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 CAPTIVITIES

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CAPTIVITIES

Babylonian Monarchy declined rapidly. A new political power appeared on the eastern and northern frontiers. Cyrus, the King of Anzan (Elam) and Persia, had overcome Astyages, ruler of the Medes (or Manda), and seized his capital, Ecbatana. Media, by the partition of the Assyrian Empire and the further conquests of Cyaxares, had grown powerful; its territories took in, on the north and west, Armenia and half of Cappadocia. Cyrus extended these con- quests by the subjugation of Lydia. thus stretching his sovereignty to the .^Dgean Mediterranean and forming a vast' empire. The balance in Hither Asia was destroyed, and Babylon was threatened by this formidable new power. 'The Deutero-Isaian Prophet hailed this brilliant star on the political horizon with joy, and recognizing in Cyrus the foreordained servant of* God, predicted through him Babylon's downfall and Israel's deliverance (Is., xliv, 28-xlv, 7). In the year 538 B. c. the Persian monarch invaded Chaldean territory; helped by disaffection in the south, one of his generals was able in a few days to take Babylon without resistance, and Cyrus became ruler of the Chaldean Kingdom.

(4) The Restoration under Cyrus: Zorobabel's Return. — Cyrus reversed the policy of deportation followed by the Assyrian and Babylonian kings. He deemed this the wiser statecraft, probably because he had expe- rienced in the conquest of Babylonia the danger of keeping an ill-affected population in the midst of a country threatened by a foreign foe. At the same time, to repeople Judea with a nation bound to the Persian dynasty by ties of gratitude would strengthen his realm against Egyptian invasion. Thus did Prov- idence "stir up the heart of Cyrus" to a liberal course towards the Israelites, and employ him as an unwit- ting instrument in the reconstitution of a people whose mission was not yet accomplished. Cyrus, accordingly, in the first year of his rule at Babylon. 538 B. c, "forty-eight years after the destruction of Jerusalem, issued an edict in which he allowed and recommended the return of all the Hebrews in his domain to the fatherland, ordered the rebuilding of the Temple, for which a subsidy from the royal treas- ury was granted, directed the sacred vessels seized by Nabuchodonosor to be sent back, and urged all Israelites to contribute to the restoration of public worship. The extreme liberality of the Persian monarch in the matter of the Temple is less surpris- ing when we consider that a restored Jerusalem was inconceivable without a restored sanctuary. Semitic cities and districts rose or declined with the shrines of their tutelary deities, and Cyrus' largeness towards the Jews in religious affairs is quite in keeping with his rehabilitation of certain Babylonian temples and the return of images to their former abodes, as wit- nessed by his inaugural proclamation (Records of the Past, new series, V, 143 sq.). That the Northern Israelites dwelling in Assyrian Mesopotamia were not similarly favoured is to be explained not merely by the much longer time elapsed since their political ex- tinction — a lapse which had permitted them to be- come rooted to the land of their exile — but principally to the absence of any desire on their part to set up the old symbolic, half-heathen sanctuaries of Jehovah. They too had learned the stern lesson of the Captiv- ity. It was a province of the Persian Empire, and not a Kingdom of Juda. that Cyrus had determined to create, and therefore Zorobabel, the grandson of Joachin, alias Jechonias (I Paral., iii, 17-19), and therefore the heir-royal of the Davidic line, was to be only its governor. He was a young man who had never known any court but that of Babylon, andso far as history records never violated tl>e surprising trust placed in him by attempting ti> recover the crown of his fathers. A contrary thesis has been defended on insufficient grounds by Sellin (Serubba- l>el, Leipzig, 1898). Sassabasar, "the Jewish prince-"

mentioned in the First Book of Esdras, is identical with Zorobabel. He and Josue, the high-priest, were en- trusted with the Temple furniture, and made the leaders of the gola, or expedition of the returning Jews. Besides a considerable number of slaves, 42.360 followed Zorobabel on the long journey to Judea. The data about this repatriation in the Book of Esdras are fragmentary. "Every man went into his own city", and from later particulars we should infer that the body of the immigrants took up their abode in the small cities and towns outside, and mostly to the south of Jerusalem. The latter must have been little more than a ruin. The returned exiles found the neighbouring tribes and races, the Samaritans, Ammonites, Moabites, Edomites, in- stalled at many points on Jewish soil, alongside the pitiful remnants of their countrymen, and it must have needed the authority, if not the force, of the Persian Emperor to make room for the Israelites on their former homesteads. Under Zorobabel the struggling community enjoyed autonomy in its in- ternal affairs. In the absence of the old system of royal administration, the primitive organization by clans and families, partially resumed in captivity, gained added vigour, and the heads of these sections. the "princes" and "elders", represented them in all general assemblies.

But the new Israel was less a political than a religious community. Only a fraction of the 250,000 or more Jews who had gone into the East could have lived to return, and, allowing for natural increase among the captive people, a still smaller part of those who might have looked upon Judea as their home re- turned from the Exile to dwell within its borders. Only the most patriotic and religious, the zealous elite, answered the call of Cyrus and migrated from their abodes which had become fixed, moved by a desire to restore the theocracy in a purer form with the "house of God" as its heart and centre (cf. I Esd., i. 5). One of the first measures, therefore, to which the leaders addressed themselves was the rebuilding of the altar of burnt-offerings, upon whose dedication the faithful rejoiced at the resumption of the daily sacrifices. Within less than a year after the corner- stone of a new Temple was laid. But an obstacle was encountered in the jealousy of the Samaritans, the half-heathen neighbours on the north. They were largely represented in the alien elements living among the Jews, and viewed with distrust the reor- ganization of a religion and community in which they would not fill an important, much less a predomina- ting role. They accordingly asked to join in the construction of the Temple. Zorobabel declined their aid by referring to the decree of Cyrus. Hereby he inaugurated that policy of separation from all con- taminating influences long followed by later leadi rs of Israel. But the Samaritans, if they could not as- sist, could hamper the enterprise by intrigues at the Persian court. Owing to these difficulties the work was suspended, and the zeal of the people cooled. It was not till these were aroused by the reproaches of the prophets Aggeus (Haggai) and Zacharias that Zorobabel and Josue could begin anew the work under Darius Hystaspis (521), sixteen years after its sus-

Eension. The external obstacles had been removed y a decree of Darius; the undertaking was pushed vigorously, and four years later the second Temple was completed. But those who had seen the Temple of Solomon sadly confessed that the new sanctuary could not bear comparison with the glory of the former.

The history of the Jewish Captivity properly em- braces the additional migration from Babylonia of about 1400 souls led by tin' priest and scribe Esdras (Ezra). In the sacred narrative the account of this second gola follows immediately that of the finishing

of the Temple. But its true chronological setting is