ourse, the Hebrews
were bitterly homesick. The land of Babylonia was as flat as a floor.
The Hebrews longed for the lovely hills and valleys of their native
land.

=By the rivers of Babylon,
There we sat down, yea, we wept,
When we remembered Zion.
Upon the willows in the midst thereof
We hanged up our harps,
For there they that led us captive required of us songs,
And they that wasted us required of us mirth, saying,
Sing us one of the songs of Zion.
How shall we sing the Lord's song
In a strange land?=

But the years went by, and they had time to look about in the new
country. They found it full of opportunities for money-making. The
soil, watered by hundreds of canals from the Euphrates and Tigris
Rivers, was wonderfully rich. Everywhere there were prosperous towns
and cities with great brick buildings, beautifully decorated with
sculpture, and thronged with merchants. Ships laden with wheat and
dates and with Babylonian rugs and mantles and other beautiful
articles sailed up the rivers, or out to sea toward India. Many
Hebrews, or Jews (that is, Hebrews from Judaea), became merchants. In
their own land they had been chiefly a nation of farmers. The
reputation of the Jews for cleverness in trade began with these
experiences in Babylon when hundreds of Jewish boys obtained positions
in great Babylonian stores or banks, and by and by set up for
themselves as merchants. Among the Babylonian contracts on clay
tablets coming down to us from this period are many Jewish names.

THE TEMPTATION TO FORSAKE JEHOVAH

These young Hebrew merchants found themselves in a net-work of foreign
religious customs. When a customer signed a contract it was proposed
that he offer a sacrifice to the god Marduk, that the enterprise might
prosper. There were religious processions and feast days in which
everyone joined, just as we hang out flags on the Fourth of July.
Foreigners from other lands joined in these rites and thought nothing
of it. Furthermore, some of these captive Jews thought that their
Hebrew God, Jehovah, had not protected them from these mighty
Babylonians. Surely, the Babylonian gods were the stronger, and one
should pay them due reverence.

=Memories of the prophets.=--On the other hand, even the dullest of
the Jews must have begun to understand that the religion of their
prophets was a different kind of religion altogether--not _a_
religion, but _true_ religion; and that