of Josiah a hundred years later, at the end of the 7th century.

The conquest of Jerusalem by the Neo-Babylonian Empire and the exile of its elite in 586 BCE, the "Babylonian captivity", ushered in the next stage in the formation of the book. Deutero-Isaiah addresses himself to the Jews in exile, offering them the hope of return. This was the period of the meteoric rise of Persis under Cyrus the Great; in 559 BCE, he succeeded his father as ruler of a small vassal