Historical Cultural Background Of A Bible Verse In Old Testament

Historical, Cultural Background of a Bible Verse in Old Testament
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Isaiah 40:3 a voice cries out; prepare in the wilderness a road for the lord, clear the way in the desert for our God
The various books of the Old Testament were written before, during and after the multiple phenomena and can be associated with different occurrences in the biblical time. The Old Testament book of Isaiah is often referred to as the small bible as it contains sixty-six chapters just as the Holy Scripture has sixty-six books. The text of Isaiah includes the preaching of the prophet Isaiah, accounting for the events which occurred before the invasion of Jerusalem by the Assyrians, during the moving of the Israelites into exile as well as their return from Babylon. The paper is set to discuss the historical as well as the cultural background of Isaiah chapter forty, verse three.
In the third verse of chapter forty, of the book of Isaiah, poetry as a literary style has been used to depict God`s nature, portraying God as a warrior that cannot be deterred by any means from achieving his sole victorious mission. A voice speaks in the desert; prepare a straight path in the wilderness for our lord. From the verse, Isaiah proclaims the God`s return to the Israelites, and he assures the Israelites of the restoration that God would bring upon them. The verse emphasizes on the fact that no obstacle would prevent God from forgiving the Israelites and in that sense equating the challenges to the desert.[Adeyemo, Tokunboh, ed. Africa Bible Commentary. Zondervan, 2006.]
This part of the bible can be estimated to the events of between 540 and 550 BC, the period during which the people of Judah have held captives in Babylon. Isaiah had sent a warning to the ignorant and stubborn people of Israel and Judah of the impending war with the Assyrians, stating that it would be the God`s punishment to the people. In 721 BC, Israel was defeated by the Assyrians whereas Judah was saved because of Hezekiah, who was Godly and took in the message from Isaiah. The people of Judah, however, did not change as time passed.
The rise of the new Babylon was God’s plan of punishing the people of Judah for having failed to be his people. The Babylonian empire swept Judah in 586BC.Not only did they lose their nation but also their altars and their old ways of life to the Babylonian empire. The Babylonian empire, however, did not exist for long, as it was peacefully taken over by the Persian Empire in 538BC.[Blomberg, Craig. "The NIV application commentary: 1 Corinthia...