Haggai. This shows that there was continual intercourse and communication between the community in Palestine and the majority of the people who were still "in Babylon"; and we may be certain that little parties and individuals, "whose spirit God had raised," continually found their way to the holy city.
In B.C. 458, Ezra, "the scribe of the law of the God of heaven," in accordance with the decree of Artaxerxes Longimanus, organised another large caravan of those whose hearts were made willing to return to the land of their fathers. Part of this most favourable royal proclamation was as follows: "I make a decree that all they of the people of Israel, and of his priests and Levites in my realm, which are minded of their own free will to go up to Jerusalem, go up with thee"; and in response to it "this Ezra went up from Babylon, . . . and there went up (with him) of the children of Israel, and of the priests and of the Levites, and the singers and the porters, and the Nethinim, unto Jerusalem in the seventh year of Artaxerxes the king" (Ezra vii. 7).
This party consisted of about one thousand eight hundred families; and apart from the priests, Levites, and Nethinim, was made up of "the children of Israel," irrespective of tribal distinctions, from all parts of the realm of "Babylon," or Assyria, now under the sway of the Medo-Persians.
The narratives contained in the books of Ezra and Nehemiah, under whose administration the position of the restored remnant became consolidated, cover a period of about 115 years, and bring us down to about B.C. 420. Jewish history during the second period of the Persian supremacy is wrapped somewhat in obscurity; but we know that nearly throughout the whole period of its existence it was more or less friendly to the Hebrews. There was certainly no revocation of the edicts of Cyrus and of Artaxerxes permitting those
