glory, Babylon was of the earth and is fallen; Jerusalem, which is from above, abideth forever."

Condition of the exiles. While some of the exiles in Babylonia seem to have met with harsh treatment, on the whole they were not persecuted. Even so, however, their hearts were often sick with longing for the homeland. "Our bones are dried up, and our hope is lost; we are clean cut off," they cried. We must remember that all nations of antiquity believed that to be torn away from one's native soil was to be separated from one's gods-greatest of all calamities. Some of the most beautiful of the Psalms express the yearning of the exiles for the Holy City and the temple of their God:

"By the rivers of Babylon,

There we sat down, yea, we wept,

When we remembered Zion.

Upon the willows in the midst thereof

We hanged up our harps.

For there they that led us captive required of us songs, And they that wasted us required of us mirth, saying,

Sing us one of the songs of Zion.

How shall we sing Jehovah's song
In a foreign land?

If I forget thee, O Jerusalem,

Let my right hand forget her skill.

Let my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth,

If I remember thee not;

If I prefer not Jerusalem

Above my chief joy."

The dreadful imprecation (not here quoted) in the closing lines of this otherwise noble psalm reveals the deep-seated sense of injury felt by the exiles. Most

of them were located not in Babylon but in colonies in agricultural districts. They settled down as Jeremiah had urged them to do, built houses, brought up families, and prospered as they never could have done in the barren land of Judah. Ezekiel refers to the exiles as transplanted to "a land of traffic,” “a city of merchants," "in a fruitful soil." Many entered into the commercial life and became wealthy. The genius for commerce which the Jews have displayed ever since first strikingly manifested itself here. hundred years later the Babylonian Jews were the wealthiest of their race in the world, and we find them sending gifts to their poor brethren in Jerusalem. It must not be thought that all remained true to their race and their religion. Very many were absorbed by their heathen environment. The faithful remnant, however, became the nucleus of a new and vigorous religious life.

A

The exiles needed consolation, and they had it. No longer did their prophets rebuke. Rather was it their mission to bind up the broken-hearted, to justify the ways of God to them, and to fill them with hope and courage for the future. The master mind of the exiles was Ezekiel, and in the next lesson we shall learn how he organized them and taught them and helped to keep the religion of Jehovah alive in them. Under his leadership they formed a miniature Judah in the midst of strangers.

Influenced by the teachings of Ezekiel and the great unknown prophet whom we call Second Isaiah, they came to believe that Jehovah had not cast them off, and that he was not powerless, but that it had been necessary for him to punish them for their sins, that he was ready to forgive them and to give them a glori

ous future if they would obey his commandments. Thenceforth the Jews were a people on probation, and the great purpose of their lives was to please Jehovah. They set themselves scrupulously to obey his laws as contained in the book of Deuteronomy. They became a forward-looking people, conscious of a great destiny. Because of this it made no difference what happened to them; they could endure anything.

BIBLICAL SOURCES:

The exiles at Telabib, Ezek. 3. 12-27.

Jeremiah's letter to the first captives, Jer 29

A prayer to Jehovah for mercy, Lam. 5.

The longing for Jerusalem. Psa. 137. (Some have thought that Psalms 42 and 43 belong to this period.)

NOTE. In connection with this lesson the student should read some good, brief history of Babylonia, as Jastrow's Civilization of Babylonia and Assyria, or Goodspeed s History of the Babylonians and Assyrians.

QUESTIONS

1. Discuss the character and work of Nebuchadrezzar.

2. Explain the reasons for the severe condemnation of him in the Bible. To what extent is it just?

3. Give a brief description of ancient Babylon; its fortifications; its buildings; its moral and religious conditions.

4. Give some facts regarding the life of the exiles in Babylonia. 5. What was there in the Babylonian civilization that tended to broaden the Hebrews?

6. Speak of the contributions of the Babylonians to civilization.

LESSON XLIII

EZEKIEL, THE FATHER OF JUDAISM

WITH the temple destroyed and the best part of Judah in exile, the problem of the Jewish leaders was how to keep the race from being absorbed by their conquerors, as Israel had been. Since the only way of worshiping Jehovah up to this time had been by bringing sacrifices to his temple, it would seem that the religion of Jehovah must perish. That it did not is due primarily to Ezekiel, who organized his people, kept them together, and found a way by which they could serve Jehovah in a land of strangers. Thus he became in a sense the founder of Judaism.

To the modern reader Ezekiel presents a less attractive personality than most of the other great prophets. He was subject to a bodily infirmity which rendered him at times dumb and incapable of action. His strange visions, influenced by Babylonian art, and his sometimes grotesque actions, seem to us to border on insanity. Yet, remarkable to say, Ezekiel's chief distinction is that he is a practical man, and that at the most critical time in the life of his people he had a plan which proved their salvation. He was a man of intense moral earnestness, and to this he owed his power. Generally we see only the austere side of him, but occasionally he allows us a glimpse of a very human side, as when he speaks of the death of his wife, “the desire of his eyes," and tells how, in obedience to the. command of Jehovah, he restrains his tears and goes on with his teaching.

His training.-Ezekiel was a priest, and the son of a priest of the temple at Jerusalem, thus a member of the aristocratic, priestly class, and a man of broad training. He was born probably during the splendid reign of Josiah, and must often have heard Jeremiah preach. Carried to Babylon when a young man, with the "first captivity," he seems to have remained silent until five years later, when his call to be a prophet came through a remarkable vision. Like Jeremiah, he took his call most seriously, and thenceforth felt himself responsible, not only for the exiles but for every Jewish soul all over the world. As a "watchman over the house of Israel" it was his duty to warn and chide and point the better way.

His early sermons.-Up to the time Jerusalem was destroyed his message was one of reproof. No other prophet was as severe in his denunciations of the sins of his countrymen. He said their history had been one long record of apostasy, idolatry, and immorality, and that punishment must come. He feared a second rebellion on the part of Judah, and did all he could to prevent it, while at the same time trying to prepare his people for the great catastrophe which he was sure would come.

Jerusalem was seething with rebellion, and the exiles, who had free intercourse with the motherland, aided and abetted it. To reinforce his spoken and written words Ezekiel used some curious object lessons to show what the consequences of rebellion against Babylon would be. On a clay tablet such as the Babylonians used for writing, he drew a representation of Jerusalem, and without it, the tents of a besieging army, with battering ram. Dramatically he enacted. the events of a siege. This was more than four years