The contrast between Judaism and heathenism was further heightened by the view of the prophets and psalmists, showing that the great nations were the very embodiment of idolatrous iniquity, murderous violence and sexual impurity, a world of arrogance and pride, defying God and doomed to perdition, because they opposed the kingdom of God proclaimed by Israel.(1264) Henceforth the term “the nations” (_goyim_) was taken by the religious as meaning the wicked ones, who would not be able to stand the divine judgment in the future life, but would go down to Sheol, or Gehenna, to fall a prey to everlasting corruption, to the fire that is never quenched.(1265) 5. Yet such a wholesale condemnation could not long be maintained; it was too strongly contradicted in principle by the prophets and Psalmists, and quite as much by the apocalyptic writers and Haggadists of later times. The book of Jonah testifies that Israel’s God sent His prophet to the heathen of Nineveh to exhort them to repentance, that they might obtain forgiveness and salvation like repentant Israel.(1266) Heathenism is doomed to perish, not the heathen; they are to acknowledge the heavenly Judge in their very punishments and return to Him. Such is the conclusion of all the exhortations of the prophets predicting punishment to the nations. Moreover, those heathen who escape the doom of the world-powers are to proclaim the mighty deeds of the Lord to the utmost lands. Nay, according to the grand vision of the exilic seer, among the many nations that shall assemble at the end of days to worship the Lord in Zion, select ones will be admitted to the priesthood with the sons of Aaron.(1267) The name _Hadrak_, understood as “he who bringeth back,” suggested itself to the rabbis as a title of the Messiah, the converter of the heathen nations.(1268) So in both the Talmud and the Sibylline books(1269) Noah is represented as a preacher of repentance to the nations before the flood, and accordingly the latter book adjures the Hellenic world to repent of their sinful lives before they would be overwhelmed by the flood of fire at the great judgment day. In the same spirit the Haggadists tell that God sent Balaam, Job, and other pious men as prophets of the heathen to teach them the way of repentance.(1270) And the rabbis actually say that, if the heathen nations had not refused the Torah when the Lord offered it to them at Sinai, it would have been the common property of all mankind.(1271)