God’s Word for You

2 Chronicles 36:22-23 The return.

by Pastor Timothy Smith on Friday, June 27, 2025

22 In the first year of Cyrus king of Persia, in order to fulfill the word of the LORD spoken by Jeremiah, the LORD moved the heart of Cyrus king of Persia so that he made a proclamation throughout all his kingdom and also put it in writing: 23 “This is what Cyrus king of Persia says, ‘The LORD, the God of heaven, has given me all the kingdoms of the earth, and he has charged me to build him a house at Jerusalem, which is in Judah. Any of his people among you may go up. And may the LORD his God be with him.’”

Jeremiah foretold the seventy years of the captivity two or three times: “These nations will serve the king of Babylon seventy years” (Jeremiah 25:11) and “When seventy years are completed in Babylon, I will come to you (says the Lord) and fulfill my gracious promise to bring you back to this place” (Jeremiah 29:10). Daniel quoted Jeremiah to comfort the exiles during their captivity: “I understood from the Scriptures, according to the word of the Lord given to Jeremiah the prophet, that the desolation of Jerusalem would last seventy years” (Daniel 9:2). And Zechariah says something like it (Zechariah 1:12, 7:5), And since Jeremiah also mentions the seventy years in Jeremiah 25:12, and it is mentioned here in 2 Chronicles 36, there are seven references to this period in the Old Testament: Ample evidence of the Lord’s promise and the faith of those who grasped and held tightly to his word. We will talk more about the date of the return, or returns in the plural, when we begin our meditation on Ezra (that is, this Sunday).

We have surely moved on from Babylon to a new captor here: Persia. In around 539 BC, Cyrus became the ruler in place of Babylon, and his empire was known as Persia. It was unlike anything else the world had yet known. Cyrus did not allow the death penalty for any first offense. He established regional officials known as satraps to govern territories that were far away. He linked the parts of his empire with good roads. He subdued the Medes to the east and the Lydians in the far west. He defeated the Elamites and made their capital, Susa, into an additional palace for himself. But more than all these things, he sent captives home, Not just the Jews, but anyone who had been captured by the Babylonians, were all free, if they wished, to go home. He also sponsored the rebuilding of their local temples to their own gods. He offered an amount of money up to a certain limit for this, but did not always pay it. He did, however, support the rebuilding of the temple of the Lord in Jerusalem.

So the book of 2 Chronicles ends with these verses on this surprising note: The captivity was over, and the Jews were free to go home. They could rebuild Jerusalem and its walls, and they could rebuild the temple once again.

We have seen that there was no more mention of King Zedekiah. He was thirty-two when he was taken into captivity, ruined and blinded by the Babylonians. That was seventy years ago. And although my grandmother lived to be a hundred and two, it’s unlikely that Zedekiah fared so well.

But the faith of God’s people? They were looking forward to returning home. While they were away for so long—a lifetime, for most of them—their style of worship changed. Once, many of them had avoided temple worship, or they had done it incorrectly. During the captivity, they couldn’t bring sacrifices at all. So something new began: the “get-together,” which through Greek became the modern word synagogue. The people met for prayer, music, reading Scripture, and having it explained and applied by preaching and teaching. It was the beginning of a stye of worship quite a bit like our worship today in Christian churches, especially those that retain a liturgy. In the Bible, synagogues are common in Judea and in Galilee in the New Testament, with more than 60 mentions in the Gospels and in Acts. Jesus, Paul and Barnabas taught and preached in synagogues, and were of course driven out of some of them (John 16:2; Acts 14:15).

The two books of Chronicles show the hand of God working among his people from the creation of Adam and Eve to the return from the Babylonian exile. God’s people make mistakes. They fall into sins. Sometimes they drag other people into terrible sins with terrible consequences. But God is forgiving and merciful. If there has been a focus on the true and correct worship at the temple, it is only a foretaste of the true and correct worship of God in the inner temple of the heart. God planted and maintained his church of believers in the Garden of Eden, and he watched over them, nurturing them, throughout the long years of the exodus from Egypt, the conquest of Canaan, the days of the united kingdom under Saul, David and Solomon, and the days of the divided kingdom from Rehoboam to Zedekiah. He continues to watch over his people to this day. That is the message for the early readers of this book, those people who would rebuild the temple in the days of Ezra, Nehemiah, Haggai and Zechariah, but that is also the message for Christians today, all of us in the true Holy Christian Church, the communion of saints.

The Reformer, Martin Luther, confessed: “The Holy Spirit carries on his work until the last day. For this purpose he has appointed a community on earth, through which he speaks and does all his work. For he has not yet gathered together all his Christian people, nor has he completed the granting of forgiveness. Therefore we believe in him who daily bring us into this community through the Word, and imparts, increases, and strengthens faith through the same Word and forgiveness of sins. Then when his work has been finished and we abide in it, having died to the world and all evil, he will finally make us perfectly and eternally holy. We now wait in faith for this to be accomplished through the Word” (Large Catechism, II, Creed 61-62).

After a quick look at Psalm 137, we will continue the account of the returning exiles in the short book of Ezra.

In Christ,
Pastor Timothy Smith

 

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