The fortunate beginning of the restoration of the city and temple soon met with difficulties. The people of Samaria, who were a mixture of the remnant of the Israelites and the strangers whom Sargon had brought there after the capture of Samaria (III. 86), and Esarhaddon at a later date (III. 154), came to meet the exiles in a friendly spirit, and offered them assistance, from which we must conclude that in spite of the foreign admixture the Israelitish blood and the worship of Jehovah were preponderant in Samaria. The new temple would thus have been the common sanctuary of the united people of Israel. But the "sons of captivity" were too proud of the sorrows which they had undergone, and the fidelity which they had preserved to Jehovah, and their pure descent, to accept this offer. Hence the old quarrel between Israel and Judah broke out anew, and the exiles soon felt the result. After their repulse the Samaritans set themselves to hinder the building by force; "they terrified the exiles that they built no more, and hired counsellors to make the attempt vain during the whole of the remainder of the reign of Cyrus."[107] The reasons which these counsellors brought forward before Cyrus against the continuation of the buildings at Jerusalem, would be the same which were afterwards brought before Artaxerxes Longimanus; namely, that when Jerusalem and its walls were finished the city would become rebellious and disobedient, as it was previously under the kings of Babylon. FOOTNOTES: [53] The reigns of Nebuchadnezzar, Evilmerodach, Neriglissar, and the accession of Nabonetus in 555 B.C., are now fixed not only by the canon of Ptolemy but also by the Babylonian tablets, which give forty-three years for Nebuchadnezzar (604-561), two years for Evilmerodach (561-559), four years for Neriglissar (559-555), seventeen years for Nabonetus, (555-538); "Transactions Bibl. Society," 6, p. 47-53. Oppert (_l. c._ p. 262) also mentions a tablet of Labasi-marduk (Labasoarchad), who sat on the throne for nine months. Boscawen reads Lakhabasi-Kudur, _l. c._ p. 78. On the elevation of Hiram in Tyre, vol. III. 394. [54] Ps. and Isa. xxi. 2. [55] Fragm. 14, ed. Müller. [56] Ps. cxxxvii. [57] Ps. liii., liv. [58] Jer. 1. 17-19. [59] Jer. 1. 2; li. 44. [60] Jer. li. 13, 53, 58. [61] Jer. 1. 14, 29; li. 27. [62] V. 314 _n_. [63] Deut. Isa. xiii. 17-22; xiv. 4, 11-14. [Cf. Cheyne, "Isaiah," Vol. II., Essay xi.] [64] Deut. Isa. xli. 2, 3; xli. 25; xliv. 28. Kohut, "Antiparsismus in Deut. Yesaias, Z. D. M. G." 1876, 3, 711 ff. [65] Deut. Isa. xlv. 1, 2, 3. Vol. III. 369. [66] Deut. Isa. xlvii. 1-13. [67] Deut. Isa. xlix. 14-16. [68] Deut. Isa. li. 17. Vol. III. 326. [69] Deut. Isa. xlix. 13. [70] Deut. Isa. xlvi. 11; xlviii. 14, 15. [71] Xenoph. "Cyri inst." 7, 5. [72] Jer. li. 31, 32, 39; Deut. Isa. xiv. 7-9; xxi. 4-9. [73] Dan. v. 1-31. [74] Beros. fragm. 14; Euseb. "Chron." 1. 42, ed. Schöne.