A terrible prophetic picture of the afflictions which the Lord would heap upon Israel, is drawn by Moses in the twenty-sixth chapter of _Leviticus_. If persistently disobedient, they were to be scattered among all nations and suffer great afflictions in the lands of their enemies. The prophet Abijah said to the wife of Jeroboam, "The Lord shall smite Israel, as a reed is shaken in the water, and he shall root up Israel out of this good land, which he gave to their fathers, and shall scatter them beyond the river;" 1 _Kings_ 14. 15. This prophecy was fulfilled when the ten tribes were carried into captivity by the king of Assyria 721, B. C.; 2 _Kings_ 17. In the Apocrypha, the prophet Esdras states that these ten tribes went a year and a half journey into the north country; 2 _Esdras_ 13. 39-45. That many remained is evident from _verses_ 48 and 49 of the same chapter. The great historian of Israel, Josephus, who wrote nearly 800 years after the captivity of the ten tribes, corroborates this view of the subject. Speaking of the return of the Jews under Esdras, he says: "Many of them took their effects with them, and came to Babylon, as very desirous of going down to Jerusalem, but then the entire body of the people of Israel remained in that country, wherefore there are but two tribes in Asia and Europe subject to the Romans, while the ten tribes are beyond the Euphrates till now, and are an immense multitude, and not to be estimated by numbers;" _Ant. B_. 11. _C_. 5. Over twenty-six centuries these scattered tribes of Israel, which Josephus declared, 1800 years ago, were an immense multitude in Asia, have continued to mix up with the nations of the earth. The second great scattering of Israel was brought about by the Babylonish captivity. The Lord said through the prophet Jeremiah, "I will give all Judah into the hand of the king of Babylon;" 20. 4. There is an account of the fulfilment of this prophecy in 2 _Kings, chapters_ 24 and 25. Jerusalem was desolated and only the poor left to till the land. The Jews, like the ten tribes before them, were scattered among the nations of Asia. In _Ezra, Chap_. 2, we have an account of those who returned to build the waste places of Judah, but multitudes of them remained in their scattered condition, as is evident from the book of Esther. Some nine years after the completion of the term of their captivity, they were scattered from India to Ethiopia, through the 127 provinces of the Persian empire; 8. 9. Jeremiah prophesied the entire desolation of Judah; "Judah shall be carried away captive all of it, it shall be wholly carried away captive;" 13. 19. It was nearly 600 years from the consummation of the Babylonish captivity to the fulfilment of this prophecy, by the final destruction of the Jews, as a nation, by the Romans, when a remnant of some 97,000 were sold into slavery in the cities of the Roman empire, and were scattered wherever the caprice of their masters led them.