sion of the emotion of the self-banished trader and colonist. In 720 B. C. the Assyrians under Sargon conquered the Ten Tribes and transplanted them eastwards to the Far East, to Armenia, Persia, Afghanistan, perhaps to India, China, and Japan. Joel, Micah, and Hosea prophesied in those times and predicted that 'many nations shall come and say, Come ye, and let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, and to the house of the God of Jacob; and he will teach us of his ways, and we will walk in his paths: for the law shall go forth out of Zion, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem.[1] ... Thou wilt perform the truth to Jacob, and the mercy to Abraham, which thou hast sworn unto our fathers from the days of old.'[2] 'Be glad then, ye children of Zion ... the floors shall be full of wheat, and the vats shall overflow with wine and oil.'[3]
'I will bring again the captivity of my people Israel, and they shall build the waste cities, and inhabit them ; and they shall plant vineyards, and drink the wine thereof; they shall also make gardens and eat the fruit of them. And I will plant them upon their land, and they shall no more be plucked up out of their land which I have given them, saith the Lord.'[4]
Isaiah (750–695 B. C.), in whom, of all the prophets, the union of the real with the ideal is most clearly marked, is essentially Messianic. The earlier chapters reflect the world war of the time, Assyria at its zenith, Babylon becoming its menace, Egypt, Tyre, and Syria doomed. But 'the Lord shall set his hand again the second time to recover the remnant of his people, ... from Assyria, and from Egypt, ... and from the islands of the sea. And he shall set up an ensign for the nations, and shall assemble the outcasts of Israel, and gather together the dispersed of Judah from the four corners of the earth.'[5] The later chapters of the book attributed to Isaiah deal with the conditions towards the close of the Babylonian Captivity a couple of centuries later, but they proclaim even more triumphantly the Restoration
