The exiles and their descendants continued to feel condescension or hostility to these others as ‘the people of the land’, a people who had not shared in the sufferings of God’s chosen people – had not sat by the waters of Babylon and wept remembering Zion.32 Many of these despised people built a rival temple on Mount Gerizim in the central Palestinian territory known as Samaria, and hence they were called Samaritans (a word of contempt to Jews); in very reduced numbers, they still live round their sacred mountain now.
