CORNELL 
 
 UNIVERSITY 
 
 LIBRARY 
 
 THE GIFT OF 
 
 ALFRED C. BARNES 
 1899 
 
Date Due 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 11 
 
 
 
 
 PRINTED IN 
 
 U. S, A. 
 
 (^ 
 
 NO. 23233 
 
 Cornell University Library 
 DS 121.65.H94 
 V.2 
 
 After the exile : 
 
 3 1924 028 771 677 
 
The original of tliis book is in 
 the Cornell University Library. 
 
 There are no known copyright restrictions in 
 the United States on the use of the text. 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924028771677 
 
AFTER THE EXILE 
 
AFTER THE EXILE 
 
 A Hundred Years of Jewish History and Literature 
 
 PART II 
 THE COMING OF EZRA 
 
 TO 
 
 THE SAMARITAN SCHISM 
 
 BY 
 
 P. HAY HUNTER 
 
 MINISTER OF YESTER 
 
 OLIPHANT, ANDERSON, & FERRIER 
 EDINBURGH 
 
 AND 
 
 24 OLD BAILEY, LONDON 
 i8go 
 
TABLE OF CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 EZRA \t JERUSALEM 
 
 The iiflgi'ims enter Jerusalem (459 b.o.)— Their reception — 
 Feeling of the Zadokites towards Ezra — Presentation of the 
 treasure — First five months of Ezra's administration — 
 Growth of a Puritan party — Ezra's views on 'mixed 
 marriages' — Chooses this question as a beginning of 
 reform — Apparent weakness of his position — Vagueness 
 of the Law — Resolves on an appeal to the people — The 
 Puritan nobles denounce the Zadokites — Violent emotion 
 of Ezra — Scene in the temple courts — Ezra's prayer — Effect 
 on the people — Shekaniah's proposal — Israel pledges itself 
 to observe the Law ...... 
 
 CHAPTER H. 
 
 A NATIONAL ASSEMBLY. 
 
 Conference of the rulers — The 'mixed marriage' question 
 referred to a meeting of all Israel — Ezra addresses the 
 people — ^They promise obedience — The opposition party — ■ 
 Their vain attempt to gain a hearing — Appointment of 
 a special commission to try all cases of ' mixed marriage ' 
 — Ezra the president of this court — Difficulties in his way 
 — Tradition and precedent against him — His justification 
 — The ' hedge about the Law ' . . . . 
 
TABLE OF CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER III, 
 IDYLL AND ALLEGORY. 
 Opponents of Ezra — Party of prophecy — Its share in tlie con- 
 troversy of the day — The author of Ruth — Motive of his 
 story : a vindication of Gentile rights — Descent of David 
 from a Moabitess — Book of Jonah — Features of the alle- 
 gory — Jonah the anti-prophet — Lesson of the book : a 
 plea for toleration . . . . . .40 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 PURITANLSM AND REACTION. 
 Work of the special commission — Number of marriages 
 dissolved — Social rank of the offenders^Close of Ezra's 
 memoirs — Their fragmentary character — Gap of thirteen 
 years in the narrative — Results of Ezra's reform — Re- 
 newed hostility of the Gentiles — Then- intrigues at court 
 — The Chronicler's account of these — The misplaced para- 
 graph — Difficulties of Ezra's position — His defects as a 
 ruler — Reaction against his policy — His attempt to wall 
 Jerusalem — His motives in making the attempt — The 
 Syrian rebellion — "Weakening of the impeiial authority 
 'beyond the River' — Ezra's power shaken — The Jews 
 denounced by their enemies — Conilict at the com-t of Susa 
 — Excitement of feeling at Jenisalem — A poem of the 
 day — Success of the Samaritan party at court — A Persian 
 force marches on Jerusalem — Destruction of the walls — 
 Fall of Ezra's administration — His unpopularity — The 
 Zadokites return to power — Complete reversal of the 
 Puritan policy . . . . .62 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 N EH EM I AH AND THE KING. 
 Ancestry of Nehemiah — His office at court — His character — 
 Persian training — Patriotism and piety — A message 
 
TABLE OF CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 from Jiidea — Nehemiali's resolve and waiting — His suit 
 granted by the King — Appointed pekhah. of Judea — 
 Obtains authority to rebuild tlie walls of Jerusalem — 
 Sets out for his province (445 B.C.) — The hostile con- 
 federacy — Sanballat the Horonite — Tobijah the Ammon- 
 ite — Gashmu the Arab — Motives and aims of the con- 
 federates — Contrast between Nehemiah and his opponents 
 — His personal superiority . . ■ .99 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 THE BUILDING OF THE WALLS. 
 
 jSTehemiah enters Jerusalem incognito — His midnight ride — 
 Inspection of the walls — His policy as Governor — Popu- 
 larity with the Judeans — Meeting of Notables — Proposal 
 to rebuild the walls — Unanimous agreement to join in 
 the work — Nehemiah's plans — The builders . . 121 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 N EH EM I AH AND THE PEOPLE. 
 
 Insulting speeches of the confederates— Nehemiah's retort 
 —Anger of Sanballat— His outburst before the army of 
 Samaria — Progress of the work — Formation of an anti- 
 Jewish league— Conspiracy to attack Jerusalem — The 
 plot disclosed to Nehemiah— His precautions against 
 surprise— Momentary discouragement of the builders— 
 A panic— Nehemiah arms the people— Revives their 
 courage— The enemy falls back— A state of siege pro- 
 claimed at JeiTisalem- Sword and trowel— Effect of this 
 crisis on Jewish character- The national self-respect 
 restored— A bread riot at Jerasalem— Rich and poor— 
 Nehemiah champions the proletariat— His reform of 
 
 . 136 
 usury • • ■ • 
 
TABLE OF CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 NEHEMIAH AND EZRA 
 
 Tlie Zadokites secretly hostile to Nehemiah — Reasons of their 
 enmity — Ezra comes forth from obscurity — His influence 
 over Nehemiah — The ' prophets ' in opposition — Under- 
 standing between the Jewish and Gentile chiefs — Their 
 intrigues — A treacherous invitation — The 'open letter' 
 — Charge of treason brought against the Jewish 
 Governor — The cry ' There is a king in Judah ! ' — Ifehe- 
 miah's answer to the charge — Alleged plot against his 
 life — Insidious proposal of the ' prophet ' Shemaiah — 
 Repelled by Nehemiah — Completion of wall and gates 
 (Elul, August, 444 B.C.) — Time occupied in building — 
 Elation of the Jews and dejection of their enemies — 
 Measures taken for the defence of the city — Appointment 
 of joint-prefects — The defences undermanned — Want of 
 citizens — Nehemiah's way of making good this want — 
 A tenth part of the population of Judea drafted into 
 Jerusalem — The new citizens chosen by lot — Use made 
 by Wehemiah of the original ' Roll of the Congregation ' 
 — Purity of race a necessary qualification for citizenship 
 — Dedication of the walls — A religious ceremony and 
 popular festival — The two processions — Place given to 
 Ezra in the function of the day — Absence of the High 
 Priest . . . . . . .159 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 THE READING OF THE TO RAH. 
 
