BABYLON AND PERSIA

THE LAST DAYS OF JUDAH. ' I S3of their size, like the pillars of brass and the brazensea, were broken in pieces. All the people of Jeru¬salem were carried into captivity, with the exceptionof the very poorest, who were left behind to be vine¬dressers and husbandmen.15. We have already seen that the Hebrew prophrets, although deeply versed in the politics of theirtimes, and foretelling with unerring insight the ruinwhich, in the course of history, was inevitably toovertake the various states, great and small, whichformed their political world, were sometimes misled,by their eager impatience to see the wrongs theywere powerless to avert avenged on their rivals andenemies by a higher power, into appointing too earlya date for their destruction.* Ezekiel especiallyrepeatedly falls into this error. Thus the defeat in¬flicted on the Pharaoh Hophra did not result in theChaldean invasion and total destruction which hedepicts in his otherwise inagnificent dirge overEgypt. (Ezekiel, ch. XXXII. and other passages.)No less premature is his eloquent prophecy of thefall of Tyre (ch. XXVI.-XXVIIL), which Nebuchad¬rezzar proceeded to blockade as soon as he had donewith Judah. The Jews suspected the proud queenof the seas of being at heart rather pleased thangrieved at the disaster which struck them from theroll of nations, and their captive prophet accordinglydenounces her and calls down destruction on herhead :"Because that Tyre hath said against Jerusalem, Aha! she isbroken that was the gate of the peoples ;I shallbe replenished now* See " Story of Assyria," p. 429.