There was hardly any fear that the captive and fugitive Jews would lose themselves in the foreign nations among whom they dwelt, like the Israelites, who had been transplanted to Assyria and Media, or that they would give up their national faith. Behind the punishment induced by the sins of the people, the prophets had proclaimed the restoration of the purified Israel. The punishment had burst upon them, they did not doubt that the restoration would come. If Asshur had fallen, the hour of Babylon might strike; Jeremiah had already fixed the time for it. Thus the destruction of their state and their shrines did not make the Jews despair of the help of their God, or cause them to fall from their faith. Those who remained behind, no less than those who were driven out, cherished the hope of Jehovah's help as deeply as they felt the pain of the fall of Jerusalem. Jerusalem fell nineteen years after the battle of Karchemish. Step by step Nebuchadnezzar had overcome Syria. First Arpad, Hamath and Damascus had succumbed, then the Ammonites, Moabites and Edomites. After Judah had recognised his supremacy in the year 600 B.C., the rebellion on which Jehoiakim ventured three years afterwards had brought upon that country a severe punishment, and a condition of greater dependence. Four years afterwards, 593 B.C., the cities of the Phenicians were reduced except Tyre. The second rebellion of Judah was followed by the annihilation of the country. The prophets of the Jews looked forward to the war of Nebuchadnezzar against Egypt--to the punishment for the campaign which Hophrah had undertaken against Syria, and which had compelled Nebuchadnezzar to raise the siege of Jerusalem. Ezekiel, who was among the Jews carried away with Jechoniah in 597 B.C., and with part of them had received a habitation on the Chaboras beyond the Euphrates, proclaimed the destruction and fall of Egypt. "Egypt," he says, "has been a staff of reed to the house of Israel. When they took hold of thee by the hand then thou didst break, and rend all their shoulder; and when they leaned upon thee, thou didst break and madest their loins to totter. Thou wast as a dragon in the seas, and camest forth in thy rivers. The sword of the king of Babylon shall come upon thee. By the swords of the mighty will I cause thy multitudes to fall: and I will water with thy blood the land wherein thou swimmest, even to the mountain; I will destroy all the beasts thereof from beside the great waters; neither shall the foot of man, nor the hoof of beasts, trouble them any more. Go down to them that are sunk in the pit, and be thou laid with the uncircumcised."[672] The same fortune was announced to the Pharaoh Hophrah and his land by Jeremiah among the emigrants at Tachpanhes[673] on the Pelusiac arm of the Nile: "Behold, I will give Pharaoh Hophrah, king of Egypt, into the hand of his enemies, and into the hand of them that seek his life, as I gave Zedekiah, king of Judah,