• They tell the story of the Jews' return from Babylon, of the rebuilding of the temple and Jerusalem, and of the reestablishment of the Jews' national life in their homeland.
• The last three of the Old Testament prophets - Haggai, Zechariah, and Malachi - lived and worked during this same period of return and restoration.

• With the fall of Jerusalem to the Babylonians in 586 b.c., the people of God entered a new phase of their history.
• The period from 586 to 538 b.c. is called the “Exilic period,” or the “Babylonian exile,” or the “Babylonian captivity.”
• By “exile” it is meant that a large number of Israelites and Judeans now were living outside of the Promised Land - in “foreign countries.”

• The deportations of Israelites had actually begun during the time of the Assyrian attacks on and eventual conquest of, Israel in 733 and 722 b.c.
• After the battle of Carchemish  in 609 b.c., the Babylonians replaced the Assyrians as the world power.
• God used them as His instrument of judgment as they deported Judeans in 605, 597, 586 and 582 b.c.
• In addition, it is probable that a good number of Israelites and Judeans emigrated of their own accord to Syria, Egypt, or even Asia Minor (Turkey) in order to avoid the onslaught of the Assyrians and Babylonians — thus beginning their “exile” from the land of promise.

• Given that God promised the land of Canaan to the descendants of Abraham  forever - how is it that the land is now controlled by pagans, while we, God's people, have been deported from it?
• If God chose the Davidic dynasty to rule forever (2 Samuel 7) - why is there now no reigning Davidic king (Psalm 89)?
• How can God allow the place He Himself chose for His presence to dwell (Psalms 132 ,137) - Jerusalem and God's temple - to be in ruins and under foreign control?
• God's Judgment
• The answer, of course, was that the continual sinning of the leaders and of the people of Israel and Judah had led to God's judgment upon them: the covenant curses of Deuteronomy 28 (especially vv. 32–37) and  Leviticus 26 (vv. 33–39) had fallen upon them.

• To show the people their disobedience.
• To show that of their ancestors during the past 400 years had led to the destruction of Jerusalem and of the temple and to the sorry state of the Davidic dynasty.
• God's people had not repented, in spite of the insistent and persistent call of God's prophets — such as Elijah and Elisha — to do so.

• But God had also promised that, after judgment, restoration would follow.
• And in 539 b.c. (after the Persians had replaced the Babylonians as the world dominating power) the Persian king Cyrus issued a decree that any Jews who wished to do so could return to Judah and rebuild their temple.

• After the first return, under Zerubbabel, the temple was rebuilt.
• 538 b.c.
• Zerubbabel
• With 42,360 Jews, 7,337 servants, 200 singers, 736 horses, 245 mules, 435 camels, 6,720 donkeys, and 5,400 gold and silver vessels
• The temple is rebuilt under Zerubbabel the governor and Joshua the priest (Ezra 3–6)
• The prophets Haggai and Zechariah
• After the second return, under Ezra
• 458 b.c.
• Ezra
• With 1,754 males, 100 talents of gold, 750 talents of silver.
• It is not stated whether women and children also went. It takes four months.
• After the third return, under Nehemiah, the walls of Jerusalem were rebuilt.
• The events of the book of Esther fall between the first and second returns (between Ezra 6 and  7).
• 444 b.c.
• Nehemiah
• Nehemiah, as governor, goes with an armed escort to rebuild and fortify Jerusalem, at government expense
• The walls of Jerusalem are rebuilt under Nehemiah the governor and Ezra the priest (Ezra 7–10; Nehemiah)
• The prophet Malachi

• The decree of Cyrus, the return led by Sheshbazzar in 538 b.c., and the completion of the rebuilding of the temple in 516 b.c. “technically” meant that the Babylonian exile was over.
• Thus, the period from 538 b.c. until ca. 400 b.c., when the prophetic voice ceased with the last of Israel's prophets, is called the “post-exilic period.”
• The truth, of course, is that the majority of Jews living outside the Promised Land did not return to Judah, for very large Jewish communities flourished not only in Babylonia, but also in Egypt, Syria, and Asia Minor.

• Persia ruled the area from the Indus River in the east to the western shores of Asia Minor on the Aegean Sea.
• During Persian rule there were many new cultural developments:
• coinage came into more widespread use
• the legal system developed
• a postal road from Susa (near ancient Babylon) to Sardis (near the Aegean coast), ca. 1,700 miles in length, aided long-distance communication.
• The fortunes of Jews living outside of Judea varied.
• Usually life in “exile” (later more commonly called “diaspora”) was not too bad -as evidenced by the Murashu documents, which provide details about Jewish trading
• On occasion, Jews were persecuted - as recorded in the book of Esther and in the extrabiblical Aramaic documents found at Elephantine in southern Egypt.

