=Effect of Environment Upon Judah"s History.= Compared with the history of the northern kingdom, that of the southern, for the first two centuries following the division of the empire, was petty and insignificant. Judah was shut in by its natural barriers from contact with the larger life that surged up and down the coast plains and through the broad valleys of Northern Israel. While it survived, the northern kingdom protected it largely from Aramean and a.s.syrian invasions, so that during this period there were few great crises to call forth statesmen and prophets. Jerusalem, because of its size and prestige, completely overshadowed the other cities of Judah, so that most of the important events in the history of the southern kingdom took place in or near the capital. The natural unity of this little kingdom also freed it from the diverse and disintegrating influences that made Northern Israel"s history one of civil war and bloodshed.
The result was that until Jerusalem"s destruction in 586 B.C. the family of David, practically without interruption, continued to sit on the throne of Judah.
=Shishak"s Invasion.= In 945 B.C. the throne of Egypt was seized by a Libyan mercenary by the name of Sheshonk, known to the biblical writers as Shishak. He set to work at once to restore the ancient glories of the empire. To this end he invaded Palestine and Syria and, according to the records which he has inscribed on the great temple at Thebes,^{(116)} he succeeded in capturing one hundred and fifty-six cities and districts. The cities lying along the Philistine Plain, including Socho, Ajalon, and Beth-horon, Gibeon in the north and Sharuhen and Arad in the south were among those captured. According to the biblical record Rehoboam stripped the temple of its wealth in order to pay tribute to this foreign conqueror.
=War Between the Two Kingdoms.= As soon as the Egyptian forces were withdrawn, Northern Israel, by virtue of its greater resources, first recovered its strength and fortified the town of Ramah, five miles north of Jerusalem. Ramah stood on a prominent hill two thousand six hundred feet high, near the intersection of the main highways running north, south, east, and west. From this fortress it was possible to cut off all commercial relations between Judah and the north. The king of Judah retaliated by hiring the aid of the Arameans. When the Northern Israelite army was withdrawn the fortress at Ramah was razed to the ground. With materials taken from this ruin the king of Judah fortified the old stronghold of Geba, two miles to the northeast, thus gaining control of the main highway from the Jordan to the Philistine Plain. In the same way Mizpah, an imposing, ma.s.sive hill to the northwest of Jerusalem, was fortified. Mizpah^{(20)} lies about two miles south of Gibeon,^{(93)} through which ran the old division line between the north and the south, so it is evident that in this border warfare the boundary between the two kingdoms remained practically the same as before. Soon both were forced to unite against their common foe, the Arameans, so that, with one disastrous exception, neither attempted again to encroach upon the territory of the other.
=Amaziah"s Wars.= In the division of the two kingdoms, Edom and the South Country fell to Judah. Shishak so completely weakened Judah that it appears to have early lost control of the Edomites. Amaziah, the father of Uzziah, was the first who succeeded in winning a decisive victory over these southern foes of the Hebrews. The battle was fought, as in the days of David, in the Valley of Salt, southwest of the Dead Sea. The narrative adds that he took Sela (the Rock) by storm. It is not clear whether this was a border fortress or, as many hold, Petra, the marvellous capital city of the Edomites, which lies in a narrow gorge, cut out of the heart of the many-colored limestone mountains that rise between the Ghor and the Arabian desert.^{(50)} Elated by this victory, Amaziah foolishly challenged the king of Northern Israel to battle. The decisive engagement was fought at Beth-shemesh, the prosperous town that lay on the southern side of the Valley of Sorek. It was almost due west of Jerusalem and in the heart of the lowlands along which the northern army probably approached.
Following up the victory, the Northern Israelites tore down two hundred yards of the northwestern wall of Jerusalem at the point where the city mounted the northern plateau and was, therefore, most exposed. They also looted the temple and royal palace, thus completing the humiliation of the southern kingdom. The conspiracy which resulted in the flight and execution of Amaziah at Lachish, the southwestern outpost of Judah, was probably the fruit of his folly.
=Uzziah"s Strong Reign.= Uzziah, who succeeded his father, rebuilt the walls of Jerusalem and strengthened them by towers that guarded the northwestern and southwestern gates of the city. He also extended the influence of Judah in the south, building the important port of Elath.
In a campaign against the Philistines he captured Gath, whose power had already been broken by the Arameans, Jabneh, west of Gezer, and Ashdod farther south. The death of this strong king, therefore, marked a crisis in the life of Judah, for his successors were inefficient and at this time a.s.syrian armies began to invade Palestine.
