And as the possession of the city, ye shall assign a space five thousand
cubits wide, and twenty-five thousand long, beside the sacred reservation;
it shall belong to the whole house of Israel. And the prince shall have
the space on both sides of the sacred reservation and the possession of
the city, on the west and on the east, and of the same length as one of
the portions of the tribes, from the west border to the east border of the
land. It shall be his possession in Israel; and the princes of Israel
shall no more oppress my people, but shall give the land to the house of
Israel according to their tribes.

I. The Home of the Exiles in Babylon. From the references in the
contemporary writers it is possible to gain a reasonably definite idea
regarding the environment of the Jewish exiles in Babylon. Ezekiel
describes the site as "a land of traffic, a city of merchants, a fruitful
soil, and beside many waters," where the colony like a willow was
transplanted [17:5]. The Kabaru Canal (the River Chebar of Ezekiel) ran
southeast from Babylon to Nippur through a rich alluvial plain,
intersected by numerous canals. Beside it lived a dense agricultural
population. On the tells or artificial mounds made by the ruins of earlier
Babylonian cities were built the peasant villages. Ezekiel speaks of
preaching to the Jewish colony of Tel-Abib (Storm-hill), and the lists
of those who later returned to Judah contain references to those who came
from Tel-Melah (Salt-hill) and Tel-Harsha (Forest-hill).

II. Their Condition and Occupations. It is probable that these mounds
were not far from each other and that the adjacent fields were cultivated
by the Jewish colonists. Thus they were enabled, under even more favorable
conditions than in Judah, to continue in their old occupations and to
build houses and rear families as Jeremiah had advised (Jer. 29; Section
LXXXVII:35). In Babylonia, as at Elephantine, so long as they paid the