THE PENTATEUCH OF THE SAMARITANS. 163 



invited everyone of Jehovah's people to go up to Jerusalem and help 

 in building His house there — " Whosoever there is among you " 

 (my subjects) " of all His people, his God be with him and let him 

 go up " (2 Chron. xxxvi, 23 ; Ezra i, 3). And as a fact some men of 

 Bphraim returned with Zerubbabel from Babylon ; for we find 

 enumerated among the returners, men of Bethel, Ai, Michmash, all 

 of which were Ephraimite towns (Ezra ii, 27, 28 : cp. Jos. xvi, 1, 

 2, 7 ; xviii, 13 ; Gen. xii, 8 ; Jos. viii, 12), and men of Jericho who 

 were descendants of Bethelite colonists (1 Kings xvi, 34). Moreover, 

 the would-be builders who were refused had themselves not claimed 

 to be Israelites, but descendants of much more recent immigrants into 

 Canaan : " We seek your God as ye do ; and we do sacrifice unto 

 Him since the days of Esar-haddon, King of Assyria, who brought 

 us up hither " (Ezra iv, 1,2). 



On the other hand, to the passages cited, which prove that a con- 

 siderable portion of the Israelites belonging to the northern kingdom 

 was left in Canaan by the Assyrian Kings, one may well add the 

 following : Firstly (referring to an event in Josiah's reign), " And 

 they . . . delivered the money which . . . the keepers ^of 

 the threshold had gathered from the hand of Manasseh and Ephraim, 

 and of all the remnant of Israel, and of all Judah and Benjamin, 

 and of the inhabitants of Jerusalem " (2 Chron. xxxiv, 9). 

 Secondly (after the burning of " the house of Jehovah " in the fifth 

 month of Zedekiah's eleventh year), " And it came to pass on the 

 second day after he " (Ishmael) " had slain Gedaliah " (which was 

 in the seventh month of that year) " and no man knew it that there 

 came men from Shechem, from Shiloh, and from Samaria 

 with meal-offerings and frankincense in their hand, to bring them to 

 the house of Jehovah " — that is, probably, to a tent set up at 

 Mizpah, the seat of government, covering the ark of the covenant, 

 which is never said to have been destroyed, or, like the other 

 furniture of the sacred house, to have been carried to Babylon 

 (Jer. xli, 4, etc. : cp. ver. 1 ; ch. xxxix, 2, 9 ; and lii, 12, etc.), 

 Thirdly, the prophecy in Isaiah ix, 1, quoted as fulfilled by the 

 preaching of the Lord Jesus in Matthew iv, 15 : " The land of 

 Zebulun and the land of Naphtali, toward the sea beyond the Jordan, 

 Galilee of the nations ; the people that walked in darkness have seen 

 a great light ; and upon them that dwelt in the land of the shadow 

 of death hath the light shined." " Galilee of the nations " it was 



