during the ninth century B.C. The peoples subject to Egypt passed under their rule, the Judæans submitting quietly; but four years afterwards a rebellion brought the armies of Nebuchadnezzar, the conqueror of Nineveh, to Jerusalem. The city was taken, the temple treasures seized, B. C. and a large number of the wealthier 597. classes carried across the Syrian desert to Babylon. In less than ten years the stubborn people again revolted, and the Chaldæan king once more laid siege to the famous city. It was bravely defended; as breaches were made in the walls stones were taken from the palaces and houses to stop them. Famine so raged that noble ladies picked garbage from the dungheaps and parents ate their own children; and

B. C.

at last, after a year and a half, the 586. Chaldæans forced an entrance, this time to blend no mercy with their vengeance. The ringleaders were put to death; the king, after seeing his sons killed, had his eyes plucked out and was carried prisoner to Babylon with large numbers of his subjects. The city was then given over to the

soldiers for plunder and afterwards set on fire; the "holy and beautiful house where their fathers praised Jehovah," cherubim, altar, ark, all burnt.

So fell Jerusalem, in the sight of whose ruins from the heights around the vanquished poured out their lamentations, because "abroad the sword bereaveth and at home is death."

"Alas! how doth the city sit solitary, that was full of people!

How is she become as a widow ! she that was great among the nations,

The princess among the provinces, how is she become tributary!

Captive is Judah gone forth because of affliction and because of great servitude :

She dwelleth among the heathen, she findeth no rest : All her persecutors overtook her in the midst of her straits.

Men! unto you do I call, all ye that pass by; behold, and

see

If there be any sorrow like unto my sorrow, which is done unto me,

Wherewith Jehovah hath afflicted me in the day of his fierce anger."

1

The land was so desolated that scarcely a man of note was left in it, only "the poor to be vine

1 Lamentations i. 1-4, 12.

dressers and husbandmen," and a few faithful like Jeremiah, for he, though invited to Babylon by the king, preferred to remain. On the breaking out of a third tumult, in which the Chaldæan governor was killed, many fled to Egypt, forcing Jeremiah to go with them, while another batch being exiled, the land was well-nigh cleared of every Judæan.

IV.

The Exile in Babylon, and the Return. THE vast desert which stretches across Africa and Western Asia is broken first by the hills that enclose the valley of the Nile, and then by the rising ground watered by the Tigris and Euphrates. Like the delta formed by the Nile, the low-lying country near the Persian Gulf has been laid down by those rivers. Its fertile and well-watered soil, the native home of the wheat-plant, invited the settlement and favoured the growth of great empires,

K

so that it became at a very remote time a centre of civilization, equal to, if not greater in importance than, Egypt, with which power its people so long contended for the mastery over Syria. It was here, as we have seen already, that the Babylonian branch of the Semites had settled, and become the ruling population, fixing their capital at the city which, translating its Accadian name into their own tongue, they called Bab-el, or "gate of God."

During the brilliant reign of Nebuchadnezzar the kingdom was extended from the Tigris to the Mediterranean, and Babylon became the most splendid capital of ancient times. It stood on both banks of the Euphrates, and was built in the form of a square, each side of which is said to have been fifteen miles long; but of so vast a walled province, as it might be called, the greater part was park, field, and garden. Among the most famous buildings was the king's palace, with its mimic mountain-terraces of trees and flowers called "hanging gardens," accounted among the "seven wonders of the world." There was also

the lofty temple of Bel, raised by Nebuchadnezzar in seven tower-like stories, faced with the colours of the sun, moon, and five planets, the topmost story being crowned with a temple. It was around this building that the legend had grown how the god had baulked the efforts of the workmen to raise it high as heaven to save themselves against another deluge, by confusing their speech. Babylon was not only a seat of gaiety and worship, but of commerce, art, and learning. There the ships called on their voyages between Arabia and India, bringing the rough products of those lands to be exchanged for its finely wrought goods; there the far-famed Chaldæan astronomers watched the stars, and strove to read in their movements the fate of men and empires. Palm-groves still relieve the tameness of the landscape, and in early spring the plain is covered with grass and flowers; but, save by Arabs and a few villagers, the ancient sites are deserted, and the remains of canals that once carried the surplus waters to barren parts wind across swampy flats to which,