all; and they shall be no more two nations, neither shall they be divided into two kingdoms any more at all."
The above prophecy was declared during the Babylonian captivity, and the expression, "I will take the children of Israel from among the heathen, whither they be gone," shows clearly that it had reference to that same captivity, and to the restoration which followed so shortly after. Isaiah prophesied upwards of one hundred years before the Babyonian captivity, and he repeats the same declaration in the 11th chapter: "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. The envy of Ephraim shall depart, and the adversaries of Judah shall be cut off; Ephraim shall not envy Judah, and Judah shall not vex Ephraim." The whole chapter is deeply instructive, as it shows throughout a reference to the captivity which the Israelites were then actually suffering in Assyria: "And it shall come to pass in that day, the Lord shall set his hand again the second time to recover the remnant of his people which shall be left, from Assyria and from Egypt," &c. And again, "And there shall be an highway for the remnant of His people which shall be left, from Assyria; like as it was to Israel in the day that he came up out of the land of Egypt." Here, then, the repeated mention of Assyria with Edom, Moab, and the children of Ammon, combined with our knowledge of subsequent events, must show clearly that these predictions referred to the state of Judæa after the return of the Israelites from their captivity, when they enjoyed, for nearly five centuries, a degree of liberty and quietude possessed by perhaps no other nation in the world at the time.
The prophet Hosea was contemporary with Isaiah, long before the Babylonian captivity, and he declared the will of the Almighty to the same effect, chap, i.: "Then shall the children of Judah and the children of Israel be gathered together, and appoint themselves one head, and they shall come up out of the land; for great shall be the day of Jezreel." To the same effect prophesied Jeremiah, long after, at the time of the Babylonian invasion, chap. iii.: "In those days the house of Judah shall walk with the house of Israel, and they shall come together out of the land of the north to the land that I have given for an inheritance unto your fathers."
Not to multiply quotations at present unnecessarily which may hereafter be more fully noticed, these references will be sufficient to show that it was ordained for the Israelites of
