raged: "We are Jews. The Jewish nation is not going to be
destroyed. Some day the exiles in Babylon will return to the old
country. We will have a king of our own. And we will build the great
nation which Jehovah promised Abraham."

THE BEGINNINGS OF A RESTORED JUDAH

In the year B.C. 538, the Babylonian empire was conquered by Cyrus,
the Persian. There was scarcely any resistance on the part of the
Babylonians. And one of his first acts in the conquered city was to
issue a proclamation that captives and exiles from other lands might
return if they wished. It was the chance for which the Jews for forty
years had been hoping. Now at last they could go back over that
thousand-mile journey, up the Euphrates, across to the coast land, and
down to Canaan. But alas! too many years had passed. Most of those who
had come to Babylon as grown people and who remembered Canaan as home
were now dead. Most of the living Jews had grown up in Babylon and
were comfortably settled there. Yet some did return, and from time to
time others kept returning. These men who thought enough of their
nation to go back to the home land and help it in its weakness and
poverty almost always became leaders.

=The new temple.=--It may have been a group of these leaders returned
from Babylon who started the rebuilding of the temple in Jerusalem in
the year B.C. 520, just sixty years after the old temple of Solomon
was burned by the soldiers of Nebuchadrezzar. There were two prophets,
Haggai and Zechariah, who did much to stir up the people to this work.
Some of their words are preserved in the Old Testament books which
bear their names. These men may have been returned exiles. The new
building was erected on the same old foundation and was finished in
four years. It was dedicated amidst the shouts of the people, while
old men and women, who as children had seen the former temple before
it was destroyed, wept for joy that at last a house had been rebuilt
for Jehovah. It seemed like the beginning of better times for their
nation.

THE GREATEST OF THE PROPHETS OF HOPE

Yet the years that followed the building of the new temple were sad
and disappointing. The better days did not seem to come. The walls of
Jerusalem still lay in ruins. The robber tribes still made their cruel
raids. The poor people suffered most, for they were oppressed and
plundered by the richer men even of their own people. "What has become
of Jehovah?" men asked. "Where are his