 Relations between Ezra and Nehemiah — Value of Nehemiah's 
 services to the Puritans — Revival of religious feeling — The 
 Law sought for by the people— The convocation of the 
 first of Tisri— Ezra requested to bring forth his Book of 
 the Torah — He reads the Law from morning to mid-day 
 — Reverent attention of the people — Blessing and curse 
 
TABLE OF CONTENTS. 
 
 \y 
 
 set before them — Their emotions of grief and fear — 
 Kehemiali soothes them — Bids them rejoice and keep 
 holiday — ^The second day's reading — Law as to the observ- 
 ance of the Feast of Tabernacles — Novelty of the com- 
 mand to dwell in booths — The festival celebrated in exact 
 conformity to the law — A week of rejoicing . . 183 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 THE COVENANTERS. 
 
 Close of the festival — A national fast — Public readmg of the 
 Torah — Separation fi'om Israel of the ' mixed multitude ' 
 — ^Izi-a's prayer — His survey of the national history — 
 Lessons draivTi fi-om it — The people deeply affected — Their 
 desire to atone for past neglect — The covenant — Article 
 as to ' mixed marriages ' — Consecration of the Sabbath — 
 Observance of the Sabbatic year — Maintenance of the 
 priesthood and ritual — Ezra and Nehemiah not anti- 
 clerical in spirit — Their care for the Sanctuary and its 
 worship — The yearly poll-tax — The wood-offering — The 
 tithes — Significanoe of the covenant — Burdens laid on the 
 people — Their willing acceptance of these — Their zeal for 
 the Law — Signatories to the covenant — The list headed 
 by the laity — Absence of Ezra's name — The Torah now 
 adopted as Israel's rule of life — Triumph of Ezra's prin- 
 ciples — But not a final triumph .... 197 
 
 CHAPTER XI. 
 THE BIRTHDAY OF JUDAISM. 
 
 The religious service of the first of Tisri— Its epoch-making 
 importance — Closes the history of ancient Israel and 
 opens the history of Judaism — The first synagogue service 
 on Jewish soil — The pulpit displaces the altar — Power of 
 prayer and of the Word — Religion deepened and made 
 
TABLE OF CONTENTS. 
 
 personal — Ezi-a succeeds where the prophets had failed — 
 Parallel between his reform and that effected by King 
 Josiah — Ezra's ' Book ' the Pentateuch — His codification 
 of the Law — His method of revision — Appropriateness of 
 the name, ' the second Moses ' . . . .219 
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 THE STRIFE OF PARTIES. 
 
 Ezra and Nehemiah — Necessary to each other — Nehemiah a 
 convert to the new doctrines — His excessive zeal — His 
 departure from Judea (in 433 B. o.) tests the reality of the 
 reformation — Ezra's trials begin again — Open hostility of 
 the Zadokites — Their violation of Law and covenant — 
 Conflict between Puritans and. Zadokites — A foreshadow- 
 ing of the conflict between Pharisees and Sadduoees — 
 Uncertainty in the popular mind — Influence of the priestly 
 patricians — The people fall away into laxity and indifi'er- 
 ence — Death of Ezra — Legends as to his place of burial — 
 His epitaph ...... 231 
 
 CHAPTER Xin. 
 
 THE LAST PROPHET. 
 
 Prophetic standpoint of Malaohi — His style — Puritan and con- 
 troversialist — Contents of his Book — The judgment on 
 Edom — Violent attack on the Zadokites — His message 
 to the Puritans — Warning against the Pharisaic spirit 
 — Malachi's ' day of Jehovah ' — Difierence between his 
 ' day ' and Joel's — Malachi's ideal saviour of society . 247 
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 NEHEMIAH AND THE ZADOKITES. 
 
 Sudden return of Nehemiah to Jerusalem as Governor — Dis- 
 may of the Zadokites and rejoicing of the Puritans — Nehe- 
 
TABLE OF CONTENTS. 
 
 miali's mood dangerous — Indignation at the injury done 
 during his absence to the work of the reformers — His 
 cleansing of the temple — Public affront put on the High 
 Priest and Tobijah — Reorganisation of the hierarchy — 
 Collectors of tithe appointed — Enforcement of the 
 Sabbath law . . . . . .261 
 
 CHAPTER XV. 
 
 THE RENEGADE PRIEST. 
 
 The 'mixed marriage' question once more — Nehemiah's 1/ 
 fanaticism on this point — Calls the offenders to account 
 — An explosion of anger — Stormy scenes at Jerusalem — 
 Manasseh ben Joiada — His marriage to Nicaso, daughter 
 of Sanballat — Refuses to put away his wife — Xehemiah 
 , expels him from the community — Beginning of the 
 Samaritan schism — Manasseh flees to Samaria — San- 
 ballat's opportunity — His resolve to found a rival sanctu- 
 ary — A number of the Zadokites follow Manasseh — The 
 Torah brought to the Samaritans — Choice of Gerizim as 
 the site of the new temple — Sanballat gains his end — 
 Creates a nation — Effect of the Samaritan schism on the 
 development of Judaism — Hatred between the two races 
 — Close of Nehemiah's memoirs — His after history un- 
 known — His character . . .■ . . 274 
 
 CHAPTER XVI. 
 
 THE GREAT SYNAGOGUE. 
 
 Institution of the Great Synagogue ascribed to Ezra : Its 
 membership ; its maxims — Accounts of the Great Syna- 
 gogue merely legendary — Ezra's work carried on by the 
 Sopherim — The issue of his reforms appears in a later 
 age— Ezra's reputation at first, overshadowed by that 
 of Xehemiah — His name omitted by Sirach from his 
 
xu TABLE OF CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 list of great Hebrews — Legends of Nehemialr — After- 
 wards Ezra's fame eclipses that of his colleague — Held 
 in highest honour by his countiymen — His supposed 
 prophetic gift — Ezra in Jewish legend — In the Koran — 
 Institutions and customs of later Judaism traced back to 
 him — His true work — Promulgation of the Written Law 
 — Introduction of the Unwritten Law — Permanence of 
 his reform proved by the Syrian persecution — Jewish re- 
 ligion identified with the Torah — Later abuses of Ezra's 
 work — Pharisaism and rabbinism — His 'schbol' a pre- 
 paration for the Gospel of Christ . . . .292 
 
PASSAGES OF SCRIPTURE CITED OR 
 REFERRED TO. 
 
PASSAGES OF SCEIPTTJRE CITED OR REFERRED TO. 
 
 2DHi 'Eesmmenu 
 
 GENESIS. 
 
 
 DEUTERONOMY. 
 
 
 PAOE 
 
 
 PAGE 
 
 XXVI. 34, 35 
 
 12 
 
 VI. 8, 9 
 
 . 309 
 
 XXVII. 46 
 
 12 
 
 VII. 1-4 
 
 11 
 
 XXVIII. 2 
 
 12 
 
 2, 3 . 
 
 . 225 
 
 EXODUS. 
 
 
 XI. 26 
 
 . 189 
 
 
 
 29 
 
 . 282 
 
 IV. 22 
 
 
 . 52 
 
 XII. 5 
 
 . 283 
 
 XXI. 2 
 
 
 . 151 
 
 XIV. 1 . 
 
 62 
 
 7 
 
 
 . 151 
 
 24 
 
 . 283 
 
 XXII. 25 
 
 
 . 157 
 
 XV. 1-6 
 
 . 208 
 
 XXX. 11-15 
 
 
 . 210 
 
 7 
 
 . 157 
 
 XXXIV. 12, 16 
 
 
 . 225 
 
 XVI. 33, 14 . 
 
 . 194 
 
 16 
 
 
 . 12 
 
 XXI. 10-14 . 
 
 11 
 
 LEVITICUS. 
 
