emble the outcasts of Israel; and
the dispersed of Judah will he collect together from the four corners of
the earth.... Ephraim shall not envy Judah, and Judah shall not assail
Ephraim.... And the Lord will utterly destroy the tongue of the Egyptian
sea.... And there shall be a highway for the remnant of his people,
which shall remain from Asshur, like as it was to Israel on the day that
they came up out of the land of Egypt." In Jeremiah[63] we read: "Behold
I will bring them from the north country, and I will gather them from
the farthest ends of the earth ... for I am become a father to Israel,
and Ephraim is my first-born." Referring to this passage, the Talmud
maintains that the prophet Jeremiah led the lost tribes back to
Palestine.

The second Isaiah[64] says "to the prisoners, Go forth; to those that
are in darkness, Show yourselves." "Ye shall be gathered up one by
one.... And it shall come to pass on that day that the great cornet
shall be blown, and then shall come those that are lost in the land of
Asshur, and those who are outcasts in the land of Egypt, and they shall
prostrate themselves before the Lord on the holy mount at Jerusalem."

And Ezekiel:[65] "Thou son of man, take unto thyself one stick of wood,
and write upon it, 'For Judah, and for the children of Israel his
companions'; then take another stick, and write upon it, 'For Joseph,
the stick of Ephraim, and for all the house of Israel his companions':
and join them one to the other unto thee as one stick; and they shall
become one in thy hand."

These prophetical passages show that at the time of the establishment of
the second commonwealth the new homes of the ten tribes were accurately
known. After that, for more than five hundred years, history is silent
on the subject. From frequent allusions in the prophetical writings, we
may gather that efforts were made to re-unite Judah and the tribes of
Israel, and it seems highly probable that they were successful, such of
the ten tribes as had not adopted the idolatrous practices of the
heathen returning with the exiles of Judah. In the Samaritan book of
Joshua, it is put down that many out of the tribes of Israel migrated to
the north of Palestine at the time when Zerubbabel and Ezra brought the
train of Babylonian exiles to Jerusalem.

In Talmudic literature we occasionally run across a slight reference to
the ten tribes, as, for instance, Mar Sutra's statement that they
journeyed to Iberia, at