In 586 BCE,* after a decade of struggle, the mighty Babylonians under their dreaded king, Nebuchadnezzar, exiled a portion of the southern kingdom after destroying Jerusalem and burning the Temple to the ground. The Temple, mind you. God’s dwelling place. Now the chosen people have no land, no king, and no Temple. That’s just another way of saying that God has abandoned them. The exile is Judah’s tragic story, the reference point of the past, that moment that would now color all others and that needed to be processed:
