"By the waters of Babylon sat" the Jews whom Nebuchadnezzar had carried from their homes. They were men of distinction, the first in rank and culture, and the priests: it was the intellectual nucleus of the people that had been transplanted to Babylonia. The danger that this nucleus, in despair of the protection of their own god, should turn to the gods of the conquerors as being more mighty, was not great. Jehovah was no longer merely the tribal God of Israel, who had been unable to protect his tribe against all other nations: the prophets had announced him as the Almighty God of the world, who ruled over the kingdoms of the earth, who would raise up and throw down at his pleasure, who exercises justice. Moreover, the captives possessed in the Book of the Law (Deuteronomy) a plain rule of life, which had been wanting to the Israelites when transplanted by the Assyrian kings. Among them were earnest spirits and mighty hearts, who preserved their courage and hope unbroken. Opportunities for these qualities were not wanting in their dealings with their countrymen, for the exiles in their differences with each other repaired much more readily to their own countrymen who were skilled in the law, than to the magistrates of the Babylonians. Among those who were first carried away in the year 597 B.C. (p. 332), was the priest Ezekiel, who had his dwelling on the Chaboras, in Mesopotamia. The rulers often came to consult Ezekiel, and the elders gathered in his house, "that he might ask Jehovah for them."[741] His announcements are strongly coloured by the priestly point of view on which he takes his stand. He maintains strictly the rubrics and customs of worship, the correct offering of sacrifice. It is a comfort to him in his sorrow to imagine, in minute detail, how the temple is to be restored with all its buildings, the land divided among the tribes, what was to be allotted to the priests, and what duties would devolve upon them, if Jehovah should restore Israel again out of the captivity.[742] Hence with the firmer conviction could Ezekiel say to his people, that they were a people of "an impudent face and hardened heart,"[743] but that Jehovah had no pleasure in the death of the evil-doer, but only in his conversion and improvement;[744] that Jehovah would assemble them out of the lands into which they were scattered. "I will bring you," so Jehovah speaks in Ezekiel, "into the wilderness of the nations; and there will I plead with you face to face, as I pleaded with your fathers in the wilderness of the land of Egypt. I will cause you to pass under the rod, and I will bring you into the bond of the covenant. And I will purge out from among you the rebels and them that transgress against me. They shall not return to Israel. I will sprinkle pure water over you that ye may be clean. I will put a new heart and a new spirit within you, and will take the stony heart out of your flesh, and give you a heart of flesh out of my spirit, that ye may walk in my statutes and keep my ordinances. Then shall ye loathe yourselves for the evils which ye have committed in all your abominations; and the ruins of the cities shall be built up and inhabited, and the wilderness shall be as the garden of Eden. Israel and Judah shall no more be two nations; they shall both be my people, and I will be their God, and my servant David shall be king over them, their only shepherd. I will conclude with them an eternal covenant of peace, and establish them in the land wherein their fathers dwelt, and multiply them, and let my sanctuary and my dwelling be for ever among them."
Prophecies uttered with such conviction and certainty, supported and strengthened the hope of the people in the coming restoration of the kingdom. It was possible by the help of Jehovah. It might be expected all the sooner, the more zealously and heartily the exiles worshipped Jehovah. The more melancholy the present state of affairs, the greater was the yearning with which the eye was directed upwards. Under their foreign rulers the Jews became accustomed more and more to think of Jehovah as the one and only king of Judah who would rescue his faithful people out of their slavery in Babylon, even as he had once led them forth with a strong hand and an outstretched arm out of Egypt. In the strange land and among strangers, where the Jews were kept together by nothing more than their common religion, where besides their religion nothing was left to them, adherence to the old faith struck deeper roots, and the increasing strength of religious conviction saved the nationality.
FOOTNOTES:
[679] Herod. 2, 178.
[680] Joseph. "c. Apion." 1, 19.
[681] Alcæi fragm. 35, ed. Bergk.
[682] Tassie, "Catalogue Raisonné," p. 64; Raspe, "Planches," 11, 653.
[683] Cp. Strabo, p. 739.
[684] Vol. I. p. 300. Herod. 1, 185. Arrian, "Anab." 7, 21. Polybius, 9, 43. Strabo, p. 754. Ammian. Marcell. 23, 6. Ptolem. 5, 20.
[685] Vol. I. p. 301. Abyden. fragm. 8, 9, ed. Müller. The position of the βασίλειος ποταμός is fixed by Ptolemy, 5, 17. That Nebuchadnezzar caused the Nahr Malka to be excavated follows from the words of Abydenus in Eusebius ("Chron." I. p. 37, ed. Schöne): Armacalen fluvium ex Arazane (Euphrate) derivavit: cp. "Præp. Evang." 9, 41. Armacale must obviously be the same name as Nahr Malka. Cp. Plin. "Hist. Nat." 6, 26 (30). On the position of the Nahr Malka, Xen. "Anab." 2-4. Ammian. Marcell. 26, 6; and that it was navigable, Herod. 1, 193.