Page:Essays ethnological and linguistic.djvu/199

Rh this Nebuchadnezzar, King of Babylon, hath broken his bones. Therefore thus saith the Lord of Hosts, the God of Israel, Behold I will punish the King of Babylon and his land, as I have punished the King of Assyria. And I will bring Israel again to his habitation, and he shall feed on Carmel and Bashan, and his soul shall be satisfied upon Mount Ephraim and Gilead. In those days and in that time, saith the Lord, the iniquity of Israel shall be sought for, and there shall be none, and the sins of Judah, and they shall not be found, for I will pardon them whom I reserve." (Jeremiah, ch. 1. v. 17-20.) In a few verses previously the game prophet declared, "In those days and in that time, saith the Lord, the children of Israel shall come, they and the children of Judah together, going and weeping; they shall go, and seek the Lord their God." (v. 4.)

If it be asked to what days and to what time this and the other prophecies can be positively shown to refer, we have only to examine the context of the two verses immediately preceding: "Declare ye among the nations, Babylon is taken, Bel is confounded, Merodach is broken in pieces; for out of the north there cometh up a mighty nation against her, which shall make her land desolate, and none shall dwell therein; they shall depart both man and beast." And then immediately follows, "In those days and in that time, saith the Lord, the children of Israel shall come, they and the children of Judah together." Here then it is expressly stated, that the restoration of all the Israelites should take effect on the destruction of Babylon, as all the other prophetic declarations also pointed clearly to an early fulfilment. None of them will in any wise admit the construction put on them by the rabbinical writers originally, of being indefinitely protracted with regard to Israel, as would be the case if the prophecies were yet unfulfilled.

Whatever might be the worldly motives of Cyrus in releasing the captives, whether it was for any assistance, afforded him in his conquests, or to weaken the provinces of Babylon and Assyria, or to strengthen the frontiers of his new kingdoms, it is certain that he extended to them extraordinary favours. In his reign, and also under his successors in carrying out the same policy, were then fulfilled the promises made to the Israelites by the mouth of Isaiah long before the Babylonian captivity: "They shall bring thy sons in their arms, and thy daughters shall be carried upon their shoulders; and kings shall be thy nursing fathers and their queens thy nursing mothers." (Ch. xlix. v. 22.) Thus unrestricted permission was given to all the Israelites through-