In the early 19th century, Mexico invited Americans to settle the territory of Texas, build farms, schools, and churches, “deal with the hostile Indians,”* and settle the wild land. Desperate to populate the territory and build the economy, Mexico offered land grants of 170 acres for farming crops, and over 4,428 acres (a league) for grazing cattle. Can you imagine that much free land?
Many found the offer too good to pass up and signs saying “Gone to Texas” or “G.T.T.” began to appear on abandoned houses across the United States. The signs were so common, in fact, that “Gone to Texas” eventually became a slang expression used to describe anyone on the run from the law. “Oh, he’s Gone to Texas” was another way of saying, “You’ll never see that money he owes you.”
It’s one thing to close up your farmhouse, make a G.T.T. sign, and ride west out of town on your wagon. It’s quite another to close down an entire kingdom. Yet that is what happened to the Kingdom of Judah during the Babylonian captivity.
Nebuchadnezzar laid siege to the city of Jerusalem and began taking captive all the best and the brightest, from the king and his princes, to the prophets, priests, wise men, and counselors. Families gathered what they could carry into bundles and began the 700-mile march to Babylon. Businesses and homes were boarded up. The palace remained open—because Nebuchadnezzar appointed Zedekiah to be his puppet king—but Solomon’s Temple, the pride of the nation, was closed.
Imagine an iron chain locking the doors to Solomon’s Temple and a sign nailed up outside: Gone to Babylon.
Yet there is a crucial difference in these stories. Settlers who moved from North Carolina to Texas in the 1820s moved voluntarily. The Hebrews of the Kingdom of Judah were captured and driven on a forced march to Babylon.
Nebuchadnezzar came for them on three separate occasions, rounding up everyone with talent, skill, or useful experience and taking them back to Babylon. The people knew only the very youngest among them would ever see Jerusalem again. Most would die in the foreign land. Some would die along the way. This was not vacation. They were not going to some new promised land. They were marching toward judgment. The emotions would have been almost entirely hopeless.
“All hands shall be feeble, and all knees shall be weak as water. They shall gird themselves with sackcloth, and horror shall cover them. Shame shall be upon their faces and baldness upon their heads” Ezekiel 7:7-8.
Not only did the king, the princes, the prophets, priests, and judges leave. Not only did the august persons of wealth and power depart. Not only did the Babylonians deport the prominent citizens of noble character.
You know who else pulled up stakes and evacuated Jerusalem? God himself.
Ezekiel reports another vision of the angelic beings who represent the glory of God. He watches as God’s glory appears over the north gate of the city (Ezekiel 8:3-4), the entrance of the city (Ezekiel 9:3), then the south end of the temple (Ezekiel 10:3-4), and the east gate of the temple (Ezekiel 10:18-19). Finally, the glory of God abandons the temple altogether, coming to rest above the mountain east of the city (Ezekiel 11:23).
Four hundred years earlier, Solomon and the nation had dedicated the beautiful golden temple to the Lord, and his glory filled the place. Now, God’s glory gathered its things and left. The life went out of the nation and the life went out of the temple.
Cartoonists have a shorthand way to indicate the comical deaths that happen in the funny papers—they draw tiny Xs for eyes. Everyone knows the X indicates death, not merely sleep. I’ve always found the little X to be remarkably apt. When we find a dead chicken or another animal on the farm whose “spirit has flown” the look reminds me of exactly those tiny Xs. But imagine that on Solomon’s Temple. The doors are locked. The town is deserted. The spirit has flown. The temple is dead. If the temple had eyes, they would be little Xs.
Remember schools during COVID-19? Following two years of online classes, it seemed in-person schools would never recover. Where was the school spirit? Where was the energy, the enthusiasm, the excitement? Everything was just DEAD.
Imagine Solomon’s Temple after the glory of God departed. The sign on the door would not say, “Gone to Babylon.”
The sign would say, “Ichabod. The Glory of God Has Departed” 1 Samuel 4:21.
AΩ.
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