3. Final Overthrow of Judah.--According to Josephus (De Bell. Jud. vi: 9, 3) 1,100,000 men fell in the siege of Jerusalem by Titus, and 79,000 were captured in the whole war. Of the latter number, the greater part was distributed among the provinces, to be butchered in the amphitheaters or cast to wild beasts; others were doomed to work as public slaves in Egypt; only those under the ages of seventeen were sold into private bondage. An equally dreadful destruction fell upon the remains of the nation, which had once more assembled in Judea, {374} under the reign of Hadrian (A. D. 133), which Dion Cassius concisely relates. By these two savage wars the Jewish population must have been effectually extirpated from the Holy Land itself, a result which did not follow from the Babylonian captivity. Afterwards a dreary period of fifteen hundred years' oppression crushed in Europe all who bore the name of Israel, and Christian nations have visited on their head a crime [the crucifixion of Messiah] perpetrated by a few thousand inhabitants of Jerusalem, who were not the real forefathers of the European Jews. Nor in the east has their lot been much more cheering. With a few partial exceptions, they have ever since been a despised, an oppressed and naturally a degraded people; though from them have spread light and truth to the distant nations of the earth.--Biblical Literature (Kitto) vol. I, p. 39. 4. Return of the Ten Tribes from the North.--Away in yonder north countries, where, I do not know, but away in those regions are ten tribes of the house of Israel. How do you know they are in the north country? Because the Bible has told us that in the latter days they should come out of the north country, and if they were not in the north country they could not come from there. Jeremiah says in his thirty-first chapter--"Behold I will bring them from the north, the blind and the lame with them, and the woman with child; they shall come, a great company out of the north countries." Where will they go to? Will they go immediately to Palestine, where they formerly had their inheritance. No. Jeremiah tells us where they will go, he tells there is to be a place called Zion before these tribes come out of the north countries, and when they come with a great company, the blind and the lame with them, and the Lord God leads them with supplication and with tears and with prayers, bringing them forth from those dreary, desolate, cold arctic regions; when that day shall come, there shall be a Zion prepared to receive these ten tribes, before they finally go back to Palestine. Is there anything in the scriptures about this? Yes. In the same chapter of Jeremiah we read that, "they shall come and sing in the height of Zion." Zion, then, will have to be built up before they come; Zion will have to be reared somewhere and prepared to receive them; and it will be a holy place, and it will be a holy people who will build up Zion, so much so that the Lord will bring