power not one is wanting. . . . Hast thou not seen? hast thou not heard? Jehovah is the Everlasting, the maker of the ends of the earth; he fainteth not, neither is weary; there is no searching of his understanding. Youths may faint and be weary, and the strongest men may stumble; but they that wait upon Jehovah shall renew their strength: they shall lift up their wings as eagles; they shall run and not be weary, and they shall walk and not faint."1

Wherefore the exiles need not fear,

"For I, Jehovah, thy God, the Holy One of Israel, thy Saviour, have given Egypt for thy ransom, Ethiopia and Seba for thee. . . . I am Jehovah, and beside me there is no Saviour; I will work, and who shall hinder? Thus saith Jehovah, your Redeemer, for your sake I have sent to Babylon, and will drive them all away, even the Chaldæans into their proud ships."2

Cyrus is spoken of as the "anointed," not as Messiah, but as the chosen instrument to free Israel by smiting the Babylonians. For in the second Isaiah we find the ideas about the Messiah altogether changed. He is no longer expected as a king of David's house, or indeed a king at all; but portrayed as the righteous "servant of Jehovah," who cries not, whose

2 Isa. xliii. 3-II.

1 Isa. xl. 21- 31.

3 Isa. xlv. I.

voice is not heard in the street, who, as a son of Israel, must bear its sorrows, be bruised for its iniquities, and the measure of whose sufferings shall be the measure of its after glory, because for that servant's sake Jehovah, to whom in common belief atonement must be made, will be merciful, Now it is under such a figure of speech, not uncommon to the Hebrew prophets, that Isaiah, as he himself declares, speaks of the pious section of Israel, not of any one man, and it is these pious ones who, as a part of the nation, must be "wounded for its sins," and thus secure from its appeased god the reward of that self-sacrifice in the good of the whole. Thus did the prophet dimly see a truth which is the life of the world, and which to Jesus, with his still more exalted views of God's relation to man, came with such power that he not only proclaimed it, but died for it.

At last the looked-for event occurred. The soldiers of Cyrus vainly tried to scale or batter down the thick and lofty walls of Babylon, and

so had recourse to secret measures. They dug a canal which diverted the waters of the Euphrates, and then, while the besieged, trusting to their strong defences, were feasting, crossed the river-bed under cover of the darkness, crept under the unguarded water-gates and

took the city.

B. C.

538.

"The under-world is stirred below, and comes forth to. meet thee:

It stirreth up the shades for thee, even all the leaders of the earth:

With one mouth they cry to thee,

Thou, too, art an empty shadow as we; thou art become. like unto us!

Thy pride is brought down to the under-world, and the melody of thy lutes,

How art thou fallen from heaven, O shining one, son of the morning!" 1

Soon after this great victory, Cyrus gave the Jews, as we may now call them, leave to return to their native land and rebuild their temple,. the sacred vessels of which he restored. Whether

1 Isa. xiv. 9-12. In the quotations from the Isaiahs I have adopted the scholarly translation of Mr. Cheyne, the forthcoming issue of whose book in an expanded form one is glad.

to note.

or not any service rendered to him by the exiles had prompted this kindly act, it was a wise one, because it secured him the gratitude of a brave people who, thus placed on the western outposts of the empire, would be its trusty defenders against attacks from Egypt. In such psalms as the 126th,

"When Jehovah brought home the captivity of Zion, We were like them that dream,

Then was our mouth filled with laughter,

And our tongue with singing,"

we read what joy their release from bondage gave the Jews. But while some thousands, and these mainly the priestly and poorer classes— "the chaff," as they were called-availed themselves of the leave to return, the larger number, "the wheat," preferred to remain in the land which had so long been their home. Indeed, when we remember that nearly fifty years had passed since the fall of Jerusalem, it is clear that most of the earliest captives must have been dead; others then young had grown old, and to those who had been born in Chaldæa, Judæa was a strange land round which no memories of

childhood or regrets of manhood gathered. No wonder, therefore, that these lacked zeal and courage to pluck up roots firmly struck in their rich foster-land and transplant them in barren Judæa, and that they shrank from a long journey across an unbroken desert, where supplies of food and water were fitful, and which was infested with robber-tribes. But they who braved these dangers were buoyed up with the hope of seeing Jerusalem, and taking part in the glorious work of raising the fallen temple. They cheered the way with songs which they could not sing "in a strange land," and at last, after months of toil and hardship, reached their journey's end. They found the land desolate, for what the mad havoc of war had spared had been destroyed by the wild tribes that swept over it; but they set to work with a will to "build up the old ruins, and rear the places that had long lain waste." An altar to Jehovah was raised at Jerusalem on the temple site, and the foundation of another temple laid amidst songs of praise and 535.

B. C.

sound of trumpets and cymbals; but an un