Rise & fall, an example of divine blessings & divine punishment

اِذَا جَآءَ وَعۡدُ اُوۡلٰٮهُمَا بَعَثۡنَا عَلَيۡكُمۡ عِبَادًا لَّنَاۤ اُولِىۡ بَاۡسٍ شَدِيۡدٍ فَجَاسُوۡا خِلٰلَ الدِّيَارِ ​ؕ وَكَانَ وَعۡدًا مَّفۡعُوۡلًا‏ 

(17:5) So, when the occasion for the first of the transgressions arrived, We raised against you some of Our creatures who were full of might, and they ran over the whole of your land. This was a promise that was bound to be fulfilled.⁷

7. This refers to the terrible destruction that the Israelites suffered at the hands of the Assyrians and Babylonians. One cannot fully appreciate the historical background of this merely from the extracts that have been reproduced above from the Books of the Prophets. A brief history of the Israelites is also needed so that a student may become acquainted with all the causes and circumstances on account of which Allah removed this nation, that professed to believe in a revealed Book, from the leadership of mankind and turned it into a humiliated, condemned and backward community. 

After the death of Prophet Moses (peace be upon him) when the Israelites entered Palestine, it was inhabited by the Hittites, Amorites, Canaanites, Perizzittes, Hivites, Jebusites, the Philistines, etc. These communities had adopted the worst kind of idolatry, their supreme deity being Ayl whom they regarded as the father of gods and who was usually represented by the bull images. His consort was called Asherah from whom had descended a whole line of gods and goddesses, about 70 in number. The most powerful god among them was Baal who was regarded as the god of rain and growth and the lord of the earth and heavens. In the northern regions his consort was called Anathoth and in Palestine Ashtaroth. These two were the goddesses of love and procreation. Besides them, there was a god of death, a god of disease and famine, and a goddess of health, and thus all the worldly powers and agencies stood divided among a large number of deities. The people had ascribed such dirty and base qualities and acts to these deities that even a worst offender against morality would shun being known by them. Obviously the people who have adopted such mean deities for worship and devotion cannot remain secure from the worst kind of moral degeneration and the modern excavations have shown this conclusively. 

Child sacrifice was a common thing among them. Their places of worship had turned into brothels, where women were kept as religious prostitutes and illicit relations with them were regarded as a part of worship and devotion. 

The Israelites had clearly been told in the instructions given in the Torah that they should destroy those communities and wrest the land of Palestine from them, and that they should avoid mixing up with those people and ward off their moral and ideological weaknesses. 

But when the Israelites entered Palestine they set this guidance aside. They not only did not establish a united kingdom of their own but fell a prey to tribal parochialism. Each of their tribes was content to take a part of the captured land and become a separate and independent state. This disunity among them did not leave any of the tribes strong enough to purge its territory completely of the idolaters, and therefore they had to allow them to live side by side with them in the same land. Not only this, but there had remained in the conquered territories a number of small cities of these idolatrous communities which the Israelites had not been able to subjugate. It is this very thing which has been complained against in the extract of the Psalms reproduced above in the beginning of( E.N. 6). 

The first consequence of intermixing with those communities was that the Israelites also became idolatrous, and gradually began to adopt other moral evils also. This has been complained about in the Book of Judges as below: And the children of Israel did evil, in the sight of the Lord, and served Baalim. And they forsook the Lord God of their fathers, which brought them out of the land of Egypt, and followed other gods, the gods of the people that were round about them, and bowed themselves unto them, and provoked the Lord to anger. And they forsook the Lord, and served Baal and Ashtaroth. (Judges, 2: 11-13).

The second consequence suffered by the Israelites was that the communities whose cities they had left unconquered and the Philistines whose land they had not at all touched set up a united front against them and drove them out of a major part of Palestine by incessant attacks, so much so that they deprived them of the Holy Ark of their Lord. At last, the Israelites felt the need of establishing a united kingdom of their own under one ruler, and on their request Prophet Samuel appointed Saul as their king in 1020 B.C. (For details see (Ayats 246-248 and E.Ns. 268-270 of Surah Al-Baqarah). 

This united kingdom was ruled by three kings: Saul (1020 B.C. to 1004 B.C.), Prophet David (1004 to 965 B.C.) and Prophet Solomon (365 to 926 B.C.). These kings brought to completion the mission that had been left incomplete by the Israelites after the death of Prophet Moses (Peace be upon the all). They annexed all the territories except the Phoenician state on the northern and the Philistine state on the southern coast, which of course became tributaries. 

