Beyond this was the whole mode of return in which the returnees found themselves. After all, they could have chosen (as others indeed did choose) to remain in Babylon. Returning to Zion was itself fraught with peril, and the life that awaited them was full of unknowns. Those who nevertheless resolved to go back were thus a self-selected group; for the most part, they did what they did out of a desire to reestablish what had been, or at least to start afresh the Jewish polity on its native soil. But