_The Epoch of the Exile:_ B.C. 586-536.
The conquest of the two sister kingdoms, with the carrying away of the
influential portion of the people into exile, was a blessing in disguise.
Israel was taken out of its petty provincialisms, its race insularity, and
placed amid one of the most highly cultivated civilizations of the
ancient world. The fertile plain of Mesopotamia had been from immemorial
antiquity the seat of great enterprises. Civilization had developed there
when surrounding peoples had not emerged from semi-barbarism. Like the
Troy beneath Troy in the Ilium ruins, we find here successive
civilizations resting each upon the debris of an earlier order. The
descriptions of ancient historians, together with the explorations of late
years, make very vivid the scenes amid which the captive Israelites
walked.
Babylon was a city which might well astonish and captivate strangers. It
was of immense size, being surrounded by a wall forty, or possibly sixty,
miles in circumference. This wall was nearly three hundred feet high, and
was broad enough to allow a chariot with four horses to turn easily upon
it. The streets were wide and straight, crossing each other at right
angles, and were lined with houses several stories in height, painted in
all the colors of the rainbow. Trees and gardens were so plentiful as to
give the whole city the appearance of a park. The grounds of the imperial
palace covered an area of seven miles round, in the centre of the city.
The largest temple the world has ever seen rose in pyramidal form six
hundred feet in air. The broad and shaded streets were resplendent with
the pomp and pageantry of the court of a mighty empire, and were alive
with the bustle of the traffic of the known world.
Libraries and museums garnered the treasures of art and literature, of
science and philosophy, accumulated through centuries. On every hand were
the tokens of a refined and cultivated civilization, venerable with age.
In the temples a rich ritual celebrated an elaborate worship, while
learned priests waited to explain the profound philosophic and poetic
truths of the sacred symbols.
Transported to such surroundings, Israel received the mental shock which
an American of a generation past experienced on first visiting Europe. The
influence of this surprise was very marked. Israel's genius flowered in
this strange soil. Her literary life centres in Babylonia. The second
Isaiah wrote there his immortal pages. The unknown authors of the noble
histories, whose charm never stales, fashioned there the traditions and
records of the past into their present shape. There the great legal
codification was carried out, and the institutional system of Israel
perfected. A new circle of ideas show themselves at work in the mind of
the people while in exile. From Chaldean scholars the Israelites probably
learned the ancient legends of the Beginnings, which they worked over in
their profounder religious consciousness into the simple and spiritual
forms in which they stand in Genesis. From Persia they either received
bodily the system of angelology that thenceforth appears in their
writings, or they received the quickening influence of a kindred religion
upon the thoughts latent in their beliefs.[50]
These intellectual influences wrought directly upon the development of
Israel's religion. In the revelation of the prosperous life of these alien
peoples the chosen race saw herself but one member of the great world
family. Persia's ethical and spiritual religion discovered to the nobler
natures of Israel the very ideals which they and their fathers had long
been strenuously seeking. These heathen were worshipping the same source
and standard of goodness before which they themselves had been doing
homage. A new sense of human brotherhood stirred within the exclusive
race, and with it the perception that there is one Father of all men.
Religion threw off all lingering polytheistic notions and soared to the
vision of One God. Monotheism dates as a clear consciousness from this
era.[51] It was saved from becoming an abstract, philosophic conception,
merging good and evil in a common source, by the stern ethical dualism of
the Persians. Though there be but one God, who is ultimately to triumph
over all evil, yet, said these Persians, evil is a present power in
creation, organized and active, waging constant warfare with the powers of
goodness. Earth is the scene of the battle between light and darkness, in
which each man must play his part, for weal or for woe.
These high ethical and religious conceptions were nourished from the deeps
of sorrow out of which the people cried bitterly to God. Their nation was
crushed, their homes were broken up, and they themselves were captives in
a strange land. Israel might have said,
A deep distress hath humanized my soul.
All tender and gracious and holy humanities sprang forth from the hard
Hebrew nature under this deep distress. The national ideal changed wholly.
The old dream of a puissant king passed from the minds of the better men,
and we hear little of it thenceforth in the writings of the nation. In the
place of it arose the vision of the Righteous, Suffering, Servant of
God--the Nation trained in the school of sorrow for a sacrificial mission,
and charged to lead the peoples of the earth into the knowledge of the
Eternal, who loveth righteousness.
As the crown and consummation of religion, the holy hope of life beyond
the grave dawned in this night of suffering, gleaming toward the day of
Him who brought life and immortality to light.[52]
Around this deepening and enriching life the remarkable body of the
prophetic-priestly system was fashioned, as the law of the new nation when
it should gain once more the old home. It looked to the formation of a
holy people; through its minute direction of the daily life, its
sacrificial symbolism charged with spiritual significances, its sacred
books for the instruction of the people, its order of scribes devoted to
this new study, its synagogues or meeting-houses for oral teaching and for
prayer--now for the first time elevated into an act of public worship
co-ordinate in dignity with sacrifice.
True to its old instinct, Israel's religion, first seeking to build up
individual holiness, turned then to build up social righteousness. The
ideals of the great prophets, which had been long working in the minds and
hearts of the leaders of the people, were now embodied in the priestly
legislation. The traditional communal system of land-holding was
established as the legal basis for the new nation. The land of Israel was
nationalized, and its title vested in God, from whom individuals received
the right of limited usufruct. It could not be sold outright. No man could
gain a fee-simple proprietorship. The seventh year was continued as a year
of fallow when the poor were to have the right of pasturage and of such
growth as the land spontaneously brought forth. At the end of seven
sabbatical periods, in round numbers every fifty years, all purchases of
land were to lapse, and the soil return to the original possessors. At the
same time all debtors were to pass through a general act of bankruptcy and
go forth free men. Interest was not to be allowed on loans made between
brother Israelites. By these provisions both villeinage or land-serfdom
and the slavery of debtor classes to capital were to be prevented in the
new nation. This legislation of the restoration was "to the end that there
be no poor among you."[53]
To such impracticable ideals, for that age, did this exilic movement of
the new religion look, with sober, strenuous, systematic effort for their
realization; and therein may we see its intensity of moral life.