Why are things not better in America? With the booming economy, the new freedoms won by the Civil Rights movement and the Feminist movement, why is there still so much poverty, inequality, and discrimination? Questions such as these that we are asking today were on the lips and in the hearts of ancient Jews around 520 B.C. Many, if not most, of these Jews in Judah (southern Israel) at that time had been exiles in Babylon during the Babylonian Captivity. Some eighteen to twenty years before they had been permitted to return to their homeland after Cyrus the King of Persia had conquered the Babylonians.

There was initially great joy among the Jews. For nearly forty years they had been aliens in a foreign land. For decades before that time they had seen the power of their beloved nation wane…