=Isaiah of Jerusalem.= It was in the year that Uzziah died that Judah"s great prophet, Isaiah, entered upon his work. His intense loyalty to his nation and his conception of the transcendent majesty of the Divine King who ruled over Israel, reveal his southern birth and training. His familiarity with king, court, and the problems of the nation leave little doubt that he was a citizen of Jerusalem and possibly a scion of one of its n.o.ble families. At first, like Amos, he devoted himself to denouncing the crimes of the ruling cla.s.s and the inevitable result of their cruelty, greed, and disregard of public responsibility.
=His Advice to Ahaz in the Crisis of 734 B.C.= When, in 735, Northern Israel and Damascus united and endeavored to force Judah to combine with them in a coalition against the invader, Tiglath-pileser IV, Isaiah entered upon his work as a statesman. In person he went to advise Ahaz, as the king was probably investigating the defences of Jerusalem, in view of the possibilities of an impending siege. The place of meeting was evidently south of the city, where the valley of the Tyropon joined that of the Hinnom near the pool where, in earlier days, Adonijah had rallied his followers.^{(107)} Isaiah"s advice, however, to make no alliances, but to simply trust Jehovah for deliverance, was rejected by king and people. Ahaz became a va.s.sal of a.s.syria, and not only turned over the silver and gold of the temple and palace to the invader, but went in person to Damascus to pay homage to Tiglath-pileser.
=The Great Rebellion of 703 B.C.= The great crisis that called forth the majority of Isaiah"s recorded sermons came thirty years later, when Judah was again tempted to enter into an alliance with the other states of Palestine in an endeavor to break free from the rule of a.s.syria. In common with the other little states of Palestine, it was a victim of its intermediate position between the great world-powers, a.s.syria and Egypt. Under a new Ethiopian dynasty, Egypt"s ambitions were again beginning to stir and a.s.syria was the chief barrier to their realization. Therefore, Egypt by promises of help encouraged the states of Palestine to revolt against a.s.syria. In 711 B.C. the Philistine towns of Ashdod and Gath did actually rebel. It was only by going about in the garb of the captive, proclaiming in this objective way what would be the consequence if Judah rebelled against a.s.syria, that Isaiah was able to arrest the attention of the nation and save it from fatally compromising itself. When the great a.s.syrian king, Sargon, died in 705 B.C. the temptations to rebel were too strong to be resisted. Merodach-baladan, of the ancient Babylonian royal line, at once instigated a successful revolt in the lower Tigris-Euphrates valley and sent emissaries to Palestine to stir up the va.s.sal states in a general uprising against a.s.syria. Tyre, Edom, Moab, Ammon the Philistine cities, and certain of the neighboring Bedouin tribes united in raising the standard of revolt against their common foe.
Egypt again promised a.s.sistance, and, although Isaiah protested with all his powers, Judah was drawn into the coalition. Hezekiah was made the southern leader of the rebellion.
=Home of the Prophet Micah.= Sennacherib, the successor of Sargon, after putting down the rebellion in southern Babylonia, advanced with a large army to the reconquest of the eastern Mediterranean states. It was probably while the a.s.syrian king was advancing from the north that Isaiah"s contemporary, Micah, uttered his warning against the venal and greedy n.o.bles of Judah. The home of the prophet was Moresheth-gath. Eusebius and Jerome describe it as a small village a little east of the modern Beit-Jibrin, which commands the entrance to the Valley of Zephathah, through which ran the highway from Jerusalem to Gaza. Another important road ran from Hebron past the mound which represents without reasonable doubt the ancient Gath, and thence along the coast plains to the north. It was the centre of a prosperous agricultural life and at the same time shared the peculiar characteristics of these frontier towns. From his home among the foot-hills^{(108)} Micah was able to watch the movement of a.s.syrian armies and to keep in close touch with the world-politics of his day.
