The History of Antiquity, Vol. 6 (of 6). Duncker Max

in joy and be led in peace; the mountains and the hills shall break forth before you into singing, and all the trees shall clap their hands.91 Jehovah goes before you, and the God of Israel brings up the rear. Was it not Jehovah who made the depths of the sea to be your pathway, so that His redeemed passed through? In the desert through which they passed they thirsted not; He clave the rock and the waters flowed.92 So shall the ransomed of Jehovah return, and come with singing to Zion, and everlasting joy shall be upon their heads; sorrow and sighing shall flee away.93 O, poor ones, surrounded with misery and comfortless; for a little time Jehovah left thee, but He takes thee up again with greater love, and I will have mercy on thee for ever, saith Jehovah. As I swore that the waters of Noah should not come again upon the earth, so do I swear to be angry with thee no more. The mountains may melt and tremble, but my mercy will leave thee no more. Jehovah calls thee as an outcast sorrowful woman, and thy God speaks to thee as to a bride who has been put away;94 thy ruins, and deserts, and wasted land, which was destroyed from generation to generation – thy people build up the ruins, and renew the ancient cities.95 Behold, I will make thy desert like Eden, and thy wilderness like the garden of the Lord; I will lay thy stones with bright lead, and thy foundations with sapphires, and make thy towers of rubies and thy gates of carbuncles.96 Joy and delight is in them, thanksgiving and the sound of strings. The wealth of the sea shall come to thee, and the treasures of the nations shall be thine;97 like a stream will I bring salvation upon Israel, and the treasures of the nations like an overflowing river.98 Thy sons hasten onward; those that laid thee waste go forth from thee.99 Lift up thine eyes and see; thy sons come from far, and I will gather them to those that are gathered together. The islands and the ships of Tarshish wait to bring thy children from afar, their gold and their silver with them.100 The land will be too narrow for the inhabitants; widen the place for thy tent, let the carpets of thy habitation be spread – delay not. Draw out the rope; to the right and to the left must thou be widened.101 I will set up my banner for the nations, that they bring thy sons in their arm, and thy daughters shall be carried on the shoulders. Kings shall be thy guardians, and queens thy nursing-mothers; I will bow them to the earth before thee, and they shall lick the dust of thy feet, and thou shalt know that I am Jehovah, and they who wait patiently for me shall not be put to shame."102

      Such expectations and hopes were far from being realised. The Edomites had, in the mean-time, extended their borders, and obtained possession of the South of Judah, but the land immediately round Jerusalem was free and no doubt almost depopulated. As the returning exiles contented themselves with the settlement at Jerusalem, the towns to the North, Anathoth, Gebah, Michmash, Kirjath-Jearim, and some others – only Bethlehem is mentioned to the South,103 they found nothing to impede them. Their first care was the restoration of the worship, according to the law and custom of their fathers, for which object an altar of burnt-offerings was erected on the site of the temple, in order to offer the appointed sacrifice at morning and evening. The priests, minstrels, and Levites were separated according to their families, and those who could not prove their priestly descent were rejected for the sacred service;104 the attempt was then made to arrange the rest of the exiles according to their families, in order to decide their claims and rights to certain possessions and lands. Then voluntary gifts were collected from all for the rebuilding of the temple; contributions even came in from those who had remained in Babylonia, so that 70,000 pieces of gold and 5000 minæ of silver are said to have been amassed. Tyrian masons were hired, and agreements made with Tyrian carpenters, to fell cedars in Lebanon, and bring them to Joppa, for which Cyrus had given his permission. The foundation of the temple was laid in the second year of the return (536 B.C.). The priests appeared in their robes with trumpets, and the Levites with cymbals, to praise Jehovah; "that He might be gracious, and His mercy be upon Israel for ever." Those of the priests and elders who had seen the old temple are said to have wept aloud; "but many raised their voices in joy so that the echo was heard far off."105 We have evidence of the grateful and elevated tone which filled the exiles in those days, in songs, where we read: "They pressed upon me in my youth, but they overpowered me not. The ploughers ploughed upon my back and made long furrows. Jehovah is just; he broke the bonds of the wicked. Praised be Jehovah, who did not give us over as prey to their teeth; our soul escaped like a bird from the snare of the fowler. When Jehovah turned again the captivity of Zion, our way was filled with joy; and they said among the nations: Jehovah hath done great things for them! Jehovah hath chosen Zion, and taken it to be His abode and resting-place for ever and ever. There He will clothe His priests with salvation, and exalt the power of David, and clothe his enemies with shame."106

