HISTORY OF ISRAEL LIBRARY

The History of Ezra and of the Hagiocracy in Israel To the time of Christ.

BOOK 1
THE HAGIOCRACY

INTRODUCTION. 

I.

ISRAEL DURING THE CAPTIVITY.

1.

The Age and its Sufferings.

THE destruction of Jerusalem by the Chaldeans, and the disasters which followed it, proved the complete ruin of everything which had hitherto been the pride and glory, the refuge and defence, of the people of Israel. There remained only the ultimate foundation of the eternal sanctity which had now been established and developed upon earth through the history of a thousand years. This was indestructible. Every object outwardly sacred, every means of defence, and every weapon of what, though small, was still, nevertheless, a community, was shattered; the earthly kingdom of Israel down to its last visible remains was utterly destroyed, and the people, as a people, annihilated. And if, strictly speaking, it was impossible for any actual community to survive the infinite anguish and the unutterable grief of this age, the result was that its sufferings pressed with all the heavier gloom on the souls of the scattered survivors of the nation.

Of their severity, indeed, it is hardly possible to form a sufficiently vivid conception. As long as the Chaldean supremacy in Asia remained unshaken, there was no hope of any mitigation of the material punishment which hung over Israel;  just as in later times it was not until the Persian empire had been destroyed by Alexander that the Greeks who had been carried away by the Persian kings could be released, and the rich Grecian booty restored. Nebuchadrezzar, however, the all-powerful sovereign of the age, and the oppressor of Israel, was still in the full vigour of his maturity at the time of the destruction of Jerusalem, and only eighteen or nineteen out of the forty-three years of his reign had as yet expired. Moreover, he continued to rule with the same energy up to the end of his long reign; for though we now possess but little detailed information concerning its latter years, the period in question, yet we may infer with confidence that the warlike son of Nabopolassar remained the terror of the nations, at any rate in Asia, until his death, and, in particular, that he maintained in full force his severe treatment of Israel. It is true that his successors' showed far less military ability; but when the Chaldean empire had prescribed law to a number of nations for more than half a century, the state of things thus established would continue to exist by its own strength even after the death of Nebuchadrezzar; a fact of which we have clear evidence with reference to the position of the people of Israel.

Nor could Egypt, the great rival power of the age, be expected to afford any real assistance or relief. It is true that from the eighth century, and even earlier, great numbers of individuals were driven from Israel to Egypt by a great variety of causes. Some went as fugitives, some as prisoners, some as settlers, either separately or in large masses, so that in some towns there certainly arose a numerous and permanent population of Israelites. Now, since there are traditions, though we can no longer investigate them at first hand, that Nebuchadrezzar, so far from ever concluding peace with Egypt, conducted an expedition against it which penetrated far into Africa, it might have been expected that the Egyptian sovereigns would have assisted a people whose territory had been wrested from them by these same Chaldeans, and of whom so many representatives, some of them distinguished men, had in recent times sought refuge and hospitality among themselves. But Israel could not hope for any permanent and serious aid from Egypt, for the latter was inspired by too constant a jealousy of the Chaldean empire; and when it had lost all its military posts on the mainland of Asia, the aims of its ambition were concentrated upon the rich maritime cities of Phoenicia, which it strove to subdue; though Nebuchadrezzar himself had directed against them his whole power, without obtaining any sufficiently satisfactory result.

Still less did any other kingdom, large or small, trouble itself about the misery of Israel. Numerous remnants of the people must have been scattered through many other countries ever since the glory of the nation, once so great, began to decline. A prosperous people spreads by its prosperity, its importance, its success, its industry, and commerce. An unfortunate people by its very misfortunes is scattered to all the winds;  and the ungodly race had always been threatened with this latter fate by the Prophets. The 'Exile' in this wider sense begins as early as the tenth and ninth centuries, long before the destruction of the kingdom of the Ten Tribes; for great numbers were made prisoners of war and subsequently for the most part sold as slaves, and many who sank through internal commotions, took to more or less voluntary flight. The ancient people, however, long retained a rooted antipathy to emigration or banishment to foreign lands; and this latter cause must consequently have been far less active than the former in early times. But since the dissolution of the Israelite nationality was mainly the work of the Assyrians and Chaldeans, in the centuries during which it was in progress, most of the Israelites who had not been compelled to settle in the East, and who could not find a resting-place in Egypt, resorted to the remaining countries of the Mediterranean or others which were still free. In particular the Coasts of the Sea, i.e. the numerous maritime districts and islands of the Mediterranean, are now (as in the eighth century) frequently mentioned as a residence of the Dispersion. The extensive trade of the neighbouring Phoenicians had long been directed to these countries, which now appear for the first time in the history of Israel, and many who were not sold as slaves followed the example of the Phoenicians, and went thither of their own free will. Others spread more or less to the north-west, and also to the south in the remote tracts of Arabia. But we are not informed of any nation having shown special sympathy for the fate of Israel, which had now sunk to its lowest, and seemed to be utterly destroyed.