Like Amos, he was inspired by the sense of approaching danger to turn his attention to conditions within the nation and to endeavor with all his prophetic power to prepare it for the coming crisis. The note of alarm sounds through all his early utterances. In imagination he pictures the effects of the coming invasions and in the sound of the names of the villages about his home he finds suggestions of the calamity about to overtake them. His eyes fall first on Gath, which lay to the northwest on the highway along which the a.s.syrian army would naturally approach. His vision sweeps southward, including Shaphir, the modern Suafir, five miles southeast of Ashdod on the Philistine Plain, Zaanan and Lachish to the southwest, and other small villages on the western borders of Judah. His eye rests last of all upon Mareshah, which has recently been identified beyond doubt with the large Tell es-Sandahannah, one mile south of Beit-Jibrin. The latter was the most important city near Micah"s home, for it guarded the pa.s.s and stood near the junction of the great highways that radiate from this point.
=Judah"s Fate in 701 B.C.= Judah experienced in 701 B.C. the calamities that Isaiah and Micah had predicted. The annals of Sennacherib state that the a.s.syrian king conquered forty-six of the cities of Judah, together with innumerable fortresses and small towns in their neighborhood; over two hundred thousand captives, and horses, mules, a.s.ses, camels, oxen, and sheep without number were carried away as spoils. In the picturesque language of the conqueror, "Hezekiah was shut up like a bird in a cage in the midst of Jerusalem" until he was forced to surrender and to pay a huge tribute of gold and silver.
=Isaiah"s Counsel in a Later Crisis.= In this great crisis the wisdom of Isaiah"s counsel was vindicated beyond question and his authority became so strong with king and people that an attempt was made to remove certain of the surviving heathen symbols from the popular worship. In the later crisis of 690 B.C., when Sennacherib advanced to the conquest of Egypt, the prophet by his advice was able to save Jerusalem. While engaged in the siege of Lachish, the imposing fortress on the Philistine Plain on the southern side of the Wady el-Hesy, Sennacherib sent messengers demanding the unconditional surrender of Judah"s capital. From the point of view of the a.s.syrian king it was dangerous to leave in his rear a strong fortress like Jerusalem, which had already proved a centre of rebellion. His demand, however, was unreasonable, for there is no evidence that Jerusalem, at this later time, was guilty of sedition. In the light of these changed conditions, instead of predicting calamity as a penalty for rebellion, Isaiah advised Hezekiah to refuse to surrender his city to destruction. The calm, unflinching faith of the prophet overcame the fears of the king and thus preserved Jerusalem for another century.
Without waiting to carry out his threats against Jerusalem, Sennacherib advanced against Egypt. From the variant traditions it appears that in the marshy land on the eastern side of the Nile delta his army was overtaken by a plague and he was forced ignominiously to retreat.
=The Reactionary Reign of Mana.s.seh.= a.s.syria continued, during the reign of Hezekiah"s successor, Mana.s.seh, to maintain its control of Palestine. a.s.syrian and Babylonian customs and religious inst.i.tutions pervaded the land as never before. Two legal contracts, drawn up in the usual a.s.syrian form and dating from the years 651 and 648 B.C. in the reign of Mana.s.seh, have been discovered in the mound of Gezer. The one records the sale of a field and the other of an estate with the house and land. The owner of the land was a Hebrew (Nethaniah) but the joint owners of the estate and the twelve witnesses were nearly all a.s.syrians, indicating how strong was this foreign influence at the time. The weak Mana.s.seh was a leader in a wide-spread reaction against the exalted religious and ethical teachings of the prophets. The old Canaanite cults were largely revived and the worship of Babylonian and a.s.syrian deities was introduced even into the temple at Jerusalem.
Silenced by persecution, the faithful prophets and priests devoted themselves to putting the principles proclaimed by Amos, Hosea, and Isaiah into definite laws that would shape the daily life of the people. The results of their work are preserved in the book of Deuteronomy, which became the basis of the later reformation of Josiah.
=Two Prophetic Reformers.= The two leaders in the great reform movement were Jeremiah of Anathoth and Zephaniah, who seems to have had great influence over his kinsman, the young Josiah. Zephaniah was apparently a native of Jerusalem. Most of his prophecy is devoted to denouncing the different forms of apostasy and the crimes of oppression then prevalent in the capital. While Jeremiah was not a citizen of Jerusalem, he came from a neighboring village and was also in close touch with the political, social, and religious life of the capital.
