ABSTRACT
The greatest challenges, especially during the period of penetration and conquest that stretched over several centuries, cams not so much from the indigenous Canaanites as from the recently arrived Philistines, followed by the Arameans, who both posed a far more potent threat to Israel's political viability in the Land. National atonement and recommitment to the covenant, at least during the early part of Israel's tenure in the Land, could tip the scales in Israel's favor and readily restore the regional balance of power and the nation's political fortunes. The prospect of Israel's total defeat, and perhaps even its complete loss of the Land at the hands of an external enemy, had to be faced as a realistic possibility. Judah bar Ezekiel, who was among the exiles, was the first of the major prophets to confront the realities of the dispersion and the question of the possibility of an authentic Jewish existence outside the Land.
