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• The events recorded in the book of Ezra and Nehemiah describe these amazing events in more detail. Ezra returned to Israel to re-build the Temple. Nehemiah returned to re-build the walls and restore Jerusalem to its former glory. They are helped by Haggai and Zechariah the prophets. It is one of the happiest and most amazing periods in Biblical history.
• But, as we have seen, after seventy long years in Babylon, many of the Jews had now started to forget Hebrew. For the past seventy years, as they were scattered throughout the Babylonian empire, they had adopted the customs and local language dialects of the peoples in which they lived. On their return from Babylon, Nehemiah laments that many no longer knew Hebrew, the Holy Language:
• Neh. 13:23   In those days also saw I Jews that had married wives of Ashdod, of Ammon, and of Moab: 24 And their children spake half in the speech of Ashdod, and could not speak in the Jews’ language, but according to the language of each people.