 
 XXIII. 3 
 
 12 
 
 
 
 3-6 
 
 . 199 
 
 V. 15 
 
 64 
 
 7, 8 . 
 
 11 
 
 VI. 9. 
 
 
 210 
 
 20 
 
 . 157 
 
 XVIII. 5 . 
 
 
 209 
 
 XXVII. 4, 5 
 
 . 283 
 
 XXIII. 39-43 
 
 
 193 
 
 12 
 
 . 212 
 
 XXV. 2-7 
 
 
 226 
 
 XXVIII. 25 
 
 . 190 
 
 35 
 
 
 157 
 
 29 
 
 . 190 
 
 36 
 
 
 157 
 
 30, 31 . 
 
 . 190 
 
 39 
 
 
 151 
 
 32, 41 , 
 
 . 190 
 
 XXVII. SO 
 
 
 225 
 
 33, 38 . 
 
 . 190 
 
 NUMBEES. 
 
 
 43, 44 . 
 
 . 190 
 
 
 
 XXIX. 21 
 
 . 190 
 
 XII. 1-10 . 
 
 36 
 
 XXX. 15 
 
 230 
 
 XV. 20 
 
 
 225 
 
 XXXI. 11 
 
 . 196 
 
 XVIII. 7 . 
 
 
 169 
 
 
 
 11-32 
 
 
 225 
 
 
 
 16 
 
 
 211 
 
 JOSHUA. 
 
 
 17 
 
 
 211 
 
 
 
 XIX. 9, 17 . 
 
 
 178 
 
 VIII. S3 
 
 . 282 
 
 XXV. 6 
 
 
 12 
 
 XVI. 3, 5 . 
 
 . 114 
 
INDEX. 
 
 EUTH. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 EZRA. 
 
 
 I. 1 . • 
 
 . 43 
 
 I. 2 . 
 
 
 6 
 
 . 46 
 
 11. 61 . 
 
 
 16, 17 . 
 
 . 46 
 
 III. 4 . 
 
 
 19 
 
 . 50 
 
 IV. 6-23 
 
 
 20 
 
 . 50 
 
 7 . . . . 
 
 
 II. 10 
 
 . 48 
 
 8 . . . 
 
 
 12 
 
 . 47 
 
 9, 10 . 
 
 
 III. 10 
 
 . 48 
 
 11-16 . 
 
 
 11 
 
 . 48 
 
 19 . 
 
 
 lY. 11 
 
 . 48 
 
 20 . 
 
 
 14, 17 . 
 
 . 50 
 
 21 . 
 
 
 15 
 
 . 48 
 
 22 . 
 
 
 17 
 
 . 48 
 
 23 . 
 
 24 . 
 
 
 I. SAMUEL 
 
 
 VII. 9 . 
 
 
 XXII. 3 
 
 . 49 
 
 12 . 
 
 
 XXVII. 3 
 
 . 49 
 
 26 . 
 
 
 11. SAMUBl 
 VIII. 18 
 
 . 49 
 
 VIII. 31 . 
 
 32 . 
 
 33 . 
 
 
 X. 2 
 
 49 
 
 35, 36 . 
 
 
 XV. 18 
 
 49 
 
 IX. 1 . 
 
 
 19-22 . 
 
 49 
 
 2 . 
 
 
 32-37 . 
 
 . 49 
 
 3 . 
 
 
 XVII. 27-29 . 
 
 . 49 
 
 4 . 
 
 
 XXIII. 37-39 . 
 
 . 49 
 
 6 . 
 
 
 II. KINGS 
 
 
 6-15 
 
 
 IV. 1 
 
 . 151 
 
 7 . 
 
 
 XIV. 25 
 
 . 52 
 
 8 . 
 
 9 . 
 11 . 
 
 f 
 
 XXII. 8 
 
 . 223 
 
 i 
 
 11 
 
 . 224 
 
 
 XXIII. 2 
 
 . 224 
 
 13, 14 . 
 15 . 
 
 
 3 
 
 . 224 
 
 
 21, 22 
 
 . 224 
 
 X. 1 . 
 
 
 XXIV. 14 
 
 . 173 
 
 2 . 
 
 3 . 8, 17, 
 
 '24, 3 
 
 I. CHBONIC] 
 
 jBS. 
 
 4 . 
 
 
 III. 2 
 
 . 36 
 
 5 . 
 
 
 19, 21. 
 
 66 
 
 6 . 
 
 
 IX. . 
 
 . 176 
 
 8 . 
 
 9 . 
 
 
 II. CHRONIC 
 
 LES. 
 
 10 . 
 
 
 VIII. 5 
 
 . 114 
 
 11 . 
 
 
 XXIV. 6 
 
 . 210 
 
 12 . 
 
 
 26 
 
 . 49 
 
 13 . 
 
 
 XXVI. 15 
 
 . 144 
 
 14 . 
 
 
 XXIX. 4 
 
 . 30 
 
 15 . 
 
 
 XXXVI. 23 
 
 . 99 
 
 16 . 
 
 

 
 INDEX. 
 
 
 
 xvii 
 
 EZRA—(contmml). 
 
 NEHEMIAH-(coii(i™erf). 
 
 PACE 
 
 PAGE 
 
 X. 16, 17 . .63 
 
 HI. 23 . . . 133, 135 
 
 17 . 
 
 
 62 
 
 28, 29 
 
 
 . 133 
 
 18 . 
 
 
 64 
 
 30 . 
 
 
 135, 160 
 
 19 . 
 
 
 64 
 
 31 . 
 
 
 
 . 133 
 
 26 . 
 
 
 24 
 
 32 . 
 
 
 
 . 133 
 
 31 . 
 
 
 160 
 
 IV. 2 . 
 
 
 
 . 114 
 
 44 . 
 
 
 63 
 
 2, 3 . 
 
 
 
 . 138 
 
 
 6 . 
 
 
 
 . 138 
 
 NBHEMIAH. 
 
 7 . 
 
 
 
 . 139 
 
 I. 1 . . . .177 
 
 7, S. 
 
 
 
 . 140 
 
 2 . 
 
 
 104 
 
 9 . 
 
 
 
 . 141 
 
 3 . 
 
 
 94 
 
 10 . 
 
 
 
 . 142 
 
 4 . 
 
 
 105 
 
 11 . 
 
 
 
 . 142 
 
 5 . 
 
 
 99 
 
 12 . 
 
 
 
 . 143 
 
 6 . 
 
 
 104 
 
 13 . 
 
 
 
 . 144 
 
 6, 8, 9 
 
 
 106 
 
 15 
 
 
 
 . 145 
 
 11 . 
 
 
 107 
 
 16 
 
 
 
 . 170 
 
 n. 1 . 
 
 
 109 
 
 17 
 
 
 
 . 146 
 
 2 . 
 
 
 109 
 
 20 
 
 
 
 . 148 
 
 3 . 
 