=Situation of Anathoth.= The little town of Anathoth,^{(109)} his home, lay to the northeast of Jerusalem, just over the Mount of Olives, at the point where the hills began to descend to the barren wilderness to the east. It stood on a low, rounded hill. The limestone rocks crop out at many points, imparting a rugged appearance to the landscape. A thriving fig orchard on the western side of the modern town recalls the forceful figure by which Jeremiah contrasted the Jews left in Palestine with the exiles in Babylonia. The low stone and mud buildings of the present town are crowded close together and the dirty streets and people remind the traveller of the men of ancient Anathoth who persecuted their ill.u.s.trious townsman. On the south the view is shut off by the rising hills, but toward the northeast lies Gibeon and Ramah and to the north Michmash, with its inspiring memories. The chief view from Anathoth, like that from Tekoa, is toward the Jordan valley and the Dead Sea. The gray, barren hills let themselves down in gradual terraces to the depths below. To the northeast are the tree-clad hills of Gilead, while across the Dead Sea rise the rounded, rocky cliffs of the Moabite plateau. Like the homes of most of the great Hebrew prophets, it is a place of broad outlook. The general impression of Anathoth is grim, stern, and sombre, although here the harsh, barren landscape of the south merges into the more fertile and pleasing hill country of the north. Even so in the character of Jeremiah were blended the sternest, most exalted sense of justice and a love for his nation and his countrymen so tender and strong that he was ready to give his life, if need be, to save them from the evils which he saw impending. Through all his sermons these two motives struggle, sometimes the one and sometimes the other breaking forth into expression.
=Josiah"s Reign.= In Josiah the reformers found an energetic leader.
It was during his reign that the Scythian hordes poured down from southeastern Europe. Some of these wild barbarians swept down the eastern coast of the Mediterranean, giving Zephaniah and Jeremiah the texts of their earlier sermons. Others, turning to the east, flung themselves against the a.s.syrian empire and ultimately, in union with the Babylonians, succeeded in conquering Nineveh itself. The impending fall of a.s.syria favored the work of the reformers, so that in 621 B.C.
the prophetic law-book was brought from the temple and publicly adopted by Josiah in behalf of the people. The record of the inst.i.tution of this new law indicates that Josiah"s authority extended beyond the old bounds of Judah. After the withdrawal of the a.s.syrian governors it was natural that the surviving tribes of the north should again look to Jerusalem for political and religious leadership. This fact explains why Josiah"s last fatal battle was fought against the Egyptian king, Necho, in the vicinity of the old Canaanite fortress of Megiddo.
=The Brief Rule of Egypt.= Necho, the son of Psamtik I, a Libyan who had succeeded in conquering Egypt, was inspired by the oft-recurring ambition to recover the Asiatic possessions once held by the empire.
The approaching fall of a.s.syria gave him a favorable opportunity. With the aid of the Greek mercenaries in his service, he succeeded in conquering the Philistine cities. The defeat of Josiah at Megiddo in 608 B.C. gave him practical possession of Palestine. In the same way the different states of Syria fell before him, so that between 608 and 605 B.C. he was master of the eastern Mediterranean. This brief Egyptian rule, however, was overthrown by the new Chaldean kingdom, which arose in lower Babylonia and, after the fall of Nineveh, quickly fell heir to the southern and western part of the a.s.syrian empire. The decisive battle between the Egyptians and Chaldeans was fought at Carchemish, by the Euphrates, in 605 B.C. and resulted in the complete defeat of Necho"s army. The Egyptians were speedily driven from Syria and Palestine and the Chaldean authority established in their stead.
=Jehoiakim"s Reign.= By the death of Josiah the cause of the patriotic prophetic party in Judah suffered severely. The younger son of the dead king, who was first put on the throne, was soon deposed by Necho and the selfish Jehoiakim was established as a va.s.sal of Egypt. His sympathies were with the party of reaction and he proved another Mana.s.seh. When the Chaldeans appeared in Palestine their rule was readily accepted, but after a reign of ten years Jehoiakim listened to the seductive promises of Egypt and rebelled against his Chaldean master. It was during the reign of Jehoiakim that Jeremiah delivered the greater part of his sermons. By direct address and object-lesson he denounced the follies and crimes of the king and people and tried to save them from the calamity which he saw impending. When the spirit of rebellion was rife he used all his influence to keep his countrymen loyal to the Chaldeans, but in vain. While Judah was being overrun by the Chaldean armies, Jehoiakim died and was succeeded by his young son, Jehoiachin.
