Exile and Refugees in the Bible

Genesis 27:41 – 28:5, Jacob (12/10/20)

Rebecca thought Jacob should go away for "a few days," until Esau cooled off. He was gone for twenty years (Genesis 31:41). Jacob and Esau were eventually reconciled, but the Bible does not record that Jacob and Rebecca ever saw each other again.

Genesis 29:1-9, Jacob (12/11/20)

Jacob is on the run from the wrath of Esau, but at least he managed to wind up in the right place.

I was curious about "my relatives" in vs. 4, so I looked it up. It seems to be more like, "Hey, bro!" than "My dear family." Other translations have "friends" or "brothers/brethren"; at least one omits it entirely.

Genesis 31:1-7, 14-18, Jacob (12/14/20)

So now Jacob is on the run from Laban! Either he can't buy a break or he can't get along with anybody; I'm not sure which. His wives now leave their land and family for a foreign country.

Leviticus 13:1-3, 45-46, Lepers (12/25/20)

Well, here's a gloomy scripture for Christmas. Lepers were some of the earliest exiles from the community of the children of Israel. We have a similar situation going on today during the COVID epidemic. Pray for the sick, particularly the ones exiled to hospital rooms where no one can visit them.

2 Kings 7:1-4, 15:1-5, Lepers (12/28/20)

Even being a king didn't save you from isolation if you were a leper. I do like the attitude of the lepers at the gate, however. "So what's the worst that can happen if we surrender? Certainly no worse than what will happen if we don't, and maybe it will be better!" Occasionally somebody says to me, "Well, I can't start X, because it takes Y years, and then I'll be Z years old." I always want to say, "So how old will you be in Y years if you don't do X??" Be like the lepers: think it through.

Luke 17:11-19, Matthew 8:1-4, Lepers (12/29/20)

Lepers, as we have seen, were outcasts. Fellow-reader Clyde C. points out that this is about the only way the ancients had to deal with a serious and contagious disease, but they were outcasts nevertheless. For this reason, the ten lepers "stood at a distance." Two aspects of the second incident are amazing: the leper came close enough to touch, and Jesus touched him! In both cases, Jesus sends the cleansed lepers to the priests, who were the only people who could readmit them to society (Leviticus 14).

1 Kings 16:29 – 17:9, Elijah (12/30/20)

Ahab was a bad person, a bad king, and a bad Jew. Maybe he was a good husband, because he did indulge the whims of his Baalist Philistine princess bride, Jezebel, in such matters as building altars for Baal and killing the prophets of God. God sent the great prophet Elijah to rebuke Ahab, but then God told Elijah that he'd better get out of town, presumably for his own safety.

1 Kings 18:1-15, Elijah (01/01/21)

Have you ever, perhaps as a teenager who put a dent in your father's car, said, "He's gonna kill me!" (By the way, I'm not admitting anything.) This is why I love Obadiah – he has exactly that hysterical reaction when Elijah tells him to go to Ahab and say that Elijah will meet with him. We see from vss. 9-10 that not only has Elijah been in exile for three years, but he has been on the run from place to place, the object of a manhunt led by King Ahab.

1 Kings 18:36 – 19:4, Elijah (01/04/21)

After three years of hiding out, Elijah comes back and challenges the prophets of Baal to a contest. They've had their turn, which lasted most of the day and was unsuccessful. Now it's Elijah's turn. He has built an altar and put the sacrifice on it. Just to make the contest fair, he soaked everything in water. He calls on God to consume the offering with fire, and bam!! It's gone! Elijah calls on the spectators to execute the false prophets of Baal, but Jezebel takes offense. Elijah is in exile again.

1 Kings 19:5-21, Elijah (01/05/21)

Elijah has been in exile for quite a while, and he's getting pretty tired of it. We can relate. God, however, is unsympathetic and tells him to get on with what he's been told to do.