After the death of Prophet Solomon the Israelites again adopted the ways of the world and fought among themselves and split into two independent kingdoms, the kingdom of Israel in the northern Palestine and Jordan with Samaria as its capital, and the kingdom of Judah in the southern Palestine and Edom with Jerusalem as its capital. These kingdoms were strife ridden from the very beginning and this state of affairs persisted till the end. 

The rulers and people of the kingdom of Israel were the first to be affected grievously by the ideological and moral weaknesses of the neighboring communities. Specially, after the marriage of its ruler Ahab with the idolatrous princess Jezebel of Zidon, idolatry and other evils began to spread unchecked among the Israelites under the official patronage. Prophets Elias and Elisha tried their very best to check this deluge but the Israelites, who were rapidly degenerating, did not heed their warning. At last the wrath of Allah overtook the kingdom of Israel in the shape of the Assyrians who started subjecting Palestine to incessant attacks from 900 B.C. downward. During this period, Prophet Amos (787-747 B.C.) and then Prophet Hosea (747- 735 B.C.) rose and warned the Israelites again and again, but the wretched depraved people did not heed their warnings at all and transgressed all limits. Prophet Amos was banished by the king of Israel from the realm of Samaria and warned not to preach his mission in the country Not very long after this the wrath of Allah burst upon the kingdom of Israel and its people. The Assyrian king Sargon took Samaria in 721 B.C. and put an end to this northern kingdom. Thousands of Israelites were put to the sword and twenty seven thousand of their leading men were driven out of their homeland and scattered in the eastern districts of the Assyrian empire and replaced by settlers from other parts of the empire. When the remaining Israelites intermixed with the settlers, they also lost gradually their national and cultural identity.

The other kingdom of the Israelites, called the kingdom of Judah, which was set up in southern Palestine also began to adopt godless ways soon after the death of Prophet Solomon, though its moral degeneration took place at a slower pace than that of Israel. Therefore, it was allowed to exist for a longer period. Then, like the kingdom of Israel, it also began to be subjected to continual attacks, its cities ruined and its capital besieged, but this kingdom could not be wholly destroyed by the Assyrians, it only became a tributary. Afterwards, when in spite of the best reformatory efforts of Prophets Isaiah and Jeremiah the people of Judah did not give up idol worship and other moral evils, king Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon attacked and captured the whole of Judah in 598 B.C. including Jerusalem and took the king of Judah as prisoner. Even then the Israelites did not mend their ways and paid no heed to the warnings and guidance of Prophet Jeremiah. Instead of reforming their ways, they started making plans to change their fate by revolting against Babylon. At last in 587 B.C. Nebuchadnezzar punished them heavily by invading Judah and destroyed all its important cities. He razed Jerusalem and Solomon’s Temple to the ground and did not leave a wall of it standing in place. He drove a large part of the Israelite population out of their land and scattered them into the adjoining countries. The people who were left behind were cursed and subjected to all kinds of humiliations by the neighboring communities. 

This was the first calamity that came as a warning to the Israelites and the first chastisement that they suffered as a result therof. 

ثُمَّ رَدَدۡنَا لَـكُمُ الۡكَرَّةَ عَلَيۡهِمۡ وَاَمۡدَدۡنٰـكُمۡ بِاَمۡوَالٍ وَّبَنِيۡنَ وَجَعَلۡنٰكُمۡ اَكۡثَرَ نَفِيۡرًا‏ 

(17:6) Then We granted you an upper hand against them, and strengthened you with wealth and children, and multiplied your numbers.⁸

8. This refers to the lease of time that the Israelites (That is the people of Judah) got after their release from the captivity of Babylon. As for the people of Israel and Samaria, they did not rise again after their moral and spiritual degeneration. But among the people of Judah there still were some people who practiced the truth and invited others also to follow it. They carried on their work of invitation to the truth among the remaining Israelites in Judah and also exhorted those who had been driven out into Babylon and other lands to repent and follow the truth. At last the mercy of Allah came to their help. The downfall of Babylon started. The Persian king, Cyrus, took Babylon in 539 B.C. and in the following year issued a decree allowing the Israelites to return to and resettle in their homeland. The Israelites began to return home in caravan after caravan, and this continued for a long time. Cyrus also allowed the Israelites to rebuild the Temple of Solomon but the neighboring communities who had settled in this land resisted it. At last Darfius appointed Zerubbabel, a grandson of the last king of Judah as the governor of Judah in 522 B.C., who got the Temple rebuilt under the care of Prophet Haggai, Prophet Zechariah and Joshua. In 458 B.C. Ezra arrived in Judah along with an exiled group and the Persian king Artaxerxes made the following decree: 

And thou, Ezra, after the wisdom of thy God that is in thine hand, set magistrates and judges, which may judge all the people that are beyond the river, all such as know the laws of thy God; and teach ye them that know them not. 