 
 110 
 
 21 
 
 
 
 . 147 
 
 4 ■. 
 
 
 110 
 
 22 
 
 
 
 . 146 
 
 4, 20 
 
 
 99 
 
 23 
 
 
 
 112, 147 
 
 5 . 
 
 
 110 
 
 V. 1 
 
 
 
 . 152 
 
 6 . 
 
 
 111 
 
 2 
 
 
 
 . 152 
 
 7 . 
 
 
 112 
 
 4 
 
 
 
 . 150 
 
 8 . 
 
 
 112 
 
 5 
 
 
 
 . 152 
 
 9 . 
 
 '. '. 11 
 
 2, 113 
 
 7 
 
 
 
 120, 155 
 
 10 . 
 
 
 113 
 
 8 
 
 
 
 103, 156 
 
 12 . 
 
 '. IC 
 
 6, 120 
 
 9 
 
 
 
 . 157 
 
 12, 13 
 
 
 . 122 
 
 10, 16 
 
 
 . 156 
 
 13-15 
 
 
 . 123 
 
 12, 13 
 
 
 . 158 
 
 17 . 
 
 
 . 128 
 
 14 . 
 
 
 . Ill 
 
 18 . 
 
 ' '. 106, 129 
 
 14, 15 
 
 
 127, 155 
 
 19 . 
 
 . 137 
 
 17, 18 
 
 
 . 127 
 
 20 . 
 
 . 106, 137 
 
 VI. 2 
 
 
 . 164 
 
 III. 1 . 
 
 . 132, 180 
 
 3,4 
 
 
 
 . 165 
 
 2 . 
 
 . 133 
 
 5 
 
 
 
 . 165 
 
 3 . 
 
 
 . 132 
 
 6, 7 
 
 
 
 . 166 
 
 4, 21 
 
 
 5 
 
 8, 9 
 
 
 
 . 167 
 
 .5 . 
 
 
 . 161 
 
 10 
 
 
 
 . 168 
 
 7 . 
 
 
 . 133 
 
 12 
 
 
 
 . 120 
 
 8 . 
 
 
 . 133 
 
 13 
 
 
 
 . 170 
 
 11 . 
 
 
 . 160 
 
 14 
 
 
 
 . 168 
 
 12 . 
 
 
 . 132 
 
 15 
 
 
 
 . 170, 186 
 
 17 . 
 
 
 . 132 
 
 16 
 
 
 
 . 171 
 
 20 . 
 
 
 . 135 
 
 17, 19 
 
 
 . 163 
 
 21 . 
 
 
 . 135 
 
 18 65, 97, 116, leO, 265 
 
 22 . 
 
 
 . 132 
 
 VII. 1 
 
 
 
 171 
 
 II 
 
xvm 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 
 NBHBMIAH— (co/iMnued). 
 
 NBHBMIAH— (co)l(OTMC(J). 
 
 
 PAGE 
 
 PAGE 
 
 VII. 2 . 
 
 . 112 
 
 X. 35-37 . . .211 
 
 3 . 
 
 . 172 
 
 35-39 
 
 . 225 
 
 4 . 
 
 95, 173 
 
 38, 39 
 
 . 212 
 
 4, 5 
 
 . 177 
 
 XI. 1 . 
 
 . 106, 174, 176 
 
 5 . . 
 
 . 174 
 
 1, 2 
 
 . . . 177 
 
 6-73 
 
 . 174 
 
 2 . 
 
 . 176 
 
 VIII. 1 . 
 
 . 30, 186 
 
 3-36 
 
 . 176 
 
 1, 2 
 
 . 224 
 
 25 
 
 . 132 
 
 2 . 
 
 . 186 
 
 35 
 
 . 164 
 
 3 . 
 
 . 189 
 
 XII. 1 . 
 
 . 216 
 
 4 . 
 
 . 187 
 
 1-26 
 
 . 176 
 
 5, 6 
 
 . 188 
 
 22 
 
 . 176 
 
 7, 8 
 
 . 188 
 
 23 
 
 . 27 
 
 9 . .1 
 
 91, 192, 224 
 
 27-29 
 
 . 178 
 
 9-12 
 
 . 193 
 
 30 
 
 . 178 
 
 13 . 
 
 . 193 
 
 36 
 
 . 179 
 
 15 . 
 
 . 195 
 
 37 
 
 . 180 
 
 16 . 
 
 . 30 
 
 39 
 
 . 180 
 
 17 . 
 
 . 194, 224 
 
 47 
 
 . 95 
 
 18 . 
 
 . 196 
 
 XIII. 1-3 
 
 . 262 
 
 IX. 1 . 
 
 . 197 
 
 3 
 
 . 200 
 
 2 . 
 
 . 200, 217 
 
 4 . 
 
 . 262, 266 
 
 3 . 
 
 . 200 
 
 5 . 
 
 . 266 
 
 4 . 
 
 . 188, 198 
 
 6 . 
 
 . 262, 263 
 
 4, 5 
 
 . 200 
 
 8, 9 
 
 . 267 
 
 6 . 
 
 . 201 
 
 10 
 
 . 267 
 
 14 . 
 
 . 202 
 
 11 
 
 . 268 
 
 17 . 
 
 . 202 
 
 13 
 
 . 215, 269 
 
 18, 19 . 
 
 . 202 
 
 15 
 
 . 269 
 
 22, 23 . 
 
 . 203 
 
 16 
 
 . 270 
 
 26 . 
 
 . 203 
 
 17, 18 
 
 . 271 
 
 27-29 . 
 
 . 203 
 
 19-22 
 
 . 272 
 
 31 . 
 
 . 203 
 
 23, 24 
 
 . 275 
 
 32 . 
 
 . 204 
 
 23, 34 
 
 . 263 
 
 34 . 
 
 . 204 
 
 25 
 
 . 277 
 
 35 . 
 
 . 204 
 
 26 
 
 . 35, 277 
 
 36 . 
 
 . 204 
 
 28 
 
 . 279 
 
 37 . 
 
 . 205 
 
 29 
 
 . 281 
 
 38 . 
 
 . 224 
 
 30 
 
 . 268 
 
 X. 1 . 
 
 . 192 
 
 
 2 . 
 
 215, 236 
 
 P3ALMS. 
 
 6 . 
 
 5 
 
 XVIII. 5 ... 54 
 
 10 . 
 
 . 216 
 
 6 
 
 . 54 
 
 28 . 
 
 . 217 
 
 XIX. 7, 8 
 
 . 309 
 
 29 . 
 
 . 206 
 
 XXVI. 7 
 
 . 54 
 
 30, 31 . 
 
 . 207 
 
 XLII. 7 
 
 . 54 
 
 32, 33 . 
 
 . 210 
 
 L. 14 
 
 . 54 
 
 34 
 
 210, 228 
 
 LXIX. 2 
 
 . 64 
 

 INI 
 
 -iEX. 
 
 
 XIX 
 
 PSALMS— <conK»!M6d). 
 
 JONAH— (comKnued). 
 
 
 PAGE 
 
 PAGE 
 
 LXXXIII. 3, 4 . 
 
 . 90 
 
 II. 5 . . . .54 
 
 8 
 
 90, 116 
 
 6 . 
 