2 Kings 17:1-23, Exile and Assimilation: The Lost Tribes of Israel (01/06/21)

Probably the most thorough-going exile recorded in the Bible is the casting out of the ten tribes of Israel, which has lasted "to this day." Their sins are not listed in chronological order. First, they got off to a bad start by choosing their own kings (vs. 8), rather than letting God choose kings for them. (When God occasionally did choose a king for them, the dynasty was always ended by assassination.) The first king immediately set up shrines with golden calves (vs. 16), instead of allowing the people to continue to go to Jerusalem to worship God (1 Kings 12:26- 28). Then, as we read a few days ago, King Ahab introduced his wife Jezebel's Baalism into the country (vs. 16). In parallel with all these, the people worshiped all sorts of Canaanite gods and goddesses, sacrificed their children, and practiced divination (vss. 7-12, 16-17). God sent them prophets, but they didn't heed the warnings, and they're gone.

2 Kings 24:8-20, Exile and Consolidation: The Jews in Babylon (01/07/21)

The story of the exile of Judah is in some ways even worse than that of the exile of the 10 tribes of Israel. In Israel, at least there was a political reason for setting up shrines instead of worshiping in Jerusalem; in Judah there was no excuse at all for setting up idolatrous shrines – not only in the city but right in the Temple itself. In Israel, Baalism was introduced at the highest level by the foreign Queen Jezebel; in Judah there was no such alliance. Israel had prophet warnings but no historical example of exile; Judah saw what happened to Israel and did the same things! So God sent Judah into exile – the Exile – to get its collective head on straight.

Kings 24:20; Jeremiah 39:1-14, Jeremiah (01/08/21)

Okay, the Babylonians were vicious barbarians, I get that. But don't you think that if you were appointed king of the little, powerless, vassal state of Judah, you might just keep your head down and pay your taxes? Zedekiah not only rebels, he also abandons his people when things start to go sour. So I don't have a lot of sympathy for King Zedekiah, to tell you the truth.

Anyway, after the Babylonians take over again, after a second siege, they've had enough. They raze the city of Jerusalem, tear down its walls, and institute a second phase of the Exile. The prophet Jeremiah is nevertheless not harmed, aside from maybe PTSD, and he is sent back home to live among the very poorest people of the land.

Jeremiah 42:1-22, Jeremiah (01/11/21)

The king of Babylon appointed Gedaliah a governor over Judah during the Exile, and Jews from here and there who hadn't been deported rallied around him (Jeremiah 40). Jeremiah was given a choice about where to go – Babylon or Judah – and he also went to Gedaliah (Jeremiah 40:6). Then one of the captains, Johanen, found out that the Ammonites had sent a guy name Ishmael to kill Gedaliah, but unfortunately Gedaliah didn't believe that, which got him and a lot of other Jews killed (Jeremiah 41:1-3). So then people rallied around Johanen, who is giving serious thought to heading for Egypt (Jeremiah 41:13-18). He asks Jeremiah what to do. Jeremiah reports what God says, but, he adds, "You never have listened to me before, and I don't think you'll start now" (vss. 21-22).

Jeremiah 43:1-13, Jeremiah (01/12/21)

After swearing in Jeremiah 42:5-6 that they would do whatever Jeremiah told them God said they should do, Johanen et al. promptly change their minds in 43:1-3, and go to Egypt anyway. (No doubt God is thinking, "Then why did you even ask me??") They take Jeremiah with them. Poor Jeremiah! When he wasn't in jail (we didn't read about that), he was being dragged from country to country, usually against his will. He is called the Weeping Prophet, but he could just as well be called the Exiled Prophet.

Galatians 1:10 – 2:1, Paul (01/13/21)

After Paul's conversion, he spent some time in self-imposed exile (vss. 15-17). Even after he began his missionary work, he spent an extremely limited time in communication with the larger Christian community in Judea, which may have just been a milder form of exile. I wonder how difficult it was for him to maintain and enlarge his faith without the support and encouragement of other Christians?

Acts 16:16-24, 35-40, Paul (01/14/21)

Paul and his crew (which included Luke; see "we" in vs. 16) offended some businessmen in Philippi by costing them money (vs. 19). I guess the businessmen figured the Roman magistrates wouldn't be interested in that, because what they actually accused Paul and crew of is proselytizing, which was against Roman law (vs. 20-21). To be fair, that was a valid charge. What was not valid was beating Roman citizens and putting them in jail, so they got an apology as soon as their citizenship became known (vss. 37-38). Nevertheless, they were asked to leave town ... ostracized again.

