first generation of post-587 exiles, the later adaptations that appear in the book seem to have been made among the second generation of exiles. Nothing in the book reflects return to the land as a historical fact. Nor is there any hint that the Persian empire has succeeded the Babylonian. Whereas Second Isaiah placed the fall of Babylon within the historical setting of the rise of Cyrus in the 540s, the book of Ezekiel is remarkably reticent about any such prospect. Only 21:35–37 (30–32) speaks