 
 . 55 
 
 9-11 . 
 
 . 91 
 
 7 . 
 
 
 64, 55 
 
 13, 14 
 
 . 91 
 
 9 . 
 
 
 . 64 
 
 cxix. 
 
 . 309 
 
 10 . 
 
 
 . 55 
 
 cxx. 1 
 
 . 54 
 
 in. 2 . 
 
 
 . 63 
 
 cxxii. 3 
 
 . 181 
 
 4 . 
 
 
 55, 56 
 
 cxLir. 3 
 
 . 54 
 
 IV. 2 . 
 
 
 . 202 
 
 CXLVII. 13 . 
 
 . 181 
 
 6, 7 
 
 
 . 56 
 
 SONG OF SONGS. 
 
 
 MIOAH. 
 
 I. 2 
 
 . 308 
 
 n. 1, 2 . . . 153 
 
 II. 10, 11 
 
 . 301 
 
 ZECHARTAH 
 
 ISATAH. 
 
 
 III. 7 . . . .266 
 
 IV. 3 
 
 . 174 
 
 IX. 6 . 
 
 . 276 
 
 XV. 5 
 
 . 113 
 
 XIV. 10 . 
 
 . 180 
 
 XXVII. 1 
 
 64 
 
 
 
 LVIII. 6 
 
 . 153 
 
 MALACHI 
 
 
 12 . 
 
 . 181 
 
 I. 1 . . 
 
 . 247 
 
 
 
 2-5. 
 
 
 . 251 
 
 JEHEMIAH. 
 
 
 3 . 
 
 
 . 114 
 
 IV. 7 
 
 53 
 
 8 . 
 
 
 237, 248 
 
 XVII. 21, 27 
 
 271 
 
 8, 13, 14 
 
 
 . 263 
 
 XXXI. 38 
 
 180 
 
 10 . 
 
 
 . 254 
 
 XXXIV. 9 
 
 151 
 
 II. 3 . 
 
 
 . 254 
 
 XXXVI. 5 
 
 168 
 
 5,7 
 
 
 246, 252 
 
 LI. 34 
 
 54 
 
 8 . 
 
 
 . 243 
 
 EZEKIEL. 
 
 
 9 . 
 
 11 . 
 
 
 . 253 
 
 250, 255 
 
 XXII. 12 
 
 153 
 
 11-16 
 
 
 . 266 
 
 XLVII. 22, 23 
 
 36 
 
 12 . 
 
 
 . 255 
 
 JOEL. 
 
 
 13 . 
 
 
 . 255 
 
 I. 9 
 II. 13 . . . 
 
 209 
 202 
 
 13-16 
 17 . 
 
 
 . 62 
 . 267 
 
 III. 6 . . . 
 
 190 
 
 HI. 1 . 
 
 
 . 264 
 
 17 . . . 
 
 174 
 
 2, 3 
 
 
 . 264 
 
 19 . . . 
 
 251 
 
 5 . 
 
 8 . 
 
 
 238, 254 
 . 254 
 
 AMOS. 
 
 
 10, 11 . 
 
 
 . 242 
 
 VII. 4 . ,. . 
 
 153 
 
 13 . 
 
 14 . 
 
 
 . 266 
 243, 257 
 
 OBADIAH. 
 
 
 16 . 
 
 
 . 257 
 
 4 . . . 
 
 251 
 
 16 . 
 
 
 239, 262 
 
 19 . . . 
 
 251 
 
 IV. 1 . 
 2 . 
 
 
 . 259 
 . 258 
 
 JONAH. 
 
 
 3 . 
 
 
 . 258 
 
 II. 2 
 
 54 
 
 4 . 
 
 
 . 260 
 
 3 . . . 
 
 54 
 
 5 . 
 
 
 259, 260 
 
XX 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 jraeto i;eatam:nt. 
 
 
 MATTHEW. 
 
 
 
 JOHN. 
 
 
 XII. 
 
 XVII. 
 
 40 
 24 
 
 PAGE 
 . 57 
 
 . 210 
 
 VII. 
 VIII. 
 
 37 . 
 
 48 . . . 
 
 PACE 
 
 197 
 287 
 
 XI. 
 
 LORE. 
 
 16 
 
 29-32 . 
 
 . 58 
 . 58 
 
 XV. 
 
 THE ACTS. 
 21 . . 
 
 I. CORINTHIANS. 
 
 220 
 
 XVII 
 
 18 . 
 
 . 286 
 
 I. 
 
 22 . 
 
 57 
 
 9|)oct;pl)a« 
 
 I. ESDRAS. 
 
 
 ECCLBSIASTICUS-(cim(iiiuai). 
 
 
 PAGE 
 
 PAGE 
 
 II. 30 
 
 . 39 
 
 XLIX. 13 . . . 297 
 
 IX. 2 
 
 . 27 
 
 L. 25, 26 . . . 287 
 
 16 
 43 
 
 . 33 
 
 . 187 
 
 I. MACCABEES. 
 I. 57, 58 . . . 310 
 
 II. ESDEAS. 
 
 
 60, 63 . . . 311 
 II. 34-38 . . .311 
 
 XII. 42 
 
 . 202 
 
 42 ... 239 
 
 XIV. 10 
 21 
 37 48 . 
 
 . 303 
 . 303 
 . 303 
 
 VII. 12 . . .294 
 13 . . . 239 
 
 ECCLESIASTICDS. 
 XXIV. 19-23 . . .310 
 
 xxxiii. 3 ... 309 
 
 XLViii. 1 ... 260 
 
 II. MACCABEES. 
 
 I. 18 ... 298 
 
 19-36 . .299 
 
 II. 13 . . . 298 
 
 xiv. 6 . . . .239 
 
CHAPTER I. 
 
 iB^va at Jerusalem. 
 
 "p^ZEA'S train of pilgrims, numbering thou- 
 -'-' sands of defenceless people, men, women 
 and children, who carried with them all their 
 worldly possessions, of necessity travelled 
 slowly. The safest route had to be chosen, 
 in preference to the most direct. Leaving the 
 Ahava about the middle of the first month, 
 they did not reach their destination until the 
 first day of the fifth. ^ 
 
 The historian and leader of this emigration 
 makes no reference to the incidents of the 
 march, its toils and anxieties, beyond an ex- 
 pression of devout thankfulness to the good 
 Providence which had brought the arduous 
 undertaking to a prosperous end.^ Nor does 
 he devote many words to describing the entry 
 
 1 Ezra vii. 9. ^ Ezra viii. 31. 
 
 II B 
 
AFTER THE EXILE. 
 
 of the pilgrim caravan into the holy city. 
 ' And we came to Jerusalem ' ^ — with this bare 
 statement of the fact Ezra passes away from 
 an event which was certainly the most 
 important tliat had occurred since the found- 
 ing of the colony, and a scene whose historic 
 significance entitled it to a more adequate 
 record. The occasion was not more interesting 
 to the Babylonian Jews, who now saw for the 
 first time that sacred metropolis of their nation 
 to which their thoughts had so often turned, 
 than to the citizens of Jerusalem, who awaited 
 with eager expectancy the arrival of their 
 countrymen from abroad. This imposing pro- 
 cession which passed through the dismantled 
 gates and along the streets of the city, laden 
 with costly gifts, was a striking testimony to 
 the power and wealth of that Israel which 
 dwelt far off among the Gentiles. The 
 Judeans, struggling to maintain themselves on 
 their poor strijj of territory, and depressed 
 by the aspect of Jerusalem itself, half ruinous 
 and half empty, were reminded that they 
 formed only a part of their people, and that 
 the lands which had sent this numerous 
 
 1 Ezra viii, 32. 
 
EZRA AT JERUSALEM. 
 
 contingent homeward teemed with hundreds 
 of thousands of their race, by whom the 
 mother-country and its claims were not for- 
 gotten. 
 