The sufferings of the dispersion, therefore, though differing in the different countries in which, more or less against their will, the Judeans were compelled to live, were everywhere very severe. For some centuries past individual Israelites had been obliged, by a necessity which constantly increased in force, to accustom themselves both to the idea and the reality of compulsory residence among foreigners (the so-called Galuth or Golah); but now the whole nation, with no further exceptions, had to learn to submit patiently to this most bitter fate. Those who were obliged to settle in foreign countries under the orders of the Chaldeans, generally constituted in each case (so far as we can learn) a small community confined to the spot assigned to it. They were required to pay for their existence in heavy services and tributes, but in other respects they were allowed free intercourse with each other. The many thousands who were banished with King Jehoiachin to the districts of the East, eleven years before the destruction of Jerusalem, as the real flower of the people, enjoyed at first a tolerable degree of freedom, as we see from the book of their fellow-exile Ezekiel, and from that of Jeremiah. Moreover, they clearly established a certain unity and a somewhat more compact community amongst all the scattered Judeans, but specially amongst themselves; and from the very fact that the noblest and most distinguished of the nation were of their number, they enjoyed the highest reputation. But the disturbances which broke out among them even before the destruction of Jerusalem, though only of a suppressed and isolated character, together with the destruction itself and the increase of the exiles by so large an additional number, inevitably tended to limit their freedom still further and increase the sufferings of them all. Even Ezekiel's voice is hushed, henceforth, for gradually lengthening periods. But the closest watch was kept over the heads of the people, around whom all the better elements of the nation now strove to collect again in a compact body. Those of high-priestly, noble, or royal origin were treated with the utmost indignity; and the worst insults were heaped on King Jehoiachin, who had been carried away as a prisoner when so young, and on whom all the nobler minds, wherever scattered, still depended as on the very breath of their own life. But those who were not fortunate enough to live under Chaldean supervision languished by crowds in the deepest want in the cities, or wandered in still greater necessity through the deserts. Amid the ruins of the dismantled Jerusalem a Chaldean garrison was doubtless placed, under the protection of fortifications, so as to make it impossible for any Judean to approach even within a great distance of the forbidden holy city. Hence, while this stern prohibition prevented any of them from even visiting the ruins of the ancient sanctuary, and there perhaps making an offering on an altar hurriedly raised, they were all compelled amid their heathen masters to habituate themselves to many things in the way of food and custom from which they had hitherto shrunk with the greatest horror as utterly unclean, but from which they were no longer able to find a satisfactory escape in any direction.

But though the suffering from this twofold source was severe enough, especially to all more tender minds, it was increased by the bitter contempt which fell on all who were too constant to approve and imitate every heathen practice at once. The scorn of the most various heathen nations was drawn upon the whole people from the very fact of their having been conquered and profoundly humiliated; but the closeness of the intercourse with the heathens which they now found was always inevitable, must have sharpened the sting of this contempt a thousand-fold for those who were most immediately exposed to it. Individuals, therefore, had but two alternatives before them. On the one hand, they must conform more and more to the practices of the victorious heathens—a course to which there were now inducements and temptations so numerous and powerful that in every country (as we know from many indications) numbers were actually content to sink into heathenism. On the other, they must resist all these thousand-fold allurements yet more decisively and boldly, in which case they had nothing to expect but still more bitter scorn, rising even to fierce persecution which did not stop short of extreme indignities and the sharpest chastisement or even of death. Thus we have certain knowledge that no small number must have drained the cup of suffering to the dregs. Some endured confinement in gloomy holes, insults of the most degrading nature, and death itself; while all who were true to their religion, without exception, had constantly to bear, or at least to dread, the bitterest contumely and derision. We can no longer trace the historical details, but we are safe in drawing the general conclusion that the sufferings of the exile were thus rendered continually greater and heavier until at last universal despair may well have seemed ready to overpower the whole people, so far as, represented by its nobler members, it still survived in the dispersion.

