Therefore the Jews, though torn for their discipline from Jerusalem, continued to identify themselves more passionately than ever with their desecrated city. A prayer of the period exclaims: _Thy saints take pleasure in her stones, and her dust is dear to them._[21] The exiles proved this by taking her name. Their prophets addressed them as _Zion_ and _Jerusalem_. Scattered and leaderless groups of captives in a far-off land, they were still that City of God. She had not ceased to be; ruined and forsaken as she lay, she was yet _graven on the palms of Jehovah's hands; and her walls were continually before Him_.[22] The exiles kept up the register of her families; they prayed towards her; they looked to return to build her bulwarks; they spent long hours of their captivity in tracing upon the dust of that foreign land the groundplan of her restored temple. * * * * * With such beliefs in God and man and sacrifice, with such hopes and opportunities for their world-mission, but also with such a bias back to the material Jerusalem, did Israel pass into exile. FOOTNOTES: [17] See vol. i., p. 100 f. [18] Jer. xlv. [19] This is especially clear from ch. xxxi. [20] Having read through the Book of Jeremiah once again since I wrote the above paragraph, I am more than ever impressed with the influence of his life upon Isa. xl.-lxvi. [21] Psalm cii. 14. [22] Isa. xlix. 16. CHAPTER IV. _ISRAEL IN EXILE._ FROM 589 TILL ABOUT 550 B.C.