Bound for Babylon
Tell 10 Jewish people they are the Chosen People of God and at least half will reply, “I wish He had chosen someone else!” While such an example of Jewish wit is amusing, it is also a testimony that God keeps His promises—even the heartbreakers.
The Torah in particular states clearly that the Jewish people are God’s chosen, special people (Dt. 7:6). They are the “apple of His eye” (Dt. 32:10; Ps. 17:8; Zech. 2:8). In Scripture, they refer to God as their Father: “[King] David said: ‘Blessed are You, Lᴏʀᴅ God of Israel, our Father’” (1 Chr. 29:10).
As a father, He certainly loves His children but also has the right to discipline them when they wander. Scripture is filled with God’s promises of reward if the Israelites obey and chastisement if they do not. However, unlike earthly fathers who are apt to break promises, God keeps all of His—good and bad.
The prophet Jeremiah was the messenger of many such promises to Israel. He proclaimed one in particular that was not so good. And much to the chagrin of the Jewish people, God fulfilled it to the letter.
For 23 years, beginning in the 13th year of King Josiah of Judah (627 B.C.), Jeremiah warned his people about the perils of worshiping strange gods (Jer. 25:3, 5–6). The consequence was a promised 70 years of captivity in a foreign country, when the land of Israel would become a desolate wasteland—an “astonishment” (v. 11). After these 70 years will be completed, God promised, “I will visit you and perform My good word toward you, and cause you to return to this place” (29:10).
God always delivers on His promises. Because they failed to heed God’s prophet, the Israelites were captured by Babylonian King Nebuchadnezzar, beginning in 605 B.C.
The Babylonian Captivity is a turning point in Jewish history. Not only did it involve the destruction of Solomon’s Temple and the removal of Jewish people from their land, but it also began a 2,500-year hiatus of Jewish sovereignty over the land and initiated the Times of the Gentiles, which will last until the Lord returns and sets up His Millennial Kingdom.
A Jewish teenager named Daniel was among the captives. Unlike many of his contemporaries, Daniel strove to live obediently to God’s Word. As a result, God allowed him to discover a precious promise that would eventually become a reality: “In the first year of his reign [Darius, about 539 B.C.] I, Daniel, understood by the books the number of the years specified by the word of the Lᴏʀᴅ through Jeremiah the prophet” (Dan. 9:2).
The passage records Daniel’s prayer, which specifically acknowledges Israel’s corporate sin:
I prayed to the Lᴏʀᴅ my God, and made confession, and said, “O Lord, great and awesome God, who keeps His covenant and mercy with those who love Him, and with those who keep His commandments, we have sinned” (vv. 4–5).
Daniel knew that, just as God kept His promise to take a disobedient people captive, He would also keep His promise to restore them to their land (Jer. 29:10). God did so under Zerubbabel and Ezra.
Interestingly, Daniel received further revelation once he understood Jeremiah’s words. Daniel 9 records a future time for the Jewish people that promises both good and bad. Those promises are not yet fulfilled. But just as God fulfilled His promises literally in the past, He will do so again in the future.
Daniel no doubt was satisfied that God did not “choose someone else.”