Moses Predicts the Dispersion.--Prophecies of Israel's dispersion were made as early as the time of Moses, fifteen hundred years before the advent of the Savior. When the Twelve Tribes were about to possess themselves of the Promised Land, their great leader, who was soon to depart, told them that so long as they served Jehovah and honored his statutes, they should be prospered and remain an independent nation. But if they forsook Jehovah and served other gods, He would scatter them among all people, from one end of the earth even unto the other. [1] A House Divided.--Joshua, succeeding Moses, conquered the land of Canaan and apportioned it among the Tribes of Israel. A season of prosperity and power was followed by decadence and ruin. As early as the days of the Judges the people began to depart from God and to invite by rebellious conduct the national calamity that had been predicted. The glory of the reigns of David and Solomon being past, the curse, long suspended, fell, and the Israelitish Empire hastened to decay. The tribes in the northern part of the land revolted and set up the Kingdom of Israel, distinct from the Kingdom of Judah, over which Solomon's son Rehoboam continued to reign. The tribe of Benjamin and the half tribe of Manasseh adhered to Judah. Ahijah, Amos and Hosea.--Jeroboam, King of Israel, made idolatry the state religion. During his reign the dispersion was again predicted, Ahijah the prophet thus voicing the word of the Lord to his disobedient people: "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." [2] Another prophet who foretold the same disaster was Hosea; [3] still another, Amos, who declared that Israel should "surely go into captivity" and be "sifted among all nations." [4] Hosea's prophecy substitutes past for future, thus: "Ephraim, he hath mixed himself among the people," referring to the event in prospect as if it had already taken place. Possibly a prophetic vision--then past--had apprised this seer of what was coming, or it may have been only a figure of rhetoric, common even at the present day. "The Wolf on the Fold."--About the year 725 B. C. these prophecies began to have their fulfillment. The Assyrians came against the Kingdom of Israel and commenced the work of its destruction. In a series of deportations they carried away the Ten Tribes--nine and a half, to be exact--and, as customary with conquerors in those days, supplied their places with colonists from other parts. The Lost Tribes.--Concerning the deported--the famous "Lost Tribes"--very little is now known. Josephus, the Jewish historian, who wrote during the first century after Christ, states that they were then beyond the Euphrates; and Esdras, in the Apocrypha, declares that they went a journey of a year and a half into "the north country."