=The First Captivity.= In 597 B.C. Jerusalem itself fell before the army of Nebuchadrezzar. The king, his n.o.bles, and between eight and ten thousand of the prominent men and artisans, representing in all between thirty and forty thousand souls, were transported to Babylonia. The object of Nebuchadrezzar was to strip the land of its leaders and all who might a.s.sist in carrying through another rebellion. Over the Judeans who were left behind was placed Zedekiah, a son of Josiah. The new king was inclined to listen to the voice of Jeremiah and to rule for the best interests of his subjects, but he was helpless in the hands of his headstrong n.o.bles. For nearly a decade Judah submitted to the strong and, on the whole, benign rule of Nebuchadrezzar; but by 593 B.C. the kings of Edom, Moab, Ammon, Tyre, and Sidon encouraged, as of old, by Egypt were again plotting rebellion. Jeremiah did all in his power to save Judah from these fatal entanglements, but false prophets undermined his influence and encouraged the people to hope that Jehovah would perform a miracle in their behalf.
=The Second Captivity.= In 588 B.C. Zedekiah rebelled against the Chaldeans. Syria and Palestine proved themselves again, as throughout all their long history, a land incapable of united action.
Nebuchadrezzar established his head-quarters at Riblah, on the upper Euphrates, beside the great northern highway. From this strategic point, from which history had already demonstrated that the Hebrew coastlands could best be ruled, he directed the campaign against the rebellious states. Most of them surrendered at once. Tyre and Jerusalem alone held out against a protracted siege. The Egyptian army which came to relieve Jerusalem was defeated on the borders of Palestine. It was only the fear of the judgment that would be visited upon them that inspired the followers of Zedekiah to resist as long as they did. Even at the risk of imprisonment and death at the hands of the unprincipled n.o.bles, Jeremiah a.s.serted that the only hope lay in surrender. At last Zedekiah in desperation, after the northern walls of the city had already been broken down by the besiegers, fled by night through the southeastern gate of the city, down through the gorge of the Kidron to Jericho. Here he was captured by the Chaldeans and carried to Riblah on the Orontes. While his life was spared, the n.o.bles and religious leaders who had been active in the rebellion were put to death. About five thousand of the prominent men of Jerusalem were carried with Zedekiah to Babylon. The city and temple were stripped of their wealth and the walls were thrown down, leaving Judah"s capital "a ruin and a heap." Israel"s feasts were transformed into fasts and her songs into lamentations.^{(110)}
=The End of the Southern Kingdom.= Not wishing to leave the territory of Judah in utter desolation, Nebuchadrezzar appointed Gedaliah, a grandson of Josiah"s counsellor, Shaphan, governor over the Jews remaining in Jerusalem. The new ruler selected as the centre of his government Mizpah,^{(20, 21)} the most commanding point in northern Judah, four and a half miles northwest of Jerusalem. This was one of the two border cities which had been fortified by Asa, in his war against Northern Israel. The northern position of his capital suggests that his authority, like that of Josiah, extended over a part of southern Samaria. This inference is supported by the fact that Israelites from Shechem, Shiloh, and Samaria came, under the protection of his rule, to present offerings at the ruined temple at Jerusalem. Many Jewish refugees soon returned from Moab, Ammon, and Edom to put themselves under the protection of Gedaliah"s just and kindly rule. The bright promise of an early restoration of Judah"s fortunes was destroyed by the treachery of a certain Ishmael, of the Judean royal line, who, at the instigation of the king of Ammon, went to Mizpah and treacherously slew Gedaliah. Contrary to Jeremiah"s advice, the Judahites who survived fled to Egypt, taking him with them. Thus Judah was overtaken with an even more overwhelming fate than that of the northern kingdom. Yet in the hour of its deepest humiliation two brave souls, Jeremiah in Palestine and Ezekiel in distant Babylon, proclaimed in clearest terms that Judah would again be inhabited and that a n.o.ble destiny yet awaited their nation. Above all, Jeremiah declared that inasmuch as the old covenant between Jehovah and the nation had been broken by the crimes of the rulers and people, a new and more spiritual covenant would be established between Jehovah and each individual.
