VOICES OF COMFORT AND HOPE

It was not easy, however, to crush the courage of the Jews.  Out of the darkness of those days we hear a whole chorus of voices, all of them saying:  “This is not the end of everything for us.  Jehovah has not forgotten his promises to our ancestors.  He will bring back the exiles from Babylon, and from other distant lands whither they have escaped, and will rebuild Jerusalem in all its beauty, and will restore the glory of our nation in the land of Canaan.”

=The prophecies in Isaiah.=—­Many of these voices are found in short passages scattered through the writings of the older prophets.  Two of them are in Isaiah 9 and 11.

="The people that walked in darkness have seen a great light:  ... the rod of his oppressor thou hast broken....  For all the armor of the armed man in the tumult, and the garments rolled in blood, shall even be for burning, for fuel of fire.  For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given; and the government shall be upon his shoulder, and his name shall be called Wonderful, Counsellor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace."=

“In other words,” he reasoned, “Jehovah will free us from the tyrannical Babylonians, give us an ideal king, who shall be wise and just and faithful, and under whose rule we shall see no more of the horror and cruelty of war.”

=Ezekiel’s prophecies of hope.=—­Away off in Babylonia itself Ezekiel helped to keep alive the hopes of the exiles.  Even though the nation is dead, he told them, Jehovah can bring it to life.  It will be as though the dry and bleaching bones in some valley where a battle was long ago fought should suddenly come together as human skeletons, and warm living flesh should grow upon them once more.  Ezekiel worked out a kind of constitution for the new nation and the temple when these should be restored.

All these brave leaders helped the Jews to believe in themselves as a people.  They listened to these men as they spoke in their synagogues in Judaea and in Babylonia.  They handed from one to another the rolls on which their words were written.  And ever the children heard from their mothers these hopes which kept them from being completely discouraged:  “We are Jews.  The Jewish nation is not going to be destroyed.  Some day the exiles in Babylon will return to the old country.  We will have a king of our own.  And we will build the great nation which Jehovah promised Abraham.”

THE BEGINNINGS OF A RESTORED JUDAH