RESTORATION of i hi. Jews. This term is ap- plied to two very different classes of prophecies relating to the Hebrew race.
I. Their Returnfrom Captivity. — It is maintained by Vcm Bohlen (Genesis, p. cxvi) that the ten tribes inter- married so freely with the surrounding population as to have become completely absorbed; and it appears to be a universal opinion that no one now knows where their descendants are. But it is a harsh assumption that such intermarriages were commoner with the ten tribes than with the two; and certainly, in the apostol- ic days, the twelve tribes are referred to as a well-known people, sharply defined from the heathen ( Acts xxiv, 7: .lames i. 1 1. Not a trace appears that any repulsive principle existed at that time between the Ten ami the Two. "Ephraim no longer envied Judah, nor Judab vexed Ephraim;" but they had become "one nation;" though only partially "on the mountains of Israel" (Isa. xi, 13; I'./.ek. xxxvii, 22). It would seem, therefore, that one result of the captivity was to blend all the tribes together, and produce a national union which had never been effected in their own land. If ever there was a difference between them as to the books counted saend. that difference entirely vanished; at least, no evidence appears of the contrary fact. When, more- over, the laws of lauded inheritance no longer enforced the maintenance of separate tribes and put a difficulty in the way of their intermarriage, an almost inevitable result in course of time was the entire obliteration of this distinction; and, as a fact.no modern Jews know to what tribe they belong, although vanity always makes them Choose to say that they are of I he two or three, anil not of the ten tribes. That all .lews now living have in them the blood of all the twelve tribes ought (it seems) to be believed, until Borne better reason than mere as- sertion is advanced against it.
When Cyrus gave permission to the Israelites to re- turn to their own country, and restored their sacred vessels, it is not wonderful that few persons of the ten tribes were eager to take advantage of it. In two cen- turies they had become thoroughly naturalized in their
Eastern settlements; nor had Jerusalem ever been the centre of proud aspirations to them. It is perhaps re- markable that in Ezra ii. 2, 36 (see also x, 18,25), the word Israel is used to signify what we might call the laity as opposed to the priests and I.evites. which might seem us if the writer were anxious to avoid asserting that all the families belonged i" the two (If this is not the meaning, it at least Bhows
that all discriminating force in the words Israel and
./»./,/// was already lost. So. too. in the I k ol Esther,
the twelve tribes through all parts of the Persian em- pire arc called .lews.) Nevertheless, ii was to lie .<x- pected that only those would return to Jerusalem whose expatriation was very recent, and principally those Whose parents had dwelt in the holy city or its imme- diate neighborhood. The re-migrants, doubtless, con- sisted chiefly of the pious and the poor; and a- the lat-
ter proved docile to their teachers, a totally new spirit reigned in the restored nation. Whatever want of zeal the anxious Ezra might discern in his comrades, it is no Blight matter that he could induce them to divorce their heathen wives — a measure ,.f harshness which I'atd would scarcely have sanctioned (1 ( 'or. vii. 12) J and the century which followed was. on the whole, orre of great religious activity and important permanent re- sults mi the moral character of the nation. liven the prophetic spirit by no means disappeared tor a century and a half; although at length both the true and the false prophet were Bupplanted among them by the learn- ed and diligent Bcribe, the anxious commentator, and the over-literal or over-fignrative critic. In place of a people prone to go astray after sensible objects Of ado- ration, and readily admitting heathen customs; attach- ed to monarchical power, but inattentive to a hierarchy: careless of a written law. and movable by alternate im- pulses of apostasy and repentance, we henceforth find in them a deep and permanent reverence ior Moses and the prophets.au aversion to foreigners and foreign cus- toms, a profound hatred of idolatry, a great devotion to priestly .and Levitical rank, and to all who had an ex- terior of piety ; in short, a slavish obedience both to the law and to its authorized expositors. Now first, so far as can be ascertained (observe the particularity of de- tail in Neh. viii, 4, etc.), were the synagogues and houses of prayer instituted and the law periodically read aloud. Now began the close observance of the Passover, the Sabbath, and the sabbatical year. Such was the change wrought in the guardians of the sacred books that, whereas the pious king Josiah had sat eighteen years on the throne without knowing of the existence of "the book of the law" (2 Kings xxii. 3. Si, in the later peri- od, on the contrary, the text was watched over with a scrupulous and fantastic: punctiliousness. From this sera the civil power was absorbed in that of the priest- hood, and the Jewish people affords the singular specta- cle of a nation in which the priestly rule came later in time than that of hereditary kings. Something anal- ogous may, perhaps, be seen in the priestly authority atComana. in Cappadocia, under the Roman sway (Cic- ero, Ep. ad Div. xv, 1. etc.).