XX
THE BABYLONIAN AND PERSIAN PERIODS
=Jewish Refugees in Egypt.= After the destruction of Jerusalem in 586 B.C. the Jews were to be found in three great centres--Egypt, Babylonia, and Palestine. Egypt, because of its friendly att.i.tude toward the Jews and its nearness to southern Palestine, was the refuge to which most of the Jewish fugitives fled. Inasmuch as the approach of the Chaldean armies was from the north, the main highway running south from Hebron through the solitary desert was the most natural line of escape. The result was that a very large proportion of the Jewish race were to be found from this time on in the land of the Nile. Even before the final destruction of Jerusalem, both Jeremiah and Ezekiel addressed the Jewish refugees in Egypt. They were found in four important towns. The two nearest to Palestine were Migdol and Tahpanhes. Migdol means tower or fortress, and the reference is evidently to one of the frontier towns that guarded the eastern boundary of Egypt. It was probably the Migdolos mentioned in the _Itinerarium Antonini_, and was situated midway between Pelusium on the Mediterranean coast and Sele, a little west of the Crocodile Lake, the present Lake Timsah. This would identify it with the ruins known as the Tell es-Semut, twelve miles southwest of Pelusium, beside the ancient caravan route that ran from Palestine to Egypt.
[Ill.u.s.tration: BABYLONIAN EMPIRE
PERSIAN EMPIRE
ALEXANDER"S EMPIRE
THE M.-N. CO.
=Situation of Tahpanhes.= Tahpanhes, the biblical name of the Graeco-Egyptian city, Daphne, is represented by the modern Tell Defenneh. It lay on the right bank of the Pelusiac branch of the Nile and close to the caravan route from Palestine. On the north was the marshy Lake Menzaleh. It was, however, close to the fertile lands of the Nile Delta and from the days of Psamtik I an important military and commercial town. Here were settled Greek and Phnician colonists, and here the Jews who fled with Jeremiah after the murder of Gedaliah found refuge. Here and at Migdol the refugees were in closest touch with their kinsmen who had remained behind in Palestine and were in a position to return thither whenever conditions were favorable. They were also in the midst of a cosmopolitan life that offered them ample opportunity to engage in trade, which must have been the chief occupation of these semi-desert towns.
=Memphis.= A third home of Jewish colonists in Egypt was Noph, which was the biblical designation of the sacred city of Memphis. This great city lay ten miles south of Cairo, at the southern end of the Nile Delta. It was a large metropolitan city, with an exceedingly diverse population. Herodotus found in the vicinity of the Egyptian temple of Ptah a Tyrian colony with a temple dedicated to the "foreign Aphrodite." Here were probably settled the Jews who had decided to make permanent homes in Egypt, and who may have reared here a temple to Jehovah.
=The Colony at Elephantine.= The fourth centre of colonization was at Syene in the land of Pathros, the biblical equivalent of upper Egypt.
Syene is apparently represented by the modern Egyptian city of a.s.suan, just below the first cataract of the Nile. In Ezekiel 29:10 Migdol and Syene mark respectively the northern and southern boundaries of Egypt.
Recent excavations on the northern end of the island of Elephantine,^{(111)} which lies in the Nile opposite a.s.suan, have revealed the presence of a large Jewish colony at this point, which flourished during the earlier part of the Persian period and was probably established soon after the fall of Jerusalem. The island is one of the garden spots of the Nile valley. The ruins of the ancient city cover a low-lying hill on the southern end, which is here fully three-quarters of a mile across from east to west. On the east across the river are the heights of a.s.suan. The view to the south is toward the rocky cataract of the Nile. On the west, across the river, extends the brown, rocky desert.
=Results of the Excavations.= The importance of the ancient town lay in its position at the head of uninterrupted navigation. From here the caravans set out for Nubia and the upper Nile and for the oases in the east. The town was built of Nile mud bricks, with little houses and narrow streets, and was evidently once the home of a large and dense population. On the western side have been discovered contracts written on papyri in Aramaic, which indicate that here was a large Jewish colony living on a practical equality with the Egyptians, Phnicians, Babylonians, and Persians, who const.i.tuted the population of this ancient metropolis. Familiar Jewish names appear in these contracts, which record the sale of land and houses. An Aramaic letter bearing the date 408 B.C. has also been discovered directed to Bagohi, the Persian governor of Palestine. From these contracts and this letter it appears that during the earlier part of the Persian period there was within the city of Elephantine a Jewish temple of Jahu (Jehovah), surrounded by strong walls and protecting gates. At this Jewish sanctuary regular offerings were presented to Jehovah and the religious customs of the homeland were thus preserved in the very heart of the old heathen city.
=Transformation of the Jews into Traders.= It is significant that the Jewish colonists in Egypt were settled in four commercial centres.
Trade was the chief occupation open to them. Hence the shepherds and farmers of Judah were soon transformed into traders and merchants.
