Jerusalem and its temple were destroyed, and the Davidic dynasty passed
away. But they had accomplished their work; a nation had been created
which through exile and disaster still maintained its religion and its
characteristics, and was prepared, when happier days should come, to
return again to its old home, to rebuild the temple, and carry out all
the ordinances of its faith. From henceforth Judah realised its mission
as a peculiar people, separated from the rest of the world, whose
instructor in religion it was to be. More and more it ceased to be a
nation and became a race--a race, moreover, which had its roots in a
common religious history, a common faith, and a common hope. Israel
according to the flesh became Israel according to the spirit.

[Footnote 1: See Pinches in the _Journal_ of the Royal Asiatic Society,
July 1897. In a tablet belonging to a period long before that of
Abraham, Isma-ilu or Ishmael is given as the name of an "Amorite" slave
from Palestine (Thureau-Dangin, _Tablettes chaldéennes inédites_, p.
10).]




CHAPTER II

CANAAN


Canaan was the inheritance which the Israelites won for themselves by
the sword. Their ancestors had already settled in it in patriarchal
days. Abraham "the Hebrew" from Babylonia had bought in it a
burying-place near Hebron; Jacob had purchased a field near Shechem,