A Letter to the Exiles

A messenger arrives in Babylon, dusty from months of travel. He is carrying a scroll from Jerusalem. A crowd of exiles gathers. Someone unrolls it, and begins to read. And the first words make everyone gasp.

It is about five hundred and ninety-seven years before Christ. Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon has captured Jerusalem and taken thousands of its people away: the young king Jehoiachin, his mother, the officials, the craftsmen and metalworkers. Jerusalem still stands, for now, with a new king called Zedekiah. But the exiles are far away, in a strange land. And some prophets in Babylon are telling them what they want to hear. Don't unpack, they say. In two years we'll all be home. Back in Jerusalem, the prophet Jeremiah knows that is not true. So when King Zedekiah sends two officials, Elasah and Gemariah, to Babylon, Jeremiah gives them a letter to carry.

The letter begins, This is what the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, says to all the exiles I sent from Jerusalem to Babylon. And then come the instructions. “Build ye houses, and dwell in them; and plant gardens, and eat the fruit of them.” Get married. Have children. Let your children get married and have children of their own. Grow in number there, don't shrink. The exiles look at each other. Build houses? Plant gardens? That sounds like we're staying. Jeremiah is telling them: this will not be a short trip. Don't spend your life sitting on your suitcases, waiting. Live. Even here.

And then comes the most surprising line of all. “And seek the peace of the city whither I have caused you to be carried away captives, and pray unto the LORD for it: for in the peace thereof shall ye have peace.” Pray for Babylon? The city of the people who conquered us? Yes, says God. Work for its good. Pray for it. When it does well, you will do well too. And don't listen to the prophets and fortune-tellers among you, God says, who tell you dreams you want to hear. They are prophesying lies in my name. I did not send them.

But the letter does not leave them without hope. When seventy years are completed for Babylon, God says, I will come to you, and I will keep my good promise to bring you back to this place. And then the words that people have written on cards and walls ever since. “For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, saith the LORD, thoughts of peace, and not of evil, to give you an expected end.” Plans for good, not for harm. A future, and a hope. Then you will call on me and come and pray to me, and I will listen. “And ye shall seek me, and find me, when ye shall search for me with all your heart.” I will be found by you, God says, and I will gather you from all the nations and bring you home. God had not forgotten them in Babylon. He was right there with them, and he had a plan.

Did the exiles really settle down and build homes? Ancient clay tablets suggest they did. A group of more than a hundred tablets, written in Babylonian and published in two thousand and fourteen, come from a village in Babylonia called Al-Yahudu, meaning the town of Judah. They record ordinary business, like rents, sales and loans, among families with Hebrew names, over several generations of the exile.

You'll find this letter in Jeremiah chapter twenty-nine, verses one to fourteen. A letter that told exiles to plant gardens, pray for their enemies' city, and hold on to God's plans. So here is a question to carry with you. Where has God put you right now, and how could you seek the good of that place?