to utter his great prayer of confession, of which Daniel 9:10-11 is a sample: We have not obeyed the voice of the LORD our God, to walk in His laws, which He set before us by His servants the prophets. Yes, all Israel has transgressed Your law, and has departed so as not to obey Your voice; therefore the curse and the oath written in the Law of Moses the servant of God have been poured out on us, because we have sinned against Him. He ends with the well-known supplication: "O LORD, hear! O LORD, forgive! O LORD, listen and act! Do not delay for Your own sake, my God, for Your city and Your people are called by Your name" (Daniel 9:19). The obvious lesson for us is that we know that the return of Jesus Christ is not far off. Do we have a similar repentant attitude as Daniel had?
Richard T. Ritenbaugh
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Daniel 9:7
About 540 BC, the prophet Daniel testified, in a prayer recorded in Daniel 9:7, that the house of Israel had not returned to its homeland. As of that date, they were still "far off." The phrase "those near" refers to the captives of the Kingdom of Judah—of whom Daniel was one—who were interned in and around Babylon. "[T]hose far off in all the countries to which You have driven them" probably refers to the exiles of the Kingdom of Israel. Daniel says Israel still had not returned, as of about 178 years after their deportation in 718 BC. Daniel would not agree that God's punishment of Israel was to last only seven years.
Charles Whitaker
Searching for Israel (Part Seven): Seven Years' Punishment
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Hosea 4:1-3
History is repeating itself. Our nations rush pell-mell toward a worse captivity than those suffered by ancient Israel and Judah in Assyria and Babylon, and our foul language is partly to blame!
Staff
Swear Not at All!
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Haggai 2:10-23
The Bible contains the record of one extended family of people and its checkered history with God. The book of Genesis reveals the beginning of Israel through the fathers, and Exodus shows their first faltering steps. Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy define what God required of them—namely, for them to be holy. Joshua through II Chronicles contain their many adventures and misadventures as they continually turned from God. God also inspired seventeen prophetic books in the Old Testament to instruct His people, to correct them, and to warn them. These books were penned mostly before their captivity, but several were written after the Babylonian captivity of the Kingdom of Judah. The book of Haggai is one such post-exilic work. The immediate application of the prophecies it contains is the work on the Second Temple, but they incorporate definite dualities with end-time events. Of note in the last two prophecies of Haggai is God's desire to bless His covenant people, even when they do not deserve it. They stress that God blesses to improve the condition of His people, especially spiritually. Haggai received the last two prophecies on the same day. Haggai 2:10 and 20 identify that day as the twenty-fourth day of the ninth month, which is called Kislev (or Chislev). Kislev falls during November and December on the Gregorian calendar, near the beginning of winter. This date—Kislev 24—is easy to find on the calendar because it is always the day before the Jews celebrate Hanukkah on the twenty-fifth of Kislev. These prophecies in Haggai were given on, and refer to, the previous day. Historically, this date has been highly significant on several occasions. It was on Kislev 24 that the Temple was freed from its desecration by Antiochus IV (“Epiphanes”). The cleansing of the Temple began that evening, which, since it was after sunset, was technically Kislev 25. That is the origin of Hanukkah. A lesser-known fact is that it was also on Kislev 24 in 1917, during WWI, that British troops liberated Jerusalem from the Ottoman Empire. We can see that this is a significant date in Jerusalem's history, and considering the dualities of these prophecies, it may be significant again.
