"By the waters of Babylon sat" the Jews whom Nebuchadnezzar had carried from their homes. They were men of distinction, the first in rank and culture, and the priests: it was the intellectual nucleus of the people that had been transplanted to Babylonia. The danger that this nucleus, in despair of the protection of their own god, should turn to the gods of the conquerors as being more mighty, was not great. Jehovah was no longer merely the tribal God of Israel, who had been unable to protect his tribe against all other nations: the prophets had announced him as the Almighty God of the world, who ruled over the kingdoms of the earth, who would raise up and throw down at his pleasure, who exercises justice. Moreover, the captives possessed in the Book of the Law (Deuteronomy) a plain rule of life, which had been wanting to the Israelites when transplanted by the Assyrian kings. Among them were earnest spirits and mighty hearts, who preserved their courage and hope unbroken. Opportunities for these qualities were not wanting in their dealings with their countrymen, for the exiles in their differences with each other repaired much more readily to their own countrymen who were skilled in the law, than to the magistrates of the Babylonians. Among those who were first carried away in the year 597 B.C. (p. 332), was the priest Ezekiel, who had his dwelling on the Chaboras, in Mesopotamia. The rulers often came to consult Ezekiel, and the elders gathered in his house, "that he might ask Jehovah for them."[741] His announcements are strongly coloured by the priestly point of view on which he takes his stand. He maintains strictly the rubrics and customs of worship, the correct offering of sacrifice. It is a comfort to him in his sorrow to imagine, in minute detail, how the temple is to be restored with all its buildings, the land divided among the tribes, what was to be allotted to the priests, and what duties would devolve upon them, if Jehovah should restore Israel again out of the captivity.[742] Hence with the firmer conviction could Ezekiel say to his people, that they were a people of "an impudent face and hardened heart,"[743] but that Jehovah had no pleasure in the death of the evil-doer, but only in his conversion and improvement;[744] that Jehovah would assemble them out of the lands into which they were scattered. "I will bring you," so Jehovah speaks in Ezekiel, "into the wilderness of the nations; and there will I plead with you face to face, as I pleaded with your fathers in the wilderness of the land of Egypt. I will cause you to pass under the rod, and I will bring you into the bond of the covenant. And I will purge out from among you the rebels and them that transgress against me. They shall not return to Israel. I will sprinkle pure water over you that ye may be clean. I will put a new heart and a new spirit within you, and will take the stony heart out of your flesh, and give you a heart of flesh out of