slavery is doubly hard for scholars and prophets, for Hebrew merchants
and rulers.

This outburst of eloquence took its rise in a war of invasion. When
the northern host swept southward, and overwhelmed Jerusalem, the
onrushing wave was fretted with fire; later, when the wave of war
retreated, it carried back the detritus of a ruined civilization. The
story of the siege of Jerusalem, the assault upon its gates, the fall
of the walls, all the horrors of famine and of pestilence, are given
in the earlier chapters of this wonderful book. The homeward march
of the Persian army was a kind of triumphal procession in which the
Hebrew princes and leaders walked as captives. The king marched in the
guise of a slave, with his eyes put out, followed by sullen princes,
with bound hands, and unsubdued hearts. As slaves the Hebrews crossed
the Euphrates at the very point where Xenophon crossed with his
immortal ten thousand. In the land of bondage the exiles were planted,
not in military prisons, but in gangs, working now in the fields, now
in the streets of the city, and always under the scourge of soldiers.
When thirty years had passed the forty thousand captives were
scattered among the people, one brother in the palace, and another a
slave in the fields. Soon their religion became only a memory, their
language was all but forgotten, their old customs and manner of life
were utterly gone. But God raised up two gifted souls for just such an
emergency as this. One youth, through sheer force of genius, climbed
to the position of prime minister, while a young girl through her
loveliness came to the king's palace. One day an emancipation
proclamation went forth, from a king who had come to believe in the
unseen God who loved justice, and would overwhelm oppression and
wrong. The good news went forth on wings of the wind. Making ready
for their return to their homeland, all the captives gathered on the