Widely scattered as they were, at each important city there were colonies of Jews. In time these were organized into great mercantile companies which, through their agents and branch houses, controlled more and more of the trade of the ancient East. The Jew of to-day is the product of those centuries of commercial training which began with the Babylonian period.
=Home of the Exiles in Babylonia.= In deporting the Jewish captives from Palestine to Babylonia, Nebuchadrezzar evidently followed the longer, more northern route, through Riblah and Hamath, across the Euphrates at Carchemish, and thence southward through Mesopotamia.
Instead of scattering the Jewish exiles throughout the empire, he settled them in a colony on the Chebar River, which is evidently identical with the Khabaru Ca.n.a.l. According to recently discovered inscriptions, this ca.n.a.l ran eastward from Babylon to the ancient sanctuary of Nippur. This region was in the northern part of the great alluvial plain between the Tigris and the Euphrates and was intersected in every direction by ca.n.a.ls, which were used both for irrigation and commerce. To escape the spring floods the villages were built on low mud mounds, in many cases ruins of earlier cities. The prophet Ezekiel, who was the pastor and spiritual adviser of the exiles in Babylon, lived at a village named after the mound on which it was built, Tell Abib. Two other similar village mounds were called Salt Hill and Forest Hill. Ezekiel describes their new home as "a land of traffic, a city of merchants, a fruitful soil, beside many waters."
=Their Life in Babylonia.= In certain psalms are found the echo of the homesickness and longing for their native hills which filled the hearts of the Jewish exiles. But the fruitful soil of Babylonia was a partial compensation for what they had lost. The active commercial life of Babylon, as that of Egypt, developed within them the latent Semitic genius for trade. At first they were evidently settled as a community by themselves, a little Judah in the heart of the great empire. Here they lived in accordance with their laws, under the rulership of their elders, building houses, planting gardens, and rearing up families, as Jeremiah advised in the letter which he wrote them (Jer. 29). The result was that the majority of the Jews in the east became so attached to their new homes that few were found later who would undertake the arduous journey of fifteen hundred miles to return to the stony hills of Judah. For a great majority of those who were exiled or who fled from Judah in connection with the first and second captivity there was no return, even though opportunities were repeatedly offered.
=Condition of the Jews in Palestine.= The third centre of the Jewish race was Judah itself. Even though Jerusalem was destroyed and its population scattered, the majority of the shepherds and peasants of Judah never left their homes. The captives who were deported by the Babylonians appear to have been taken almost entirely from the capital city. Those who remained in Palestine were probably placed under the rule of the governor of the so-called "Province beyond the River." The t.i.tle evidently originated in Babylon, for it was the designation of the territory which lay west of the Euphrates and included Syria as well as Palestine. Without organization and the protection of a native ruler the fortunes of the Jewish peasants must have been indeed pitiable. The book of Lamentations contains references to the pitiless persecutions and the frequent forays to which they were subject.
Whenever the local government was weakened, Judah was the object of attack from every quarter. On the north were the Samaritans, who could never completely forget their hereditary rivalry with the southern tribes. At this time the Samaritan territory apparently extended southward so as to include the cities of Gibeon and Mizpah. On the east the Ammonites had at last succeeded in pushing their boundaries westward to the Jordan, and in occupying the fruitful hills and valleys of southern Gilead. East of the Dead Sea the Moabite territory evidently extended northward to that recently occupied by the Ammonites. In southern Judah the Edomites, pushed northward by the advance of a strong Arab race, known as the Nabateans, had seized not only the South Country but the old capital, Hebron, and the territory to the east and west. On the southwest they occupied the important city of Mareshah and the adjacent Philistine lowlands.^{(108)}
[Ill.u.s.tration: THE JEWISH COMMUNITY IN PALESTINE DURING THE PERSIAN AND GREEK PERIODS.
M-N CO.
=Extent of the Jewish Territory.= The Jews were therefore almost entirely confined to the Judean highlands. Their outposts on the southwest were Keilah and Bethzur, on the west Zanoah, which guarded the entrance to the Valley of Sorek, and Netophah, the modern Beit Nettif, which guarded the entrance to the Valley of Elah. The northern boundary ran within five or six miles of Jerusalem. To the northeast the Jews appear to have held the city of Jericho and the neighboring Plain of the Jordan. Thus the cultivated Jewish territory was little more than twenty-five miles in length and breadth and included the least desirable land of all Palestine.