City ChangersShembull

Stay Awhile

To the people of Israel, Babylon was everything Jerusalem was not. Babylon was dedicated to false gods, while Jerusalem was dedicated to the one true God. Babylon was the center of pagan worship; Jerusalem hosted the only holy worship. Babylon was characterized by sin, while Jerusalem was the home of those worshippers blessed to live on God’s holy hill, where the ark of the covenant resided and where Solomon’s temple towered over the city. Jerusalem was God’s preferred address on Earth.

Which is why it was an utter shock when Babylon defeated Israel’s armies, tore down the walls of Jerusalem, desecrated the temple, and hauled off their leaders and thousands of Jews to live—and die—in exile, nine hundred miles from their home.

As you might imagine, the Jews taken captive to Babylon did not make the transition well. Their entire national identity, not to mention their faith, seemed to have been ripped from them. What they really wanted was for God to instantly judge Babylon and send them home to Jerusalem ASAP.

On cue, some men among them rose up, claiming to be prophets from God, teaching that God had promised to overthrow their captors and send them home soon.

But the prophet Jeremiah, who had managed to remain in Jerusalem, really did hear from God, and he sent a letter to the exiles. Here’s the part that must’ve been a bitter pill for the displaced Jews to accept:

God said He sent them into exile. They’d thought it was some sort of fluke or anomaly in the universe, for how else could God have been overpowered by the power of Babylon? No fluke, Jeremiah said. God sent you there. He’s doing something intentional. You’re there for a reason. 

Then he said they were not going to be rescued anytime soon. Those so-called prophets among you saying you’re about to come home … don’t listen to them. Don’t pay attention to their alleged visions and dreams. I haven’t told them to say that, because it isn’t true. Later in the letter, he said they’re going to be in Babylon for seventy years.

But just as they were preparing to fight a long campaign of bitterness against their cruel captors, God dropped the A-bomb on them:

Build houses and live in them; and plant gardens and eat their produce. Take wives and become the fathers of sons and daughters, and take wives for your sons and give your daughters to husbands, that they may bear sons and daughters; and multiply there and do not decrease. Seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the LORD on its behalf; for in its welfare you will have welfare. (Jeremiah 29:5–7 NASB)

Say what? I don’t want to build a house here … I want to go home to my real house in Israel. Plant a garden? Never! That implies I’m accepting that this is my reality and will be for the foreseeable future. Marriages and births? Seriously, God, You act as though we’re supposed to like it here. Are You forgetting how we came to be here? Don’t You see their pagan worship? Didn’t You see that they dashed our infants against the rock? This place is hateful to us, and You want us to go on as though this is our home now?

And if that weren’t enough, God asked them not only to endure their captors but also to actively work for—and even pray for—their success? Lord, I can see them thinking, I will never pray for the welfare of the ones who defiled Your temple and destroyed Your nation. Never!