* Kings xvii. 24-40.  There do not seem to have been the continual disputes between the inhabitants of Judaea and Samaria before the return of Nehemiah, which the compilers of the Books of Ezra and Nehemiah seem to have believed.

Thus another Israel began to rise up again, and, at first, the new Judah seems to have been on tolerably friendly terms with it:  the two communities traded and intermarried with one another, the Samaritans took part in the religious ceremonies, and certain of their leaders occupied a court in the temple at Jerusalem.  The alliance, however, proved dangerous to the purity of the faith, for the proselytes, while they adopted Jahveh and gave Him that supreme place in their devotions which was due to “the God of the land,” had by no means entirely forsworn their national superstitions, and Adrammelek, Nergal, Tartak, Anammelek, and other deities still found worshippers among them.  Judah, which in the days of its independence had so often turned aside after the gods of Canaan and Moab, was in danger of being led away by the idolatrous practices of its new neighbours; intermarriage with the daughters of Moab and Ammon, of Philistia and Samaria, was producing a gradual degeneracy:  the national language was giving way before the Aramaean; unless some one could be found to stem the tide of decadence and help the people to remount the slope which they were descending, the fate of Judah was certain.  A prophet—­the last of those whose predictions have survived to our time—­stood forth amid the general laxity and called the people to account for their transgressions, in the name of the Eternal, but his single voice, which seemed but a feeble echo of the great prophets of former ages, did not meet with a favourable hearing.  Salvation came at length from the Jews outside Judah, the naturalised citizens of Babylon, a well-informed and wealthy body, occupying high places in the administration of the empire, and sometimes in the favour of the sovereign also, yet possessed by an ardent zeal for the religion of their fathers and a steadfast faith in the vitality of their race.  One of these, a certain Nehemiah, was employed as cupbearer to Artaxerxes II.  He was visited at Susa by some men of Judah whose business had brought them to that city and inquired of them how matters fared in Jerusalem.  Hanani, one of his visitors, replied that “the remnant that are left of the captivity there in the province are in great affliction and reproach:  the wall of Jerusalem also is broken down, and the gates thereof are burned with fire.”  Nehemiah took advantage of a moment when the king seemed in a jovial mood to describe the wretched state of his native land in moving terms:  he obtained leave to quit Susa and authority to administer the city in which his fathers had dwelt.*

     * Nehemiah i., ii.