And whosoever will not do the law of thy God and the law of the king let judgment be executed speedily upon him whether it be unto death, or to banishment, or to confiscation of goods, or to imprisonment. (Ezra, 7:25-26). 

Taking advantage of this decree, Ezra carried out the revival of the religion of Prophet Moses (peace be upon him). He gathered together all the righteous and good people from the Israelites and set up a strong organization. He compiled and spread the Pentateuch which contained the Torah, made arrangements for the religious education of the Israelites, enforced the law and started purging the people of moral and ideological weaknesses which they had adopted by intermixing with the other communities. He compelled the Jews to divorce the idolatrous wives they had married, and took a covenant from them that they would worship God alone and follow His law only. 

In 455 B.C. an exiled group came back to Judah under Nehemiah whom the Persian king appointed as the ruler of Jerusalem and ordered him to build the wall round the city. Thus, after 150 years the Holy city was fully restored and became the center of Jewish religion and culture, But the Israelites of northern Palestine, and Samaria did not benefit from the work of revival done by Ezra. They built a rival sanctuary on Mount Gerizim and tried to make it the religious center for the people of the Book. This caused a further, and perhaps the final, split between the Jews and the Samaritans. 

The Jews suffered a setback for a while with the fall of the Persian Empire and the conquests of Alexander the Great and the rise of the Greeks. After the death of Alexander, his kingdom was subdivided into three empires. Syria fell to the lot of the Seleucide empire, with Antioch as its capital, whose ruler Antiochus III incorporated Palestine into his dominions in 198 B.C. These Greek conquerors who were idolatrous by precept and freelance morally felt greatly ill at ease with the Jewish religion and culture. So, they began to propagate the rival Greek way of life and culture by political and economic pressure, and were able to win over a strong section of the Israelites who became their helpers. This external interference caused a split in the Jewish nation. One group among them readily adopted the Greek dress, the Greek language, the Greek way of life and the Greek sports, while the other persistently stuck to their own culture and way of life. 

In 175 B.C. when Antiochus IV (who was called Epiphanes, that is, the manifestation of God) came to the throne, he used all his power and authority to stamp out the Jewish religion and culture. He got idols installed in the Holy Temple at Jerusalem and forced the Jews to prostrate themselves before them. He strictly forbade the rite of offering the sacrifices at the altar, and commanded the Jews to offer sacrifices to idolatrous deities instead. He proposed death penalty for those who would keep the Torah in their houses, or observe the Sabbath or perform circumcision of their children. But the Jews did not yield to this coercion, and started a powerful resistance movement, known in history as the revolt of the Maccabees. Though in this struggle the sympathies of the Greeck oriented Jews were with the Greeks, and they fully cooperated with the despots of Antioch to crush the Maccabean revolt, the common Jews who still retained the religious fervor of the days of Ezra sided with the Maccabees, who were ultimately able to drive out the Greeks and establish a free religious state which remained in power till 67 B.C This state prospered and in time extended to all those territories which had once been under the control the kingdoms of Judah and Israel. It was able to annex a part of the land of the Philistines which had remained unconquered even in the days of Prophets David and Solomon (Peace be upon them). 

This is the historical background of the verse of the Quran under commentary.

اِنۡ اَحۡسَنۡتُمۡ اَحۡسَنۡتُمۡ لِاَنۡفُسِكُمۡوَاِنۡ اَسَاۡتُمۡ فَلَهَا ​ؕ فَاِذَا جَآءَ وَعۡدُ الۡاٰخِرَةِ لِيَسُـوْۤءا وُجُوۡهَكُمۡ وَلِيَدۡخُلُوا الۡمَسۡجِدَ كَمَا دَخَلُوۡهُ اَوَّلَ مَرَّةٍ وَّلِيُتَبِّرُوۡا مَا عَلَوۡا تَتۡبِيۡرًا‏ 

(17:7) Whenever you did good, it was to your own advantage; and whenever you committed evil, it was to your own disadvantage. So, when the time of the fulfilment of the second promise arrived, (We raised other enemies that would) disfigure your faces and enter the Temple (of Jerusalem) as they had entered the first time, and destroy whatever they could lay their hands on.⁹