David C. Grabbe
Cleansing God's People
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Haggai 2:10-19
The first Kislev 24 prophecy concerns the uncleanness of the covenant people and God's response. It is important to remember what came before this. Approximately 42,000 Jews had just returned from the seventy-year-long Babylonian captivity. Haggai 1 concerns God stirring up the people to rebuild His destroyed Temple. Ezra's account shows that, after getting this kick-start from God in Haggai 1, Zerubbabel and Joshua did everything precisely as Moses had instructed. The priests were consecrated, an altar was constructed, and offerings were made, all according to God's specifications (see Ezra 3:2; 6:18). In Haggai 2:16-17, the same primary complaint appears as in Haggai 1, and the same necessary reaction from God. The people were looking to their own affairs rather than to God and His will for them. In Haggai 1, they were more concerned about their houses than about the proper worship of God (verses 4, 9). In Haggai 2:17, God says that the people were not turning to Him. In both cases, God crippled their productivity. They were putting forth the effort—there was no end of activity—but they produced little. God was cursing the work of their hands to get their attention. Their efforts to build were in vain since they did not have God and His will for them as their top priorities. We see, then, a humbled people returning from captivity, a newly consecrated Levitical priesthood, a new altar, and the beginnings of a new Temple, yet God still declares the whole nation to be unclean. Because the people are unclean, all the works of their hands are also unclean, including the sacrifices and offerings. The fact is, under the Old Covenant, there was no way to be spiritually cleansed. God provided instructions on how to be ritually clean, but the Old Covenant did not provide a means to remove sin from the people. The blood of bulls and goats, though required, could not take away sin (see Hebrews 9:11-22). They could only point to the future, perfect Sacrifice that could cleanse them of sin and prepare a people for their Savior (Galatians 3:19, 24). Thus, if they followed God's instructions, they could achieve a level of ritual cleanness or holiness (setting apart), but their sins could not be truly cleansed. Through a series of questions that Haggai asks the priests, God points out that uncleanness is transferable, but holiness is not. Defilement or impurity can spread from an object to a person to another object, but purity and holiness cannot. Holiness is personal and individual. This principle is especially interesting in light of what was happening at the time. The people and the leaders were finally in the process of building the Temple, the dwelling place of the Holy God. It contained many objects that were also holy, as well as the Most Holy Place. However, even the presence of God could not, by itself, make the people clean. To make them clean, it would take something more than just having the Temple nearby, with all of its holy objects and even the Shekinah—the glory of God. This prophecy ends curiously. It does not contain a call to repentance, except perhaps by implication. God says that His people are unclean, that the presence of something holy cannot make them clean, and that they had not turned their hearts toward Him. Then He suddenly says that from this day forward, He would bless. In most other places where God begins listing the transgressions of His people, He concludes with something that sounds a lot more like a curse than a blessing. Yet here, His blessing seems to be as a consequence of their sinful state. It is not a reward for their condition, but rather, His blessing will be a means to bring them out of it. His blessing is the solution to their wayward hearts and their general uncleanness.
David C. Grabbe
Cleansing God's People
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Matthew 13:33
The “three measures of meal” first show up in Genesis 18:6: “So Abraham hurried into the tent to Sarah and said, 'Quickly, make ready three measures of fine meal; knead it and make cakes.'” The occasion was God's meeting with Abraham and Sarah to promise them a son, the next step—a miraculous one—in the growth of the family/kingdom. The meal symbolizes the fellowship between God and the family of Abraham. The Jews in Jesus' audience were quick to claim Abraham as their father (John 8:39), and the “three measures of meal” refers to something easily recognizable in their history. But then Jesus introduces a subversive element into the story. Over time, something happened to the fellowship between God and the expanding house of Abraham—the kingdom became “all leavened.” Many commenters hold that this parable teaches that the gospel will spread over all the earth in the same way that leaven spreads, but this interpretation overlooks both the context and the fact that God's Word never uses leaven positively. Instead, leaven is universally a symbol of corruption, especially of apostate doctrine and practice (Matthew 16:11-12; Luke 12:1; I Corinthians 5:8; Galatians 5:7-9). The parable indicates, then, that the covenantal relationship between God and Abraham's family had completely degenerated. Israel “took” of pagan belief systems from the nations around her and introduced those corrupting ways into her relationship with God. The Judaism that Jesus encountered was a noxious blend of some Scripture with beliefs and practices picked up during the Babylonian captivity and flavored with Hellenism and the hardened traditions of previous generations. When Jesus delivered the parables, the major problem within the kingdom was not the idolatry of graven images as before the captivity, but one of false beliefs. He did not have to contend with pagan temples and high places, but with hearts hardened by anti-God doctrines and practices. The beliefs and practices that Jesus encountered suggested a thoroughly leavened covenantal relationship, such that “He came to His own”—the descendants of Abraham, in particular—“and His own did not receive Him” (John 1:11). Therefore, as He later informed the religious leaders, God would take the kingdom from its current caretakers and give it to a spiritual nation—the spiritual seed of Abraham, those who are Israelites because of their faith in Him rather than their physical lineage.
David C. Grabbe
God's Kingdom in the Parables (Part Two): Tares, Mustard Seed, and Leaven
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