      The fortunate beginning of the restoration of the city and temple soon met with difficulties. The people of Samaria, who were a mixture of the remnant of the Israelites and the strangers whom Sargon had brought there after the capture of Samaria (III. 86), and Esarhaddon at a later date (III. 154), came to meet the exiles in a friendly spirit, and offered them assistance, from which we must conclude that in spite of the foreign admixture the Israelitish blood and the worship of Jehovah were preponderant in Samaria. The new temple would thus have been the common sanctuary of the united people of Israel. But the "sons of captivity" were too proud of the sorrows which they had undergone, and the fidelity which they had preserved to Jehovah, and their pure descent, to accept this offer. Hence the old quarrel between Israel and Judah broke out anew, and the exiles soon felt the result. After their repulse the Samaritans set themselves to hinder the building by force; "they terrified the exiles that they built no more, and hired counsellors to make the attempt vain during the whole of the remainder of the reign of Cyrus."107 The reasons which these counsellors brought forward before Cyrus against the continuation of the buildings at Jerusalem, would be the same which were afterwards brought before Artaxerxes Longimanus; namely, that when Jerusalem and its walls were finished the city would become rebellious and disobedient, as it was previously under the kings of Babylon.

      CHAPTER IX

      THE KINGDOM OF CYRUS

      We were able to prove that Cyrus, soon after his victory over Astyages and the Medes, reduced the Parthians and Hyrcanians beneath his dominion, that the Caducians, the Armenians, and the Cappadocians were his subjects before the Lydian war, that his empire at this period extended to the Halys. How far he had already advanced towards the Bactrians and Sacae must remain uncertain, owing to the contradiction which exists on this point between the summary narrative of Herodotus and the excerpt from Ctesias. Afterwards the Lydian war and its sequel made Cyrus master of the whole of Asia Minor. Between the Lydian and Babylonian wars Herodotus represents him as conquering the whole of upper Asia, one nation after the other, and Berosus as conquering the whole of Asia. When our knowledge is so scanty, it is impossible to fix the campaigns of Cyrus in the East and the West with greater exactness, or even to ascertain clearly what successes he achieved in these regions before and after the Babylonian war. We merely perceive that Elam was subject to Cyrus before the attack on Babylon (p. 83), and if a habitation could be allotted to Nabonetus in Carmania, that country must have been subject before the war which destroyed the Babylonian kingdom; we may also conclude with great probability that Cyrus would not have marched against Babylon before he felt himself secure in the East. Hence we may assume that Iran was subject before the Babylonian war, and the campaigns which resulted in the conquest of the Gandarians and their northern neighbours, the Sogdiani and Chorasmians, must be ascribed to the period after this war. Whether the nations in the north of Armenia, on the isthmus between the Black and the Caspian Sea, the Saspeires and Alarodians in the East, and the Colchians and Phasians in the valley of the Phasis, were reduced by Cyrus

91

Deut. Isa. lv. 12.

92

Deut. Isa. xlviii. 21.

93

Deut. Isa. li. 11.

94

Deut. Isa. liv. 6-10.

95

Deut. Isa. xlix. 19; lviii. 12.

96

Deut. Isa. liv. 11.

97

Deut. Isa. lx. 5.

98

Deut. Isa. lxvi. 12.

99

Deut. Isa. xlix. 17.

100

Deut. Isa. lx. 4-9.

101

Deut. Isa. liv. 2.

102

Deut. Isa. xlix. 22, 23.

103

Ewald, "Volk. Israel." 3, 91.

104

Ezra ii. 59-63.

105

Ezra iii. 8-13.

106

Ps. cxxix. – cxxxii.

107

Ezra iv. 1-5, 24. It is obvious that verse 24 must follow on verse 5 in chap. iv. The verses 6-23 treat of things which happened under Xerxes and Artaxerxes, and they have got into the wrong place.