9. The historical background of the second degeneration and its chastisement is as follows: The moral and religious fervor with which the Maccabees had started their movement gradually cooled down and was replaced by love of the world and empty external form. A split appeared among them and they themselves invited the Roman General, Pompey, to come to Palestine. Pompey turned his attention to this land in 63 B.C. By taking Jerusalem he put an end to the political freedom of the Jews. But the Roman conquerors preferred to rule their dominions through the agency of the local chiefs rather than by direct control. Therefore, a local government was set up in Palestine which eventually passed into the hand of Herod, a clever Jew, in 40 B.C. This ruler is well known as Herod the Great. He ruled over the entire Palestine and Jordan from 40 to 4 B.C. On the one hand, Herod patronized the religious leaders to please the Jews, and on the other, he propagated the Roman culture and won the goodwill of Caesar by showing his loyalty and faithfulness to the Roman Empire. During, his reign, the Jews degenerated and fell to the lowest ebb of moral and religious life. 

On the death of Herod his kingdom was subdivided into three parts. His son, Archelaus, became the ruler of Samaria, Judea and northern Edom. In A.D. 6, however, Caesar Augustus deprived him of his authority and put the state under his Roman governor, and this arrangement continued up till A.D. 41. This was precisely the time when Prophet Jesus (peace be upon him) appeared to reform the Israelites whose religious leaders opposed him tooth and nail and even tried to get him the death sentence by the Roman governor, Pontius Pilate. 

The second son of Herod, Herod Antipas, became the ruler of Galilee and Jordan in northern Palestine, and he was the person who got Prophet Yahya (John) (Peace be upon him) beheaded at the request and desire of a dancing girl. Herod’s third son, Philip, succeeded to the territories bounded on one side by river Yermuk and on the other by Mount Hermon. Philip had been much more deeply influenced by the Roman and Greek cultures than his father and brothers. Therefore the preaching of the truth could not have even so much effect in his land as it had in the other parts of Palestine. 

In A.D. 41, the Romans appointed Herod Agrippa, the grandson of Herod the Great, ruler of the territories that had once been under Herod himself. Coming into power this man did whatever he could to persecute the followers of Prophet Jesus (peace be upon him) and used all the forces at his disposal to crush the movement that was functioning under the guidance of the disciples to inculcate fear of God in the people and reform their morals. 

In order to have a correct estimate of the condition of the common Jews and their religious leaders, one should study the criticisms leveled by Prophet Jesus (peace be upon him) on them in his sermons contained in the four Gospels. Even a religious man like Prophet John (peace be upon him) was beheaded before their eyes and not a voice was raised in protest against this barbarity. Then all the religious leaders of the community unanimously demanded death sentence for Prophet Jesus (peace be upon him), and none but a few righteous men were there to mourn this depravity. Above all, when Pontius Pilate asked these depraved people, which condemned prisoner he should release, according to the custom, at Passover, Jesus or Barabbas the robber, they all cried with one voice Barabbas. This was indeed the last chance Allah gave to the Jews, and then their fate was sealed. 

Not long after this, a serious conflict started between the Jews and the Romans, which developed into an open revolt by the former between A.D. 64 and 66. Both Herod Agrippa II and the Roman procurator Floris failed to put down the rebellion. At last, the Romans crushed it by a strong military action and in A.D. 70 Titus took Jerusalem by force. About 133000 people were put to the sword. Sixty seven thousand made slaves, and thousands sent to work in the Egyptian mines and to other cities so that they could be used in amphitheaters for being torn by wild beasts or become the practice target for the sword fighters. All the tall and beautiful girls were picked out for the army of conquest and the Holy City of Jerusalem and the Temple were pulled down to the ground. After this the Jewish influence so disappeared from Palestine that the Jews could not regain power for two thousand years and the Holy Temple could never be rebuilt. Afterwards the Roman Emperor, Hadrian, restored Jerusalem but renamed it Aelia. The Jews, however, were not allowed to enter it for centuries. This was the calamity that the Jews suffered on account of their degeneration for the second time.

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Q: Can you please share the number of times Jews were punished / forced to migrate by different powers in their history of 2000 yrs as they claim?

A:

Of course. It’s important to approach this historical topic with clarity and context. The Jewish experience over the last two millennia is deeply marked by a series of displacements, expulsions, and persecutions. These events are not just historical footnotes but central to Jewish collective memory and identity.

It’s difficult to give a single, simple “number of times,” as persecution could range from localized violence to mass expulsions from entire kingdoms and countries. However, we can outline the major cycles of expulsion and forced migration that are foundational to this history.