 Naturally it was the leader of these foreign 
 Jews who excited the liveliest interest among 
 the citizens. Ezra's great reputation had 
 preceded him. He was indubitably the fore- 
 most man of his nation for the time being, 
 and the rumour of the extraordinary powers 
 with which he had been invested by the Great 
 King must have aroused the keenest curiosity 
 as to the line he would follow in directing the 
 affairs of the colony, and the attitude he 
 would take up towards its chiefs. The latter 
 can scarcely have shared the popular satis- 
 faction, or joined very heartily in the acclama- 
 tions which welcomed the pilgrim company into 
 Jerusalem. They knew of Ezra and his in- 
 tentions only by report, but they knew enough 
 to make them look on him with covert jealousy. 
 The High Priest could have no friendly feel- 
 ing to the man whose authority superseded his 
 own. The Zadokites suspected danger to 
 their caste privileges. The entire political- 
 aristocratic party, which had been supreme 
 
AFTER THE EXILE. 
 
 since the time of Zerubbabel's efFacement, 
 resented this influx of foreigners as an element 
 of disturbance, imported most unnecessarily 
 into the midst of the existing order of things. 
 They felt instinctively that in Ezra a formid- 
 able critic of their policy and of its results had 
 come, and from the first they stood on their 
 guard against him. . 
 
 The High Priest and his faction had not 
 long to wait before Ezra gave a sufiiciently 
 plain indication of his sentiments towards the 
 hierarchy. Three days were spent by the 
 Babylonian Jews in resting from the fatigues 
 of the journey, and in finding shelter for them- 
 selves and their families — a matter arranged 
 without much difficulty, since the ancient 
 limits of Jerusalem were too extensive by far 
 for its present population. On the fourth day 
 there took place in the temple the formal 
 presentation of the treasure brought from 
 Babylon. In ordinary circumstances, the High 
 Priest, as representative of the church and 
 ruler of the sanctuary, was the proper person 
 to receive such pious oiFerings ; at an earlier 
 day, the deputies of the Golah had laid the 
 gifts they brought at the feet of Joshua ben 
 
EZRA AT JERUSALEM. 
 
 Jehozadak.^ But on this occasion, for reasons 
 of his own, Ezra quietly set aside the High 
 Priest Eliashib, and selected as official receiver 
 of the treasure one Meremoth ben Uriah, 
 member of a non-Zadokite priestly house, and 
 a man distinguished for his zeal, as appears 
 from other passages in the history of the 
 time.^ The whole transaction was managed 
 by Ezra in a precise, business-like fashion 
 characteristic of the man. With Meremoth 
 were associated another priest and two Levites. 
 The specie and plate were weighed in their 
 presence, piece by piece to the last ounce. 
 An inventory of all was made, and laid up in 
 the temple archives. 
 
 At this point Ezra's memoirs break off; the 
 curtain drops abruptly, and nearly five months 
 pass before it is raised again. The Chronicler 
 tells how the ' children of the exile ' who had 
 come with Ezra from Babylon offered sacrifices 
 
 1 Supra, vol. i. p. 176. 
 
 2 Ezraviii. 33. Cp. Neh. iii. 4, 21 ; x. 6. The family 
 to whicli Meremoth. belonged, that of Hakkoz, was one of 
 those which, at the time of the first Return, were suspended 
 from the priesthood on account of defective genealogies 
 (Ezra ii. 61), but which seem in course of time to have been 
 reinstated. 
 
AFTER THE EXILE. 
 
 on a great scale in the temple, and how Ezra 
 submitted his credentials to the scrutiny of the 
 Persian officials ' beyond the Eiver,' and was 
 recognised by them as the plenipotentiary of 
 the Great King.^ But as to Ezra's proceedings 
 during those five months at Jerusalem, and the 
 first steps he made in his mission of reform, 
 the Chronicler says not a word ; and since it 
 may be safely assumed that he did not spend 
 those months in idleness, or allow them to pass 
 without making some attempt to carry out the 
 purpose for which he had come to Judea, one 
 has to conclude that an important passage of 
 his memoirs has been either accidentally 
 omitted or deliberately suppressed. It may be 
 supposed that during those months Ezra was 
 gathering information, feeling his way, and 
 forming his party. There was one duty which 
 in the eyes of the zealous Sopher admitted of 
 no delay — the duty of instructing this people 
 
 1 Verses 35 and 36 of Ezra viii. are evidently no part of 
 the original memoirs of Ezra ; and it may be doubted 
 whether the comparative trivialities they record can be the 
 events alluded to in ix. 1, where Ezra takes up his own story 
 with the connecting phrase, 'And when these things were 
 done.' The mention of 'king's satraps' in viii. 36 involves 
 a manifest absurdity, betraying the later hand. 
 
EZRA AT JERUSALEM. 
 
 sunk in ignorance of the Law, and consequently 
 in sin. For this he had brought with him his 
 copy of the Torah — not mere fragments of the 
 code, such as the priests of Jerusalem had in 
 their hands, but a copy the most complete and 
 authentic as yet in existence ; for this he had 
 brought with him his staff of teachers, men 
 trained in his own school, penetrated with his 
 own ideas, and burning with a zeal not less 
 fervid than his own to communicate that 
 knowledge without which, in their view, a true 
 life was impossible either for the individual 
 or the nation. Doubtless the Babylonian 
 mebinim, the ' teachers of the people,' lost no 
 time in beginning at Jerusalem the work which 
 they had carried on with so much success 
 among the Golah ; and probably their first 
 efforts stirred up a spirit of opposition which 
 decided Ezra on bringing matters between 
 himself and the ruling party to a crisis. He 
 had already thrown down the gauntlet to the 
 Zadokites in the affair of the presentation of 
 the treasure. Defiance had been met by 
 defiance. And now all those who were dis- 
 contented with the governing party, who dis- 
 approved of its policy on religious grounds — 
 
AFTER THE EXILE. 
 
 among whom were members of the non- 
 Zadokite priesthood as well as of the secular 
 nobility — attached themselves to Ezra and 
 promised him their support. The men of this 
 party were known as ' those' wBo^i^mbled at 
 the words of the God of Israel ' — ' those who 
 trembled at the commandment of God.' ^ They 
 were the thoroughgoing reformers, whose 
 scrupulous reverence for the Law verged on 
 fanaticism, and who were determined at all 
 costs to force its authority on the people, 
 without showing any more regard to the 
 counsels of prudent statesmanship than to 
 class interests or private ambitions. 
 
