Now let us go a step farther. Just seventy years had elapsed since the first band of captives were carried away to Babylon by Nebuchadnezzar in the year B.C. 606. "That the word of the Lord by the mouth of Jeremiah might be fulfilled, the Lord stirred up the spirit of Cyrus, King of Persia, that he issued a proclamation throughout all his kingdom, and put it also in writing, saying: Thus saith Cyrus, King of Persia, the Lord God of heaven hath given me all the kingdoms of the earth; and He hath charged me to build Him a house at Jerusalem that is in Judah. Who is there among you of all His people? His God be with him, and let him go up to Jerusalem, which is in Judah." This proclamation, which was in reference to all the people "of the Lord God of heaven," was issued in the year B.C. 536, two years after the conquest of Babylon by Cyrus, and was, we are told, promulgated "throughout all his kingdom," which was the same as that over which Nebuchadnezzar and his successors reigned before him, only again somewhat extended, even as the kingdom of Babylon was identical with that of Assyria, as already pointed out. Indeed, Cyrus and Darius I. are called indifferently by the sacred historians by the title of "King of Persia" (Ezra iv. 5), "King of Babylon" (Ezra v. 13), and "King of Assyria" (Ezra vi. 22). The first response to this proclamation was a caravan of "forty-two thousand three hundred and sixty, beside their servants and their maids, of whom there were seven thousand three hundred and thirty-seven, and two hundred singing men and singing women," who, under the leadership of Zerubbabel, who was a lineal descendant of the royal house of David, and of Joshua the high priest, made their way from "Babylon to Jerusalem." Now the leading spirits of this returned party of exiles were, no doubt, "the chief of the fathers of Judah and Benjamin, and the priests and Levites"; at the same time they included "all those" from all the other tribes without distinction, "whose spirit God had raised to go up to build the house of the Lord, which is in Jerusalem" (Ezra i. 5). They are no longer counted after their tribal origin, but in families, and after the cities to which they originally belonged, which, for the most part, are not easy to identify; hence it is difficult to say how many belonged to "Judah," and how many to "Israel"--but that there were a good many in this company of those who belonged to the northern kingdom of the Ten Tribes, is incidentally brought out by the mention of two hundred and twenty-three men of Ai and Bethel alone. Now, Bethel was the very centre of the ancient rival idolatrous worship instituted by Jeroboam, and, though on the boundary of Benjamin, belonged to "Ephraim."