* Ezra iv.-vi.; the account given by Josephus of the two expeditions of Zerubbabel seems to have been borrowed partly from the canonical book, partly from the Apocryphal writing known as the _1st Book of Esdras_. For nearly a century after this the little Jewish republic remained quiescent. It had slowly developed until it had gradually won back a portion of the former territories of Benjamin and Judah, but its expansion southwards was checked by the Idumaeans, to whom Nebuchadrezzar had years before handed over Hebron and Acrabattene (Akrabbim) as a reward for the services they had rendered. On the north its neighbours were the descendants of those Aramaean exiles whom Sargon, Sennacherib, and Esar-haddon, kings of Assyria, had, on various occasions, installed around Samaria in Mount Ephraim. At first these people paid no reverence to the "God of the land," so that Jahveh, in order to punish them, sent lions, which spread carnage in their ranks. Then the King of Assyria allotted them an Israelitish priest from among his prisoners, who taught them "the law" of Jahveh, and appointed other priests chosen from the people, and showed them how to offer up sacrifices on the ancient high places.* * Kings xvii. 24-40. There do not seem to have been the continual disputes between the inhabitants of Judaea and Samaria before the return of Nehemiah, which the compilers of the Books of Ezra and Nehemiah seem to have believed. Thus another Israel began to rise up again, and, at first, the new Judah seems to have been on tolerably friendly terms with it: the two communities traded and intermarried with one another, the Samaritans took part in the religious ceremonies, and certain of their leaders occupied a court in the temple at Jerusalem. The alliance, however, proved dangerous to the purity of the faith, for the proselytes, while they adopted Jahveh and gave Him that supreme place in their devotions which was due to "the God of the land," had by no means entirely forsworn their national superstitions, and Adrammelek, Nergal, Tartak, Anammelek, and other deities still found worshippers among them. Judah, which in the days of its independence had so often turned aside after the gods of Canaan and Moab, was in danger of being led away by the idolatrous practices of its new neighbours; intermarriage with the daughters of Moab and Ammon, of Philistia and Samaria, was producing a gradual degeneracy: the national language was giving way before the Aramaean; unless some one could be found to stem the tide of decadence and help the people to remount the slope which they were descending, the fate of Judah was certain. A prophet--the last of those whose predictions have survived to our time--stood forth amid the general laxity and called the people to account for their transgressions, in the name of the Eternal, but his single voice, which seemed but a feeble echo of the great prophets of former ages, did not meet with