A history of the work of redemption. Containing the outlines of a body of…

3. The captivity into Babylon was the occasion of another thing which did afterwards much promote the setting up of Christ's kingdom in the world, and that was the dispersion of the Jews through the greater part of the known world, before the coming of Christ. For the whole nation being carried away far out of their own land, and continuing in a state of captivity for so long a time, they got them possessions, and built them houses, and settled themselves in the land of their captivity, agreeable to the direction that Jeremiah gave them, in the letter he wrote to them in the 29th chapter of Jeremiah. Therefore, when Cyrus gave them liberty to return to the land where they had formerly dwelt, many of them never returned; they were not willing to leave their settlements and possessions there, to go into a desolate country, many hundred miles distant, which none but the old men among them had ever seen; and therefore they were but few, but a small number, that returned, as we see in the accounts we have in the books of Ezra and Nehemiah. Great numbers tarried behind, though they still retained the same religion with those that returned, so far as it could be practised in a foreign land. Those messengers that we read of in ⟨p. 110⟩the 7th chapter of Zechariah, that came to enquire of the priests and prophets in Jerusalem, Sherezer and R•gem•m•lech, are supposed to be messengers sent from the Jews that remained still in Babylon.

Those Jews that remained still in that country were soon, by the great changes that happened in the world, dispersed thence into all the adjacent countries. Hence we find, that in Esther's time, which was after the return from the captivity, the Jews were a people that were dispersed throughout all parts of the vast Persian empire, that extended from India to Ethiopia; as you may see, Esth. iii.8. "And Haman said unto King Ahasuerus, There is a certain people scattered abroad, and dispersed among the people in all the provinces of thy kingdom," &c. And so they continued dispersed till Christ came, and till the apostles went forth to preach the pospel. But yet these dispersed Jews retained their religion in this dispersion. Their captivity, as I said before, thoroughly cured them of their idolatry; and it was their manner, for as many of them as could from time to time to go up to the land of Judea to Jerusalem at their great feasts. Hence we read in the 2d chapter of Acts, that at the time of the great feast of Pentecost, there were Jews abiding at Jerusalem out of every nation under heaven. These were Jews come up from all countries where they were dispersed, to worship at that feast. Hence we had, in the history of the Acts of the Apostles, that wherever the Apostles went preaching through the world, they found Jews. They came to such a city, and to such a city, and went into the synagogue of the Jews.