By the Rivers of Babylon

Read it: 2 Kings 25; Jeremiah 29–31; Daniel 1; Daniel 6

The northern kingdom had already gone, swept away by Assyria. The southern kingdom of Judah lasted over a century longer. It had some good kings who brought reform, but most of its kings led the people into the same idol worship. God sent prophet after prophet. One of them, Jeremiah, warned Jerusalem for forty years that if it did not turn back, Babylon would come. Almost nobody listened. They beat him, put him in prison and threw him into a muddy well.

The fall

Babylon, a great empire in what is now Iraq, rose under King Nebuchadnezzar. He took captives from Jerusalem in several waves. In the first, around 605 BC, a group of noble young men were carried off, among them a teenager called Daniel. Then, in 586 BC, after a long siege, the end came. The Babylonian commander “burned down the house of the LORD, the royal palace, and all the houses of Jerusalem” (2 Kings 25:9). The walls were broken down. “So Judah was taken into exile, away from its own land” (2 Kings 25:21).

Think what this meant. The temple where God’s glory had filled the house was ashes. The land promised to Abraham was lost. A son of David no longer sat on the throne. Back in chapter 13 you read God’s warning: “if you defile the land, it will vomit you out” (Leviticus 18:28). Now it had happened. One of the saddest songs in the Bible comes from these years: “By the rivers of Babylon we sat and wept when we remembered Zion” (Psalm 137:1). Zion was another name for Jerusalem.

Had God’s promises failed? Second Kings ends with a small, quiet sign that they had not. Decades later, King Jehoiachin, a descendant of David held prisoner in Babylon, was released and “dined regularly at the king’s table for the rest of his life” (2 Kings 25:29). David’s line was still alive.

A letter to the exiles

Jeremiah, still in Jerusalem, wrote to the exiles in Babylon. They were expecting a quick return, but God’s message was surprising: “Build houses and settle down. Plant gardens and eat their produce” (Jeremiah 29:5). Have families. And more surprising still: “Seek the prosperity of the city to which I have sent you as exiles. Pray to the LORD on its behalf” (Jeremiah 29:7). Pray for Babylon, the enemy that burned your temple.

The exile would last seventy years. But it wasn’t the end. “For I know the plans I have for you, declares the LORD, plans to prosper you and not to harm you, to give you a future and a hope” (Jeremiah 29:11). That verse is often printed on mugs and cards. In its setting, it’s not a promise that next week will be easy. It’s a promise to a people who would wait seventy years, most of whom would die in exile, that God had not abandoned them. That makes it stronger, not weaker. And the hope wasn’t mainly about getting home. It was about God: “You will seek Me and find Me when you search for Me with all your heart” (Jeremiah 29:13).

Then Jeremiah gave one of the biggest promises in the Old Testament. Israel had broken the covenant made at Sinai again and again. The law was good, but it was written on stone, and their hearts stayed hard. So God promised something new: “Behold, the days are coming, declares the LORD, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah” (Jeremiah 31:31). This time, “I will put My law in their minds and inscribe it on their hearts” (Jeremiah 31:33). Everyone, from the least to the greatest, would know God personally. And it would rest on complete forgiveness: “For I will forgive their iniquities and will remember their sins no more” (Jeremiah 31:34).

Daniel in Babylon

Meanwhile, in Babylon, Daniel and his friends were being trained for the king’s service. They were given Babylonian names and a Babylonian education. Daniel accepted a lot, but he drew a line: “Daniel made up his mind that he would not defile himself with the king’s food or wine” (Daniel 1:8). He didn’t rant or rebel. He politely asked for a ten-day test of vegetables and water, and at the end he and his friends looked healthier than everyone else. “God gave knowledge and understanding” (Daniel 1:17) to these four young men, and they rose to the top. They lived exactly as Jeremiah had said: serving the city, without losing their God.

Decades later, Babylon had fallen to the Persians, and Daniel, now an old man, was one of the most senior officials in the empire. Jealous rivals persuaded King Darius to pass a law that for thirty days no one could pray to any god or man except the king. Daniel’s response: “three times a day he got down on his knees, prayed, and gave thanks to his God, just as he had done before” (Daniel 6:10), at his window facing Jerusalem. He was thrown into a den of lions. The king, who liked Daniel, called after him, “May your God, whom you serve continually, deliver you!” (Daniel 6:16). In the morning Daniel answered: “My God sent His angel and shut the mouths of the lions” (Daniel 6:22). The king then praised Daniel’s God, whose “kingdom will never be destroyed” (Daniel 6:26).

Scholars debate when the book of Daniel was written in its final form; Christians hold different views. What all agree on is its message: God is King even over the empires, and He keeps His people faithful in a land that is not their home.

Where Jesus is in this

On the night before He died, Jesus took a cup of wine at the Passover meal and said, “This cup is the new covenant in My blood, which is poured out for you” (Luke 22:20). Jeremiah’s promise was being kept. The letter to the Hebrews quotes Jeremiah 31 in full and says Jesus is the one who brings that covenant in. Through His death our sins are forgiven and remembered no more, and through His Spirit God’s law is written “not on tablets of stone but on tablets of human hearts” (2 Corinthians 3:3).

The exile also helps Christians understand their own lives. Peter calls believers “foreigners and exiles” in this world, and Daniel shows us how to live that way: working hard for the good of the place we live, praying for it, and never bowing to anything but God.

Think about it: Daniel didn’t try to fight everything about Babylon, but he knew exactly where his lines were. Where are your lines, the things you won’t do whatever the pressure from your friends, your school or your feeds?

Go deeper: The Holy Spirit, or Power from on High by A. B. Simpson — Simpson tells the story of Jeremiah, the sensitive young prophet who said “I am so young” and who shared the suffering of the people he warned, and shows how his promise of a new covenant, with God’s law written on our hearts, is fulfilled by the Holy Spirit. Start with chapter 21, “The Holy Spirit in the Life and Testimony of Jeremiah”.