Of these the first, as was most meet, spoke pardon to the people's conscience and the proclamation that their set period of warfare was accomplished; the second announced that circumstances and the politics of the world, hitherto adverse, would be made easy to their return; the third bade them, in their bereavement of earthly leaders, and their own impotence, find their eternal confidence in God's Word; while the fourth lifted them, as with one heart and voice, to herald the certain return of Jehovah, at the head of His people, to His own City, and His quiet, shepherdly rule of them on their own land. These herald voices form the prologue to our prophecy, ch. xl. 1-11, to which we will now turn. FOOTNOTES: [23] If we would construct for ourselves some more definite idea of that long march from Judah to Babylon, we might assist our imagination by the details of the only other instance on so great a scale of "exile by administrative process"--the transportation to Siberia which the Russian Government effects (it is said, on good authority) to the extent of eighteen thousand persons a year. Every week throughout the year marching parties, three to four hundred strong, leave Tomsk for Irkutsk, doing twelve to twenty miles daily in fetters, with twenty-four hours' rest every third day, or three hundred and thirty miles in a month (_Century Magazine_, Nov. 1888). [24] For the above details, see Rawlinson's _Five Great Monarchies of the Ancient Eastern World_, vol. i. [25] _Herodotus_, Bk. I.; "Memoirs by Commander James Felix Jones, I. N.," in _Selections from the Records of the Bombay Government_, No. XLIII., New Series, 1857; Ainsworth's _Euphrates Valley Expedition_; Layard's _Nineveh_. [26] Perrot and Chipiez, _Histoire de l'Art d'Antiquité_, vol. ii.; Assyrie p. 9. [27] The Book of Daniel. [28] Isa. xlii. 22, xlvii. 6. [29] _Records of the Past_, second series, vol. i., M. Oppert's Translations. [30] Mr. St. Chad Boscawen's recent lectures, of which I have been able to see only the reports in the _Manchester Guardian_. [31] Ch. lviii. 2. [32] Ch. lviii. 13, 14. [33] See vol. i., p. 292 ff. [34] Jer. xxix. [35] _Records of the Past_, first series, ix., 95 _seq._ BOOK II. _THE LORD'S DELIVERANCE._ CHAPTER V. _THE PROLOGUE: THE FOUR HERALD VOICES._ ISAIAH xl. 1-11.