It is true that they were in many respects lightened by the very continuance of the new state of things. No prohibition was laid on those who desired quietly to cultivate the land, or to pursue any other vocation within the limits assigned to them, and in many cases this laborious toil bore the most blessed fruit even in the midst of silent misery. Again, the heavy weight of a despotic will often breaks down of itself, as time goes on, at many points; and since those who have no real fatherland are glad to earn their living by submissive intercourse with the settled inhabitants, by trading, and by diligently drawing together the largest possible quantity of movable property, the necessary permission seems to have been granted at an early period to many of the more skilful and active. Indeed, the direction of their energies to this mode of gaining their living was henceforth developed among the Judeans resident in foreign countries, and to this extent Israel was fain to step into the place of that very Canaan which it had formerly so deeply despised. Moreover the skill, the penetration, and surely the pious life also of many of the members of this singular people, must gradually have gained the recognition even of the sovereigns of the time. There were many individual Judeans, it would seem, even at an early stage of the exile, who were favourites at court, and were employed on royal commissions, like Nehemiah at a later period. The termination of the exile itself gives the clearest general proof of these positions; for we shall see here­after how great an amount of portable property many of the exiles were able to bring together at a moment's notice on that occasion. But as long as the general decrees of the king concerning Israel were unrepealed, all these exceptions could avail little, since even the most distinguished and the most prosperous were constantly exposed to the blows of every changing caprice of their masters, and indeed had more to fear from them than others. The sufferings of the people, then, remained, on the whole, unchanged.

2.

The Age and its Hopes.

But yet, even while whirled through the eddies of such deep despair, the scattered members of this community, which was destroyed only in outward appearance, were never without a protecting rock of sure salvation, and from the darkest hours of that long night the rays of an eternal hope often flashed forth with all the greater brightness. If this great destruction and dispersion, to which external appearances would point as the final extinction of a people and a community of Israel, had really coincided with the completion of that mysterious spiritual fabric which had so long been woven on this earthly loom, and whose thread could only be broken when it was completed, no genuine rescue from the depth of national misery would have been possible; and every hope directed to that object must have remained as fruitless in result as it was idle in conception, and could only have served to embitter still further the sufferings of the age. But the texture of the great divine work which (as already explained) had now been centred in Israel for a thousand years, had only become more and more tangled during the last centuries, without ever seeing itself completed. Its inner genius, therefore, had already been directed with increasing force towards extricating itself from these embarrassments, and had gained a clear perception of the manner in which the knots must be untied and the commencement of a genuine progress secured. The destruction of the kingdom of Israel, as constituted and developed in Canaan, and the total dispersion of the people, which through the whole period of the monarchy had wandered further and further from its higher calling, had for centuries been proclaimed by the true prophets, with ever-increasing severity, as a necessity before God; but the same seers had always foretold, at the same time, that Israel was only to be purified by this divine chastisement in order that the great and eternal work of God, starting from a fresh and pure commencement, might be the more sure of being completed in it. The first or threatening half of these prophecies was now fully realised; and even if the sufferers of the time as yet bore with them no distinct consciousness of the nature or spirit of the divine work which had now been broken off in an unfinished state, at least the light of the second branch of the prediction, giving assurance of its consummation, must have shone before them; and the certainty of the fulfilment of the first would guarantee that of the second.

And so this ever progressive work of God itself, since it was still far from its completion, could not suffer the scattered members of the nation to rest. They themselves were not willing to be estranged from it; and in the midst of the deep gloom of the age it flashed upon their souls with fresh glory the brightest visions of its own accomplishment, which should surely come. It is true that the desolation of this period echoes to the lament, amongst a thousand others, over the decay of prophetic activity and the cessation of divine teaching; but in general nothing further is meant by this than the heavy blow which the powers of prophecy and instruction, in common with all other national developments, must certainly have felt with great violence. The host prophets and teachers which had often swept through the kingdom with such tumultuous vehemence in the last days of Jerusalem, had suddenly vanished; and the prophetic activity was entirely shut out from the field in which it had hitherto worked with the greatest force, viz. the complete publicity of popular life. The circumstances of the time were such that the fundamental power of the ancient community could only rise under the heaviest burdens and the deepest sorrow of heart. Nevertheless it did rise once more; and even when the people of Jahveh, and with them every oracle and lesson from their God, seemed to have perished from off the earth, its deep spring, incapable of exhaustion, never quite ceased to flow, but rather rose up with a strength proportioned to the pressure which it had to resist. Moreover, at a time when all public discourse and instruction had become impracticable, the high perfection which had long been reached (as has been frequently explained) by the peculiar genius of the literature of Israel, came to the assistance of the impulse of prophetic communication; and, indeed, literature had never before possessed such profound significance for Israel, or rendered such immediate service, as at this juncture.

