Those residing in the neighboring lands also suffered from this widespread
and bitter hostility. Among all the peoples of southwestern Asia they had
no allies except the Nabateans, an Arabian people that had driven the
Edomites from their home on Mount Seir. The only bond that bound them to
this ambitious heathen race was the common hatred of the Syrians. It was
natural, therefore, that Judas a little later should send an embassy with
the object of securing the moral support, if not the direct intervention,
of the distant Roman power whose influence was beginning to be felt
throughout all the Mediterranean coast lands. For the present, however,
Judas was dependent simply upon the sword for defence. He also had no time
for permanent conquest, for he must prepare himself for the heavier blow
that the court of Antioch was preparing to deliver. All that he could do,
therefore, was to make sudden attacks upon his foes on every side and
rescue the persecuted Jews by bringing them back with him to Judea.

II. The Jewish Attitude toward the Heathen Reflected in the Book of
Esther. In these perilous circumstances it is not strange that the Jews
gravitated far from the position of broad tolerance advocated by the II
Isaiah and the authors of the prophecy of Malachi and in the stories of
Ruth and Jonah. In the stress of conflict they completely lost sight of
their mission as Jehovah's witnesses to all the world. The destruction of
the heathen seemed to them absolutely necessary if Jehovah's justice was
to be vindicated. The spirit of this warlike, blood-thirsty age is most
clearly formulated in the book of Esther. The presence of Aramaic and
Persian words testify to its late date. It is closely allied to the
midrashim or didactic stories that were a characteristic literary product
of later Judaism. Like the stories of Daniel, the book of Esther contains
many historical inconsistencies. For example, Mordecai, carried as a
captive to Babylon in 597 B.C., is made Xerxes's prime-minister in 474
B.C. Its pictures of Persian customs are also characteristic of popular