uced the worship of idols. The strife
between Rehoboam and Jeroboam led to centuries of warfare between their
descendants, with the result that the tribes of Israel were scattered and
disrupted. In brief, it was because they forgot the meaning of the Law of
God that they became involved in ignorant fanaticism and blameworthy
practices such as insurgence and sedition. Their divines, having concluded
that all those essential qualifications of humankind set forth in the Holy
Book were by then a dead letter, began to think only of furthering their
own selfish interests, and afflicted the people by allowing them to sink
into the lowest depths of heedlessness and ignorance. And the fruit of
their wrong doing was this, that the old-time glory which had endured so
long now changed to degradation, and the rulers of Persia, of Greece, and
of Rome, took them over. The banners of their sovereignty were reversed;
the ignorance, foolishness, abasement and self-love of their religious
leaders and their scholars were brought to light in the coming of
Nebuchadnezzar, King of Babylon, who destroyed them. After a general
massacre, and the sacking and razing of their houses and even the
uprooting of their trees, he took captive whatever remnants his sword had
spared and carried them off to Babylon. Seventy years later the
descendants of these captives were released and went back to Jerusalem.
Then Hezekiah and Ezra reestablished in their midst the fundamental
principles of the Holy Book, and day by day the Israelites advanced, and
the morning-brightness of their earlier ages dawned again. In a short
time, however, great dissensions as to belief and conduct broke out anew,
and again the one concern of the Jewish doctors became the promotion of
their own selfish purposes, and the reforms that had obtained in Ezra's
time were changed to perversity and corruption. The situation worsened to
such a degree that time and again, the armies of the republic of Rome and
of its rulers conquered Israelite territory. Finally the warlike Titus,
commander of the Roman forces, trampled the Jewish homeland into dust,
putting every man to the sword, taking the women and children captive,
flattening their houses, tearing out their trees, burning their books,
looting their treasures, and reducing Jerusalem and the Temple to an ash
heap. After this supreme calamity, the star of Israel's dominion sank away
to nothing, and to this day, the remnant of that vanished na