In the midst, then, of the heavy oppression and the severe chastening of these decades, the fundamental power of the ancient community rose once more with increased force and purity by its own inextinguishable genius, and became necessarily the true and all-efficient instrument of that spiritual renovation and inner conversion without which the community could never have rallied from its extreme desolation and distress and risen to the beginning of a useful external life. Here, therefore, we meet with the most striking repetition of that phenomenon which we have so often been enabled to recognise in the course of this history. At every great crisis of the history of Israel it was prophecy, as the original and fundamental power of the community, which had brought on the decisive moment, and, whether quite alone or in alliance with some other dominant power, had given beforehand the new direction to affairs. Whenever the result had been healthy, one or more great prophets had invariably been at work, and had also left traces of their spirit in immortal writings or in renowned successors; and where the result had been purest and most salutary, there too in every instance the prophetic spirit at work had been purest and most divine. This is also the case with the last great phase. Sighing, indeed, most deeply under the darkness and the burdens of the day, the prophetic power is still the first to wake into renewed activity the spirit which the times required, and it was this which, with inexhaustible energy, conducted its work through every stage, in spite of every oppression, until the new order of things issued victoriously front the dreadful struggle. This is the last occasion on which the ancient community offers the spectacle of the true religion, still pure and free from all foreign admixture, exerting its utmost possible strength in the effort to reach its goal; and it would be strange if the Old Testament itself did not still contain the most significant and distinctive monuments of the exalted spectacle, since this victory and transition to the last great phase must be placed among the most important and permanently instructive passages of Old Testament history. Such monuments do, however, as a fact exist in sufficient number and clearness, although it is not always easy to recognise them at first sight.

For the first ten or twelve, perhaps, of these years of disaster, the hoary prophet Jeremiah, who has been previously described, still survived from the midst of the preceding period, with his stern sentence on all the past and present, with his deep sorrow, with his lofty confidence as he looked upon Israel's eternal destiny and on the promise of a new covenant, with his unwearied zeal even under the heaviest blows of that heavy time, and his wise counsels under the grave difficulties of the new situation. We have already seen how his constant and impartial care embraced both near and distant members of the community, and how he endeavoured to warn them against the snares of heathenism, which were now far more dangerous than before; but his prudence was too great, and his insight into the future too penetrating, to permit him ever to recommend to the existing generation any other course than quiet resignation to the divine destiny and tranquil obedience to the Chaldean supremacy. This truth had long taken the shape in his mind of a settled anticipation that the exile of Israel would last seventy years—that is, a complete generation. It was, then, only to a distant future, and to an Israel thoroughly re­generated by the fiery chastisement of long years of suffering, that this last of the great prophets looked for salvation. Yet, even when the fate of the moment was the most terrible, he clung with the firmest trust to the expectation of this future salvation, and the completion of the divine work which had been begun in Israel; and as a citizen of his day he brought all the actions and decisions of his life, which, coming from him, readily assumed a higher or prophetic significance, into entire accordance with this faith. Thus by the example of his own conduct and the power of his tranquil confidence, he conducted the whole better consciousness of the nation, with the most salutary results, from the former period to the new one, and in extreme old age, though placed between two very different epochs, continued to be a stay and exemplar of Israel even in the second. Yet that distant future to which he looked forward in spirit with such yearning love, owed still more to his profound declaration that an entirely new covenant must be entered into, in which the divine commands must no longer be engraved, as in the ancient narrative, on simple wood or stone, and stand over against mankind as an instrument of external compulsion, but must be written on the very heart of man, redeemed from the power of sins which had waxed strong in the course of history, and must ever work from the free impulse of the heart itself. This brief utterance draws to a focus at once the highest result of all Israel's previous history, and the highest problem to be solved by the great future which was now unfolding itself. Henceforth all the profounder minds of the community make their deepest aspirations and most decisive objects and efforts depend upon it; and, in its glorious truth, with a claim which cannot be escaped, it maintains itself in living power through every subsequent age, until at the end of this whole epoch it is at length fulfilled.

