Jews are the only people who have been displaced from their homeland not once but 4 times.
For almost as long as the Jewish nation has existed, it has been persecuted and forced to wander from land to land: starting with slavery in Egypt, to the destruction of both temples in Jerusalem, to the Crusades, the pogroms, the Holocaust, and finally, modern day anti-Semitism.
These times of national displacement are known in Hebrew as galut, exile. The four primary periods of exile are known as “arba galuyot” (the four exiles).1
The Beginning: Egypt (1523 BCE – 1313 BCE)
The beginning of all galut, the root from which it grew and branched off, was when Jacob and his children left Canaan (as Israel was then called) because of famine and traveled to Egypt for food.2 There they settled, prospered and began to grow numerous.3 Fearing the growth of this nation, Pharaoh enslaved the children of Israel.4 After a period of 210 years, G‑d sent salvation through His servant Moses, smiting the Egyptians with the ten plagues.5 The Jewish people were redeemed and started their 40-year journey in the desert on their way back home to the Land of Israel.
The Egyptian exile served as the forerunner, and the prototype, for the four exiles that the Jewish people were later to endure.6 7
The Four Exiles
The prophet Daniel had a vision that subtly hints to the four exiles of the Jewish nation:
I saw in my vision by night...four great beasts…The first was like a lion...and behold, another beast, a second one, similar to a bear…Afterwards I beheld, and there was another, similar to a leopard…After that, as I looked on in the night vision, there was a fourth beast—fearsome, dreadful and very powerful.8
In Daniel's prophecy, each creature symbolizes an exile that the Jewish people were to undergo. The first was Babylon, the second Media/Persia, the third Greece, and finally Edom, commonly identified as Rome.9