The following timeline summarizes these major events, followed by a more detailed explanation.timeline title Major Jewish Expulsions and Forced Migrations section Classical Antiquity 70 CE : Roman Destruction of Jerusalem<br>Mass enslavement & diaspora. 135 CE : Bar Kokhba Revolt<br>Judea renamed, Jews barred from Jerusalem. section Medieval Period 1290 : Expulsion from England<br>By King Edward I. 1306-1394 : Expulsions from France<br>Multiple decrees by different kings. 1492 : Expulsion from Spain<br>Alhambra Decree after the Reconquista. 1497 : Expulsion from Portugal<br>Forced conversion policy. section Early Modern Period 1540s-1650s : Expulsions from Italian States<br>e.g., Kingdom of Naples, Papal States. 1648-1657 : Cossack Uprising (Chmielnicki)<br>Massacres in Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. 1740s-1750s : Expulsions from Russian Empire<br>Empress Elizabeth Petrovna decrees. section 19th & 20th Centuries 1881-1914 : Pogroms in Russian Empire<br>Wave of violence spurs mass emigration. 1935-1945 : The Holocaust<br>Systematic genocide across Europe. 1948-1950s : Jewish Exodus from<br>Arab countries & Iran.

Detailed Explanation of Key Events

Here is a more detailed look at the major events highlighted in the timeline.

1. The Roman Era (1st – 2nd Centuries CE)

• The Great Jewish Revolt (66-73 CE): Resulted in the destruction of the Second Temple in Jerusalem (70 CE). This was a catastrophic blow, ending the central form of Jewish worship and leading to mass casualties and enslavement.
• The Bar Kokhba Revolt (132-136 CE): After a failed rebellion, the Romans systematically depopulated Judea, renaming it “Syria Palaestina” to sever the Jewish connection to the land. Jerusalem was rebuilt as a Roman pagan city, and Jews were forbidden from entering it. This event cemented the Jewish Diaspora.

2. The Medieval Period (11th – 15th Centuries)

This era was marked by religious persecution during the Crusades and expulsions from Western Europe.

• The Crusades (1096 onwards): While marching to the Holy Land, Crusader armies often massacred Jewish communities in the Rhineland (modern Germany), giving Jews the grim choice of conversion or death.
• Expulsion from England (1290): King Edward I issued an edict expelling all Jews from the kingdom.
• Expulsions from France (1306, 1322, 1394): Jews were expelled from France multiple times, often allowed back in for financial reasons before being expelled again.
• The Spanish Inquisition and Expulsion (1492): This is one of the most significant events. Following the Reconquista, the Catholic Monarchs Ferdinand and Isabella issued the Alhambra Decree, forcing all Jews to either convert to Christianity or be expelled from Spain. Similar decrees followed in Portugal (1496) and Spanish territories in Italy. This shattered the largest and most prosperous Jewish community in Europe.

3. The Early Modern Period (16th – 18th Centuries)

• Expulsions from German States and Italian Cities: Throughout this period, Jews were repeatedly expelled from various principalities, duchies, and city-states (e.g., Vienna, 1670; numerous German states; Papal States in Italy).
• The Chmielnicki Massacres (1648-1657): A Cossack uprising in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth (modern Ukraine) led to the brutal massacre of tens of thousands of Jews, completely destroying hundreds of communities.
• The Pale of Settlement (1791-1917): In the Russian Empire, Jews were not expelled per se but were legally confined to a designated western border region called the Pale. They were forbidden from living in the interior of Russia, a form of forced containment.

4. The 19th and 20th Centuries

• Pogroms in the Russian Empire (1881-1884, 1903-1906): Waves of violent, state-sanctioned riots against Jewish communities led to mass death and destruction, triggering a massive wave of emigration (over 2 million Jews) to the United States, South Africa, and Palestine.
• The Holocaust (Shoah) (1941-1945): The systematic, state-sponsored genocide by Nazi Germany and its collaborators resulted in the murder of six million European Jews, wiping out entire centuries-old communities.
• Jewish Exodus from Arab Countries and Iran (1948 onwards): Following the establishment of the State of Israel, centuries-old Jewish communities across the Middle East and North Africa faced persecution, violence, and expulsion. Around 850,000 Jews were forced to flee from countries like Iraq, Yemen, Egypt, Libya, Morocco, and Iran.

Conclusion

Rather than a simple count, the history is better understood as a near-continuous cycle of persecution, forced migration, and resettlement over 2000 years. This experience of being a minority group repeatedly targeted for expulsion is a central pillar of Jewish historical consciousness. It explains the deep-seated Jewish yearning for a secure homeland, which culminated in the Zionist movement and the establishment of the modern State of Israel.