Ezekiel, the younger contemporary and successor of Jeremiah, is a complete example of a prophet of the captivity. Since be had already begun his prophetic ministry among the exiles seven years before the destruction of Jerusalem, he experienced most acutely, even in this his dearest and holiest occupation, the full pressure of the burden of those days which was ever growing more intolerable; and he felt his action more and more cramped and clouded by the rising unbelief and increasing despair of the majority of his fellow-exiles, as well as by the fearful issue of public affairs, and even by domestic affliction. He is, moreover, far from hurrying the scattered members of his nation into any vain expectation as to the present or any insurrection against the Chaldeans. But the glorious and eternal hope of Israel ever burns in his soul with the same brightness, and after each disturbance and interruption in his prophetic activity he turns to it again with yet greater zeal, and finds means enough to cherish and to heighten the glow of the true fire in the hearts of others too, if no longer by public discourse, at all events by private communication and pre-eminently by his writings. And although in the deepest and most decisive truths he only follows his great predecessor Jeremiah, there is yet a great deal about him which strikes us with the most original force and clearness. As the most indefatigable prophet of the first and severest half of the exile he occupies a unique position in the development of this age of transition. By the very fact of his first rising as a prophet during the exile, he fitted himself in the best possible manner to become a true labourer in the thorny field of prophetic activity for the whole of this new period. In fact, although he shows less originality and depth than Jeremiah, yet there is more even tranquillity and assiduity both in his literary method and artistic arrangement and (as far as it falls within our knowledge) his life also. Seven years had already elapsed since the commencement of his prophetic activity when Jerusalem was completely destroyed, and while from that time his fate required more and more patient endurance, it was with the greater calm (though his zeal burned highest in the deepest calm) that his contemplative spirit directed itself to the task of setting forth the manner in which the future Israel, purified and ennobled, should rise again with genuine life and undergo a new development. Even under the iron heel of the Chaldean supremacy he already foresaw with lofty assurance the final victory of the future Jerusalem. While the Temple with the holy city and all the kingdom lay in ruins, this prophet strove to delineate with the utmost vividness and down to each detail the true type of everything which was to be restored again at the right time, and so to represent by anticipation the perfected state of the kingdom of God which should surely come, that nothing more than the actual hand should be needed to give it a corresponding existence in reality at the favourable moment.

It was more than thirteen years after the destruction of Jerusalem when he sketched this prophetic design for the future kingdom and sanctuary, and exercised his mind, with most glowing zeal, on that which his hand yearned soon to carry into active execution; and how easily does the hand carry out at the auspicious hour what the spirit has thus realised in its inmost consciousness and planned with celestial clearness even to the details! Two years later (B.C. 570) Ezekiel wrote down the last lines of his Book which we possess from his hand. We have no further trust­worthy knowledge of his later life, and he may have succumbed soon afterwards to the severity of the times. It is true that from the Middle Ages downwards a sepulchre and sanctuary, still much visited, have been pointed out as his in southern Babylonia in the neighbourhood of Kufa; but the very name of the sanctuary makes it scarcely possible to regard it as his. Nor again is the late tradition any more credible, that he was one of those who returned from the captivity. His great work must have attracted a number of readers by the very novelty and extraordinary splendour of its style of composition, but it seems never to have been so widely circulated and so generally read in those times as the work of Jeremiah. Nevertheless it was of great value in fanning the sacred flame during these days of coldness at least in many quarters, and in keeping the fire on the altar of the eternal sanctuary bright, when it had already vanished completely from the eye of sense, and it is the most important monument we now possess of the first half of the period of exile.

That many other prophets were engaged in similar labours throughout the wide extent of the dispersion we may consider certain. In the first place, the hope of a future restoration of the higher right, and of the fresh victory of Israel over the heathen nations, was upheld in his own neighbourhood by the prophet who worked up a fragment of the older prophet Obadiah against Edom. This was probably only a short time after the destruction of Jerusalem, when the righteous indignation aroused by the unworthy conduct of Edom and other neighbouring peoples at the time of its fall was still fresh and burning.

Fragments of the larger work of another prophet no longer known to us by name have been incorporated and preserved in a prophetic composition which is itself, perhaps, only one or two decades later. These fragments display a wonderful depth of feeling and thought, and although here too it is only the cruel and treacherous brother-nation of Edom which appears as the immediate object as well as the type of the divine retribution which might be confidently expected, yet the prophet's soul is already most genuinely absorbed in the contemplation of the great and continued impenitence of Israel itself, partly careless, partly stubborn, as the real cause of the continuance of the great sufferings of the people. Remembering all the long past and the eternal hope of the community of the true God, he strives with all his power once more to raise himself, and with himself all the true members of that community, out of the despair of the dark present to joyous trust in the divine grace. It seems then that this prophet wrote somewhat later, when Jerusalem had already lain in ruins for several decades, but while the full severity of the sufferings of the exile still continued—perhaps about the middle of the whole period. We see the people waiting long in the depths of sorrow, and sighing gloomily for deliverance; but the reason why that deliverance never came, and why, in fact, it never could come in the sense in which these malcontents desired and expected it, is declared by the prophet with the most striking truth.

