The Babylonian Exile (586–538) marks an epochal dividing point in Old Testament history, standing between what were subsequently to be designated the pre-exilic and post-exilic eras. The Judahite community in Babylonia was, on the whole, more Yahwist in religion than ever, following the Mosaic Law, emphasizing and redefining such distinctive elements as circumcision and the sabbath and stressing personal and congregational prayer—the beginnings of synagogal worship. It is possible that they also reached an understanding of historical events (like that taught by the great pre-exilic and exilic prophets)—as the chastening acts of a universal God acting in history through Nebuchadrezzar and other conquerors. To this period is also ascribed the beginning of the compilation of significant portions of the Old Testament and of the organizing view behind it. In any event, it was from this community that the leadership and the cadres for the resurrection of the Judahite nation and faith were to come when Cyrus the Great (labelled “the Lord’s anointed” in Deutero-Isaiah) conquered Babylon and made it possible for them to return (538). A contingent of about 50,000 persons, including about 4,000 priests and 7,000 slaves, returned under Sheshbazzar, a prince of Judah.

The first great aim was the rebuilding of the Temple as the centre of worship and thus also of national existence; this was completed in 515 under the administration of Zerubbabel and became the place of uninterrupted sacrificial worship for the next 350 years. The next task was to rebuild the walls of Jerusalem, which was undertaken by Nehemiah, a Babylonian Jew and court butler who was appointed governor of Judah and arrived in 444. Nehemiah also began religious reforms, emphasizing tithing, observance of the sabbath, and the prohibition against intermarriage with “foreign” women. This reform was carried through systematically and zealously by Ezra, a priest and scribe who came from Babylon about 400 bce, called the people together, and read them the “book of the law of Moses” to bring them back to the strict and proper observance maintained in Babylon: circumcision, sabbath observance, keeping the feasts, and, to seal it all, avoiding intermarriage. (In this presentation, modern critical scholarship is being followed, placing Nehemiah before Ezra instead of the traditional sequence, which reverses the positions.) Haggai, Zechariah, and Malachi are the prophets of this restoration period. Ezra and Nehemiah are its narrators.

It was in this period that enmity between the Jews, or Judaeans, as they came to be called, and the Samaritans, a term applied to the inhabitants of the former northern kingdom (Israel), was exacerbated. It has been surmised that this goes back to the old political rivalry between Israel and Judah or even further back to the conflict between the tribes of Joseph and Judah. Scholars ascribe the exacerbation of enmity in the restoration period variously to the Samaritans’ being excluded from participating in the rebuilding of the Temple; to Nehemiah’s rebuilding of the walls of Jerusalem (regarded as a threatening act by the Samaritan authorities); or to the proscriptions of intermarriage by Ezra. The animus of the Jews against the Samaritans is frequently expressed in the biblical books dealing with the restoration (expressions perhaps engendered by later events), but the attitude of the Samaritans and a good deal else about them is not evident. At some time they became a distinct religious community, with a temple of their own on Mt. Gerizim and a Scripture that was limited solely to the Pentateuch, excluding the Prophets and Writings.

Old Testament history proper ends with the events described in the books of Ezra and Nehemiah. The books of Chronicles give all the preceding history, from Adam to the Babylonian sack of Jerusalem and the exile. The last two verses of the Second Book of the Chronicles are repeated in the first two verses of Ezra: God inspires Cyrus to send the Jews back to Jerusalem to rebuild the Temple. The Persian period of Jewish history ended with the conquest of Alexander the Great in 323 bce to begin the Hellenistic era, in which some of the biblical (including apocryphal or deuterocanonical) writings were created (for Hellenistic Judaism, see Judaism).