 Among the darkest blots on Jewish social 
 life, as it presented itself to Ezra's searching 
 eye, was that practice of contracting marriages 
 with aliens, which had been originally sanc- 
 tioned by the hierarchy on grounds of policy,^ 
 and was now in a manner legitimised by the 
 usage of years. In all probability the report 
 that such a practice existed had reached Ezra 
 before he left Babylon ; certainly he could not 
 have spent many days or weeks at Jerusalem 
 without making the discovery for himself. 
 
 1 Ezra ix. 4 ; x. 3. " ^Supra, vol. i. p. 255. 
 
EZRA AT JERUSALEM. 
 
 Tried by his severely orthodox standard, the 
 conduct of those priests and nobles of Israel 
 who had taken ' outlandish women ' for their 
 wives was scandalous in the extreme — an 
 offence against relisrion, sufficient in itself to 
 provoke a repetition of the divine judgments 
 from whose strokes the nation was slowly 
 rallying. In his view, Israel was a people 
 consecrated to a 'jealous God,' and therefore 
 bound to preserve itself most carefully from 
 all admixture of foreign elements. Such 
 unions were a pollution of 'the holy seed.' 
 They contravened the spirit, if not the letter, 
 of that legislation which it was his great aim 
 to establish. They threatened to destroy that 
 purity of race which was a necessary safeguard 
 for purity of religion. Deeply read in the 
 past history of Israel, profoundly impressed 
 with the warning he saw written large on its 
 every page, Ezra shuddered to think that 
 what had been before might be again — that 
 commerce and alliance with the heathen might 
 bring in their train idolatry, and idolatry 
 involve the nation in ruin beyond repair. 
 Brooding over the evils of his time and the 
 difficulties of his mission, he came to look on 
 
AFTER THE EXILE. 
 
 this question as one of supreme importance 
 not only for the present but for the whole 
 future of Judaism. He deliberately chose this 
 as the ground on which to fight his first battle 
 with the dominant faction at Jerusalem. 
 Victorious here, he might hope to find the way 
 opened for the further development of his 
 campaign of reform. 
 
 The office of Chief Judge to which Ezra had 
 been appointed by the Persian king gave him 
 full power to deal with offenders against the 
 Law of Moses. He had authority to punish 
 those who broke the Law by confiscation of 
 their goods, by sentence of outlawry, even, in 
 extreme cases, by sentence of death ; ^ and 
 from his jurisdiction there was no appeal, 
 except to the code itself which he had at once 
 to interpret and to administer. It might have 
 been supposed that Ezra, armed with such 
 powers, would have found no difficulty in 
 settling the alien marriage question out of hand 
 — that he had simply to set up his tribunal, 
 summon the culprits before it, and compel 
 them to submit or take the consequences. 
 But in reality this summary mode of proceed- 
 
 1 Ezra vii. 26. 
 
EZRA AT JERUSALEM. 
 
 ing was impracticable. It was 'not his man- 
 date from Artaxerxes that failed Ezra here; 
 it was the Law itself On this question of 
 marriage between Jews and Gentiles the 
 teaching of the Law was undecided, incon- 
 clusive ; in different passages, it seemed to 
 speak with a different voice ; there was no 
 article of the code which Ezra could invoke as 
 final in the controversy he was about to raise. 
 The older Law — that Deuteronomic code 
 which, either in whole or in part, had hitherto 
 been the sole statute-book of the community 
 of the Second Temple — limited its prohibitions 
 to marriages with certain specified Canaanite 
 tribes, seven in number,^ of which in Ezra's 
 time only the names survived. Elsewhere 
 this same code expressly permitted the marriage 
 of Israelites with foreign women taken captive 
 in war ; ^ and decreed that the offspring of 
 unions with the daughters of Egypt should, 
 in the third generation, enter on all the rights 
 of Israelites of pure blood.^ Even in the case 
 of marriages between Jews and Ammonite 
 or Moabite women, the Deuteronomic legisla- 
 
 1 Deut. vii. 1-4. 2 Deut. xxi. 10-14. 
 
 3 Deut. xxiii. 7, 8. 
 
AFTER THE EXILE. 
 
 tion, wliile excluding their descendants from 
 all share in the religious life of Israel to the 
 tenth generation,^ did not go so far as to 
 decree their expulsion from the community. 
 A more Puritanic spirit pervades the code 
 which Ezra had brought with him from Babylon 
 — the so-called 'priestly code.'^ But that 
 code was not yet promulgated at Jerusalem; 
 it was still to the Judeans virtually an un- 
 known book ; and Ezra had to establish its 
 authority before he could make his appeal to 
 it from the more ancient and familiar Torah 
 which the Zadokites had already in their 
 hands. 
 
 Thus it might seem that Ezra, in raising 
 this particular issue, was coming down from the 
 strong position which he held in virtue of his 
 mandate, and oifering battle to his opponents 
 on terms more advantageous to them than to 
 himself. The result, however, proved that he 
 had made no mistake in tactics. He had 
 resolved on a direct appeal to the people, 
 
 1 Deut. xxiii. 3. 
 
 2 i.e. the main body of legislation in Exodus, Leviticus 
 and Numbers. Cp. Gen. xxviii. 2 ; xxvi. 34, 35 ; xxvii. 
 46 ; Numb. xxv. 6 ; Exod. xxxiv. 16. See Stubbe, Die J5/i« 
 im, Alt. Test., 50, 51. 
 
EZRA AT JERUSALEM. 13 
 
 trusting more to the effect of his personal 
 influence than to tlie authority of a code which 
 was as yet all but unknown. The marriages 
 he so strongly condemned had been contracted 
 in the first instance, and perhaps for the most 
 part, by members of the Jewish aristocracy. 
 They were of the nature of political alliances, 
 intended to link the leading families of Judea 
 with those of the neighbouring nations, and so 
 to disarm the hostility which from the outset 
 had involved the colony in so many troubles. 
 In those days the whole power and wealth of 
 Judea were in the hands of a small minority, 
 a privileged caste, whose hereditary rights 
 were not for a moment questioned by the 
 multitude. But if the conscience of this sub- 
 missive multitude could be touched, and their 
 feelings stirred, on a question which affected 
 them less vitally than it did their social 
 superiors, then the latter would have to give 
 way under the sheer, irresistible pressure of 
 public opinion. The prophets of old had 
 made their appeal, once and again, from the 
 court to the streets ; Ezra, with different aims, 
 followed the same method now. He could 
 scarcely hope to succeed on other lines. The 
 
14 AFTER THE EXILE. 
 
 part of Phinehas with liis javelin was cl early- 
 out of date. To use the power given by a 
 Gentile monarch in humbling the native 
 authorities of Judea was a dangerous ex- 
 pedient, only to be resorted to in case othe^ 
 means should fail. But it might be possible 
 to work on the fears of the people, to impress 
 them with a sense of the unfaithfulness of 
 their chiefs and the appalling consequences of 
 persistence in their impious courses, and so to 
 raise a storm before which the hierarchy and 
 nobility would have to bow their heads and 
 yield. Ezra could count on the active support 
 of the considerable body of foreign Jews which 
 had accompanied him from the East. Their 
 views on the question of the hour were 
 identical with his own, and already they had 
 begun that gradual leavening of Jewish 
 society, that quiet diffusion of their stricter 
 principles of duty, which, all through this 
 period, must have powerfully aided the leaders 
 of reform. 
 
