There is a simple poem by Louise F. Tarkington which goes in part this way:

I wish there were some wonderful place
Called the Land of Beginning Again,
Where all our mistakes and all our heartaches
Could be dropped like a shabby old coat at the door
And never put on again.

What has this to do with the return of the Jewish exiles from seventy years in slavery in Babylon? Everything! Because, as they left Babylon behind and turned their faces toward their homeland, they carried a lot of mental baggage along with them. They had the backward look. They had the memory of suffering through several generations - humiliation, painful separation from their religious centers, daily encounters with people who prized false gods and bowed down to idols, and the sight of a new generation of their own p…