Acts 25:13-19; 2 Timothy 1:8-12; Philemon 1:1-2, 8-10, 23; Ephesians 4:1-3; Paul (01/15/21)

Paul spent a lot of time in prison, exiled from society. Many scholars seem to think that the two longest periods were the one under Felix, when he was held without trial, and in Rome, toward the end of his ministry. Being in prison didn't stop his work. He continued to write letters to his students, his friends, and his churches. We could follow his example today.

Luke 5:27-35, 19:1-10, Tax collectors (01/18/21)

Tax collectors in Judea had a reputation, probably well deserved in most cases, for collaborating with the Romans and squeezing as much money from people as they could. They were ostracized from polite society. All the same, Jesus loved tax collectors and could see great possibilities. When Jesus called them, the tax collector Levi eventually became the great Gospel writer Matthew (see Matthew 9:9), and Zacchaeus became a philanthropist.

Esther 2:5-10, 15-20, Esther (01/19/21)

The Jews as a whole are in exile in Babylon when the king decides to choose a new queen by means of a beauty contest (see Esther 1:1 – 2:4). Esther is a young Jewish woman who has lost her parents. Her guardian and father-figure decides to enter her into the beauty contest, which means that she is further separated from her family and friends. Her long and ever-greater personal exile does have a happy ending when she becomes queen. Pray that we will all have a happy ending when we become vaccinated.

Esther 4:1-17, Esther (01/20/21)

No one in the palace knows that Queen Esther is Jewish when Haman buys the order from the king to kill all the Jews. On the other hand, she knows that she will be risking her own life to go to the king and plead for the Jews. Her cousin and mentor Mordecai asks her, "Who knows if you haven't come to the kingdom for such a time as this?" She says she'll do it, but meantime, she wants prayers from him and everybody he knows. "Then I will go in to the king, which is against the law; and if I perish, I perish."

In this time of COVID exile, the doctors, nurses, firefighters, police, grocery workers, mail carriers ... and many others ... who must be out there on the front lines risk their lives daily. We need to pray for them daily while they fight for us.

Jeremiah 29:10-14, The LORD Will Bring His People Back from Exile (12/31/20)

Ring Out, Wild Bells by Alfred, Lord Tennyson

James 1:1-19, Those in the Diaspora – and that's us! (01/21/21)

By the first century, Jews were scattered all over Europe, Northern Africa, the Middle East, and eastward into parts of Asia. These were the Jews of the Diaspora, or Dispersion. Some were in sizable Jewish communities, some in smaller communities, and some probably by themselves. Does this sound like your situation in this time of COVID? James writes to the new Christians, calling them the "twelve tribes of the Dispersion." "What?" they probably said. "I, a brand-new Gentile Christian in Spain, am a part of a community going back 2000 years? I'm not alone?"

No, we aren't alone. We have each other, even if we can't get together right now. We need to count this time as joy, because we know that the testing of our faith in these troubling times will lead to endurance and ultimately to a more complete faith.

Pray without doubting for the safety of all those workers who are delivering vaccines and caring for the sick.

1 Peter 1:1-12, 2:11-12, 5:8-11, Those in the Diaspora – and that's us! (01/22/21)

One thing I learned from this current study is that we, the people of God, have spent most of our time in one form of exile or another – whether isolation or ostracism of a person or exile or dispersion of a people. That hasn't necessarily been a bad thing. It has led us to have time alone with God, separate from the gods of the world. It has led us to trust and depend on God. It has led to the development of communities of faith and the writing of scripture. God has worked through terrible times to create and strengthen a people for himself.

It seems like only yesterday that James urged those of us in the Dispersion to rejoice that we are going through some terrible times. Wait – it was only yesterday! When two towering figures of the early Church, James and Peter, tell us exactly the same thing, we need to take what they are saying very seriously. Why on earth should we rejoice? Because God will bring the Church through this time stronger and purer than ever, providing we each do our own part in loving and caring for each other. Now may the God of all grace, who called you to his eternal glory by Christ Jesus, perfect, establish, strengthen, and settle you. To him be the glory and the power forever and ever. Amen!

More of A Community in Exile
Community in Exile - Part 1

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