 They represented only a minority of the population, and Judah, after recovering from the immediate impact of war, continued to have a life not much different from what had gone before.In 539 BCE Babylon fell to the Persians and the Babylonian exile ended and a number of the exiles, but by no means all and probably a minority, returned to Jerusalem.They were the descendants of the original exiles, and had never lived in Judah; nevertheless, in the view of the authors of the Biblical literature, they, and not those who had remained in the land, were "Israel".