FOR the sins of His people the Lord had stricken Jerusalem, and given up Judea into the hands of the heathen. The judgments of God had first fallen on the kingdom of the ten tribes; as they had been foremost in the sin of idolatry, so they had first met its awful punishment. Shalmaneser, king of Assyria, had attacked Samaria (724 B.C.), and after a siege of nearly three years had taken the city, and carried Israel into captivity, with Hoshea its king.The punishment of the kingdom of Judah had been for some time deferred. While such monarchs as the pious Hezekiah and the faithful Josiah had sat on the throne of their ancestor David, God's mercy had guarded [Pg viii] Jerusalem from her foes; but since the time of these virtuous rulers, tyrants had arisen, who set not God before their eyes; princes and people had combined to break the laws of the Almighty, and despise the counsel of the Most High. The vine which the Lord had brought from Egypt, and had planted and watered with such tender care, had brought forth the wild grapes of rebellion and idolatry. The mandate had not gone forth, "Cut it down, why cumbereth it the ground?" but the Lord had said in His anger, "I will take away the hedge thereof, and it shall be eaten up; and break down the wall thereof, and it shall be trodden down. And I will lay it waste" (Isa. v. 5, 6). In 606 B.C., Nebuchadnezzar carried captive to Babylon some of the most illustrious of the children of Judah, and subjected Jehoiakim their king to his power. In 599 B.C., the Assyrian monarch besieged and took Jerusalem, then under the sway of Jehoiachin, and led into bondage that prince and the chief of his people. In 588 B.C., the work of retribution was completed. Zedekiah, the last king of Judah, was taken, a miserable, blinded prisoner, to Assyria; the temple and palaces of Jerusalem were given to the flames, her walls were razed to the ground, and the mourning exiles from Judea, [Pg ix]by the waters of Babylon, hung their harps on the willows, and wept.But though the Lord chastened his people, they were not given over to destruction. At the period at which the following sketch of Jewish history commences, that prophecy which had, seventy years before, been uttered by the inspired Jeremiah was on the point of fulfilment: "Thus saith the Lord, That after seventy years be accomplished at Babylon I will visit you, and perform My good word toward you, in causing you to return to this place. For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, saith the Lord, thoughts of peace, and not of evil, to give you an expected end" (Jer. xxix. 10, 11). As a mighty despot had been the instrument, in God's hand, to chastise a rebellious race, so another powerful monarch was now appointed by Providence to raise the fallen, to restore the exiles; as a "shepherd," to gather together the dispersed flock of the Lord.