In the simple song, again, the inextinguishable hopes and all the better aspirations of the first period of the exile, as well as its deep grief, found utterance—a fact of which we still possess the most moving evidence in certain psalms. The bitter scorn entertained towards the unrighteous rulers of the time rises at an early period with genuine prophetic severity in many of the songs sung in the midst of the heathen. Yet none of the prophetic truths which strove to penetrate the age and raise it from its consuming sorrow to a glorified hope, could really sink deep into the heart of the masses and drop most soothing balm upon its fresh wounds, until they consented to clothe themselves in the magic garb of gentle elegy, and, in lines (verses) worthy to live ou every tongue, imperceptibly raised the legitimate sorrow of every member of the nation to loftier comfort and to kindred prayer. This is the significance of the popular elegies which beyond doubt were composed in great numbers during these years, and of which a remarkable and instructive example is preserved in the small Book of Lamentations which we still possess. The five songs which compose this book evidently constitute a higher unity, in which the poet sets forth all the painful experiences of the people, and all their real causes for mourning, as well as all the sufferings which were yet more keenly felt by individuals; but together with them he exhibits all those higher truths which alone could bring real comfort in such great misery, real elevation in such great depression. The fate of Zion, that is of the true community, is so unspeakably heavy, that it can even appeal to the heathen for sympathy; but at the next moment the deep consciousness of its higher destiny rises up anew against the heathen in all the more irresistible strength. The sufferings of the whole community, and still more of each individual, are bitter and humiliating indeed; but the sharpest sting is the consciousness, on the part of the nation, of having merited them all by its own great sins, and their only alleviation lies in the sincere confession of its own guilt, and in raising itself anew to the divine grace which is for ever the same. To this confession, and to the hope which rests on this grace, the cycle of songs leads imperceptibly on, and thus it formed the most beautiful minor book of songs to which the art of the time could give utterance, and which the genuine spirit of the true religion was then able to produce. We must not place the composition of these songs too long after the destruction of Jerusalem, for they reproduce with the greatest vividness many very special features of that event; but numerous indications point with equal distinctness to a time at which the first pang had already passed away, and the new circumstances, with their crushing weight, had already begun to establish themselves firmly; nor do such elegies, with their melting softness and their transitions to the higher doctrine, find a fitting place until the first wild burst of grief has subsided. There is no evidence whatever of their having been probably composed in Babylon, but on the other hand there are distinct marks which point to Egypt as the place of their origin. The fact that Jeremiah himself was banished in his extreme old age to Egypt might warrant us in regarding him as the author of the songs, especially as this little book is early found attached to his larger work; a at any rate, if the songs are not his, they are at least the work of one of his disciples who must have been himself a native of Jerusalem.

Again, the hope of Israel, which in the course of centuries had acquired such strength, is not relinquished even in the historical composition of these gloomy days. We see this very clearly in the present canonical books of Kings, which were written about the middle of the exile. At that time there was no prospect as yet of a speedy deliverance of Israel; for although King Jehoiachin, for whose fate the whole people felt such warm and special sympathy, was at last released from prison on the death of Nabuchadrezzar (560 B.C.) by his successor, Evil­Merodach, and even brought to the royal court with special marks of favour, yet, strictly speaking, it was only a former personal injury that was rectified by this conduct on the part of the new king. Special kindness in the treatment of a man who had lost his crown nearly forty years before had no bearing on the fate of the nation; besides, when this historical work was written he had already died—no doubt during the two years' reign of this Babylonian monarch. In spite of all this the unknown historian dwelt with the utmost enthusiasm on the memory of the kingdom of Israel, and took special delight in bringing the Messianic hopes into prominence, though only when he found them in older documents. Just at the time, therefore, when these hopes in their narrow and literal sense must have seemed to have lost all foundation and support in external history, so far as they referred to the confident expectation of a successor of David who should complete the destinies of Israel, the work of this historian shows how far they were from having actually disappeared.

II.

ISRAEL AMONG THE HEATHEN.