"By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down, yea, we wept, when we
remembered Zion."--_Psalm 137:1._
[Illustration]
WHEN the Jews came to Babylon, some were made to live in the city,
where they worked at trades, and kept shops. Others lived in the
country and worked in the fields. These were not like the fields at
home. The goodly land at home was full of hills and valleys, with
sloping pastures for the flocks, and vineyards on the sides of the
hills; but the land round Babylon was quite flat, with broad rivers
flowing slowly and lazily through the meadows, with weeping willows
upon their banks.
While Jerusalem was being besieged, Ezekiel, at Babylon, drew the
picture of the town on a tile, and shut it in with a wall, and lay
watching it, and weighing out a little bit of bad bread for himself to
eat every day, that the other Jews who were with him might know what
was going on among their brethren at Jerusalem, as God told him.
And in a vision he saw the angels come and mark in their foreheads all
that were good, that they might not be hurt in the siege; while the bad
would die by sword, and hunger, and sickness. So it is still, God saves
His own good ones. The angels know and mark them, when all the rest are
given up to God's terrible anger.