="The people that walked in darkness have seen a great light: ... the rod of his oppressor thou hast broken.... For all the armor of the armed man in the tumult, and the garments rolled in blood, shall even be for burning, for fuel of fire. For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given; and the government shall be upon his shoulder, and his name shall be called Wonderful, Counsellor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace."= "In other words," he reasoned, "Jehovah will free us from the tyrannical Babylonians, give us an ideal king, who shall be wise and just and faithful, and under whose rule we shall see no more of the horror and cruelty of war." =Ezekiel's prophecies of hope.=--Away off in Babylonia itself Ezekiel helped to keep alive the hopes of the exiles. Even though the nation is dead, he told them, Jehovah can bring it to life. It will be as though the dry and bleaching bones in some valley where a battle was long ago fought should suddenly come together as human skeletons, and warm living flesh should grow upon them once more. Ezekiel worked out a kind of constitution for the new nation and the temple when these should be restored. All these brave leaders helped the Jews to believe in themselves as a people. They listened to these men as they spoke in their synagogues in Judaea and in Babylonia. They handed from one to another the rolls on which their words were written. And ever the children heard from their mothers these hopes which kept them from being completely discouraged: "We are Jews. The Jewish nation is not going to be destroyed. Some day the exiles in Babylon will return to the old country. We will have a king of our own. And we will build the great nation which Jehovah promised Abraham." THE BEGINNINGS OF A RESTORED JUDAH In the year B.C. 538, the Babylonian empire was conquered by Cyrus, the Persian. There was scarcely any resistance on the part of the Babylonians. And one of his first acts in the conquered city was to issue a proclamation that captives and exiles from other lands might return if they wished. It was the chance for which the Jews for forty years had been hoping. Now at last they could go back over that thousand-mile journey, up the Euphrates, across to the coast land, and down to Canaan. But alas! too many years had passed. Most of those who had come to Babylon as grown people and who remembered Canaan as home were now dead. Most of the living Jews had grown up in Babylon and were comfortably settled there. Yet some did return, and from time to time others kept returning. These men who thought enough of their nation to go back to the home land and help it in its weakness and poverty almost always became leaders.