• The policy of the Assyrian and Babylonian kings had been to deport conquered peoples and scatter them in other lands.
• The policy of the Persian kings was exactly the opposite: they repatriated those peoples, that is, they sent them back to their own lands.
• The Persian kings were more humane than either the Assyrian or the Babylonian kings.
• One of the first acts of the first Persian king, Cyrus, a singularly noble and just monarch, was to authorize the return of the Jews to their own land.

• Cyrus (539 - 530 b.c.)
• conquered Babylon (539 b.c.) and made Persia a world empire.
• He permitted the Jews to return to their homeland, in fulfillment of Isaiah’s prophecy..
• Cambyses (530 - 522 b.c.)
• is thought to have been the Artaxerxes mentioned in Ezra 4:7,11,23, who stopped work on the temple.
• Darius I (522 - 486 b.c.)
• authorized completion of the temple (Ezra 6).
• Xerxes (Ahasuerus) (485 - 464 b.c.)
• is famous for his wars with Greece.
• Esther became his wife
• Mordecai was his prime minister.
• Artaxerxes I (Longimanus) (464 - 423 b.c.)
• was very favorably disposed toward the Jews.
• He authorized Nehemiah, his cupbearer, to rebuild Jerusalem.

Ezra 4:8–6:18; 7:12–26 ; and Daniel 2:4–7:28 are written in Aramaic.

It is evident that these scattered Jewish communities had their own leadership — note the elders mentioned in Ezekiel (Ezekiel 8:1 ; 14:1 ; 20:1) - and some of them maintained close contact with the Jewish leadership in Jerusalem.

Aramaic correspondence from the 5th century b.c. has been found from Elephantine in southern Egypt, addressed to Jews in Jerusalem.

• There is not much written material to help illuminate the life of those who remained in the land during the exilic period.
• However, a recent archaeological discovery at Ketef Hinnom in Jerusalem seems to indicate a degree of prosperity for at least some of those who were left behind in the land by the Babylonians.
• But it must be remembered that Jerusalem and the surrounding cities had been devastated by the Babylonians, and that living conditions for most of those still living in the land must have been less than ideal.
• As the post-exilic period got under way and the temple and then the walls of Jerusalem were rebuilt in 516 and 444 b.c. respectively, the fragile Judean community was harassed by the Samaritans to the north, the Ammonites to the east, the Arabs to the south, and the Ashdodites to the west.
• It also seems reasonable to assume that at this time, when Judah was vulnerable, their age-old enemy the Edomites moved into the Hill Country of Judah, into the Hebron area.
• The temple, its priesthood, and its service were certainly focal points for the reconstituted Jewish community.
• It was during this time that the book of Chronicles was written, emphasizing that these institutions were an important legacy bequeathed to the post-exilic community.
• Israel's history was retold with this in mind as the writer of Chronicles stressed the community's connection to the past - even tracing genealogies back to Abraham and Adam!
• The writer also emphasized the biblical principle that obedience typically leads to blessing while disobedience leads to disaster; that Israel, as God's people, was a unity;
• and that the activities of godly kings were divinely approved.
• All of this was to encourage the fledgling community to remain united and faithful to God.
• It was to this community that persons such as Zerubbabel, Haggai, Zechariah, Ezra, Nehemiah, and Malachi ministered, trying to assure them that God had not abandoned them.
• However, they seemed to be aware of the fact that although the exile had technically “ended,” God's presence had not yet returned to the temple, nor had He delivered His people as completely as He had promised (compare Isaiah 40 – 66 and Jeremiah 31). Even though they were aware that the actual return fell short of the return promised by the prophets, they, as God's people, were being called upon to remain faithful to Him — to await the climactic deliverance from exile that was still to come.

• Almost a century after the time of Artaxerxes I (the king who had allowed Nehemiah to go back to Jerusalem and rebuild its walls), the last Persian king, Darius III, was defeated by Alexander the Great of Macedonia in the famous battle of Arbela, near the site of Nineveh, in 331 b.c.
• The end of the Persian Empire marked the beginning of the rise of Greece.
• For the first time in history, the center of world power shifted from Asia to Europe.
• Later it would shift even farther west, to Rome and the greatest empire the world had yet seen - the Roman Empire - of which the Jews and their country were a part at the time of the New Testament.