the Edomites, who had suffered many wrongs at the hands of the Hebrews.  It was probably about this time that this half-nomadic people began to be driven northward by the advance of the Nabateans, an Arab people who came from the south.  Dislodged from their homes, the Edomites took advantage of the weakness of the Jews and seized southern Judah, including the ancient capital Hebron.  The doom which Ezekiel pronounces upon the Edomites in 25[12] is because of the revenge that they wreaked upon the Jews at this time.  It is significant that Ezekiel’s sermons in the period immediately following the fall of Jerusalem contain dire predictions of divine vengeance upon all these foes.  After the overthrow of Gedaliah’s kingdom, the Jews who remained in Palestine appear to have been left wholly without defences or defenders.  Ezekiel, in 33:23-29, speaks of those who inhabit the waste places in the land of Israel, who live in the strongholds and the caves.  Some of them appear to have turned robbers.  Foreign settlers came in from every side and in time intermarried with the natives and led them into idolatry.  Ezekiel sternly condemns their immorality and apostasy.

From the references in Jeremiah 41:5 and Ezra 3:3 it is clear that even during this reign of terror many of the people continued to offer sacrifices to Jehovah at the great altar cut in native rock which stood before the ruins of their temple in Jerusalem.  Priests were also doubtless found in the land to conduct these services.  The ancient feasts, however, with their joyous merrymaking and the resulting sense of divine favor, were no longer observed.  Instead, the people celebrated in sackcloth and ashes the fasts commemorating the successive stages in the destruction of their city (Zech. 7:3-7).  While their lot was pitiable and their character seemingly unpromising, these people of the land were important factors in the re-establishment of the Judean community.

VI.  Fortunes of the Jews in Egypt.  The narrative in Jeremiah states definitely that the large proportion of those who had rallied about Gedaliah after his death found a temporary asylum on the eastern borders of Egypt.  Here they were beyond the reach of Chaldean armies and within the territory of the one nation which offered a friendly asylum to the Jewish refugees.  Most of this later group of exiles settled at the towns of Tahpanhes and Migdol.  The latter means tower and is probably to be identified with an eastern outpost, the chief station on the great highway which ran along the southeastern shore of the Mediterranean directly to Palestine and Syria.