I will pour out my spirit upon thy children,
And my blessing upon thy descendants,
So that they shall spring up as grass in the midst of waters,
As willows by water-courses.
One shall say, "I am Jehovah's,"
And another shall call himself, "Jacob,"
And another will inscribe on his hand, "Jehovah's,"
And receive the surname, "Israel."'

I. The Seventy Years Following the Rebuilding of the Temple. Regarding
the seventy years which intervened between the rebuilding of the temple in
516 B.C. and the appearance of Nehemiah in 445 the biblical historians are
silent. This silence is probably because there were no important political
events in the life of the Judean community to be recorded. During the
latter part of his reign Darius bridged the Hellespont and undertook the
conquest of the western world. Later, under the reign of his son Xerxes,
the mighty hordes of eastern warriors were turned back, and the growing
weakness of the great Persian Empire was revealed. In 486 Egypt rebelled,
and Persian armies marched along the eastern shore of the Mediterranean,
probably levying heavy taxes for their support upon the Jews as well as
upon the other peoples of Palestine. The suppression of the rebellion in
Egypt illustrated how impossible it was for any of the eastern peoples to
withstand even the decadent power of the Persian Empire.

In Palestine the Jews were still the prey of their hostile neighbors. No
walls protected the temple and city of Jerusalem. The Jews were probably
ground down under their greedy Persian governors. With the disappearance
of Zerubbabel the local control fell naturally into the hands of the high
priest and his followers, whose civil authority from this time on
constantly increased. The words of II Isaiah well describe the lot of the