 Ezra's method of dealing with this question 
 might be open to criticism ; to an impartial 
 onlooker it might seem high-handed, harsh, 
 even cruel. But there could be no doubt as 
 
EZRA AT JERUSALEM. 15 
 
 to the perfect purity and integrity of his 
 motives. Unlike most of his adversaries, he 
 had no personal interest in the dispute, no 
 selfish ends to gain. His one ambition was to 
 glorify God and to be of service to his nation. 
 He plunged into this controversy with all the 
 passionate intensity of conviction which be- 
 longed to him alike by temperament and 
 training. But for this unquestionable sincerity, 
 the means he took to bring home to the people 
 his sense of their guilt and danger might have 
 been thought to savour of the theatrical. The 
 scene prepared for them was in the highest 
 degree dramatic ; but Ezra's part in it, though 
 not perhaps unstudied, was certainly not 
 acted. He was in deadly earnest ; and his 
 vehement expressions of horror and alarm, 
 exaggerated as they might appear, were the 
 natural outcome of what he really felt and 
 believed. 
 
 At an hour when the temple courts were 
 thronged with worshippers — probably just 
 after the offering of the morning sacrifice — 
 certain members of the Puritan party among 
 the Jewish nobles, who from the first had been 
 in opposition on this question of alliance with 
 
i6 AFTER THE EXILE. 
 
 the Gentiles/ came forward to where Ezra 
 stood, and publicly denounced the chiefs of the 
 clergy and laity as guilty of breaking the Law 
 and leading the people into sin. The archaic 
 form of the indictment sufficiently indicated 
 its source. The accusers spoke as Ezra himself 
 might have spoken. A string of names of 
 ancient Canaanite tribes, which had long ceased 
 to exist — a reference to their ' abominations ' 
 or idolatries ^ — suggested the inference that the 
 prohibitions laid on Israel at the time of the 
 first settlement of the land were valid still ; 
 that they were necessary still, as then ; that 
 the penalty of disobedience was still as terrible 
 as any that stood written in the earliest 
 chapters of the national history. Israel was 
 ' the holy seed,' and for Israel to ' mingle with 
 the Amme ha-Aretz ' was a defiance of that 
 divine law which had decreed its eternal 
 separation from the heathen.^ 
 
 If the report of this scandal had now reached 
 Ezra's ears for the first time, and burst upon 
 him with the shock of a new revelation, it 
 could not have provoked a more startling 
 
 1 Su'pra, vol. i. p. 256. ^ ~^,^^^ \y^ \ 
 
 8 Ibid. 2. 
 
EZRA AT JERUSALEM. 17 
 
 display of emotion. The feelings which he 
 had hitherto held in check, or disclosed only 
 to his intimates, now overmastered, over- 
 whelmed him, broke through all restraint and 
 reserve. In the wild abandonment of oriental 
 mourning, all thought of personal dignity was 
 forgotten. Ezra was no longer the great scribe 
 and scholar, the high Persian official whom 
 men addressed as ' my lord,' ^ the Chief Judge 
 of Israel : he was simply a son of Abraham, 
 agonising for his people. Rending his gar- 
 ments, tearing his hair and beard, in frantic 
 gestures and inarticulate cries he gave vent to 
 the grief and horror which words were too 
 feeble to utter. The people looked on, at first 
 amazed, then terrified. The paroxysm spent 
 itself ; physical exhaustion followed ; Ezra 
 sank to the earth, and lay there in a kind of 
 stupor.^ Eound the prostrate form of their 
 leader gathered in silence all those who 
 thought and felt with him, all those who 
 ' trembled at the words of the God of Israel.' 
 Hour passed after hour; the winter day 
 waned, the evening shades fell ; still Ezra lay 
 motionless and speechless, as though crushed 
 
 1 Ezra X. 3. 2 Ezra ix. 3. 
 
 II C 
 
1 8 AFTER THE EXILE. 
 
 under the load of Israel's guilt ; and still his 
 followers stood round him, patient and mutely 
 sympathetic. 
 
 The rumour of this extraordinary scene 
 spread through the city ; as the hour of 
 the evening oblation^ drew near, great numbers 
 of the people flocked to the temple and 
 thronged its outer court. Men, women and 
 children,^ priesthood and laity, nobles and 
 commons, friends and foes of the new doctrines 
 — all were there ; and all looked with awe and 
 wonder upon that spectacle of self-abasement, 
 which recalled the figure of some great prophet 
 of the past, a Jeremiah or an Ezekiel, lament- 
 ing dumbly the impending doom of his people. 
 At last Ezra's voice broke the ominous 
 stillness. With rent garments and dishevelled 
 hair, his anguish of mind written on his 
 features, he knelt in prayer. His face turned, 
 his hands outstretched towards the temple, as 
 to the earthly dwelling of Jehovah, he poured 
 out his soul in a frenzy of supplication. As 
 
 1 Ezra ix. 4. The time for oifering tte morning sacrifice 
 was just after daybreak ; for oifering the evening sacrifice, 
 the hour of twilight. See Schurer, History of the Jewish 
 People, i. 286. 2 Ezra x. 1. 
 
EZRA AT JERUSALEM. 19 
 
 he prayed, his body rocked to and fro ; now he 
 was on his knees, now prone on the earth ; 
 tears streamed down his cheeks, sobs choked 
 his utterance.^ Such signs of emotion in such 
 a man, so stern and strong and self-controlled 
 as Ezra had hitherto seemed to the citizens of 
 Jerusalem, gave an added pathos and solemnity 
 to his utterances. 
 
 Ezra has reproduced in his memoirs the 
 argument of this prayer, which certainly de- 
 served to be recorded, for its effect upon 
 those who heard it was remarkable, and the 
 occasion was historic. Virtually it was an 
 admonition and appeal addressed to the 
 great audience gathered round the suppliant ; 
 in form, it was a confession of the national 
 guilt, without one word of petition for the 
 divine forgiveness. It shows clearly in what 
 sense the Puritans of that day construed 
 their national history, past and present, and 
 in what spirit they approached their task as 
 reformers. Branded on their consciousness, 
 vivid before their eyes, was the disastrous 
 end of the ancient kingdom — the destruction 
 within one lifetime of the political and social 
 
 1 Ezra X. 1. 
 
AFTER THE EXILE. 
 
 fabric built up during a thousand years. 
 The new Israel was still bearing the con- 
 sequences of the calamity that had overtaken 
 the old. The iniquities of the fathers were 
 still being visited on the children. 'Sword, 
 and captivity, and spoiling ' ^ had marred 
 the beauty of Israel, stripped it of all glory, 
 wasted its strength, and made the people 
 what they were that day. It was true that 
 the heavy hand of judgment had been of late 
 uplifted ; they lay no longer under the ban of 
 the Eternal ; they had been raised from the 
 dust. The favours shown them by such 
 powerful Gentile monarchs as Cyrus, Darius 
 and Artaxerxes — the restoration to their land 
 — the success of their efforts to rebuild the 
 temple — were so many proofs and pledges that 
 Jehovah had not forsaken them.^ But to 
 make this nascent prosperity a ground of self- 
 confidence — to suppose that they could re- 
 constitute the polity of Israel without those 
 safeguards which their fathers, to their own 
 undoing, had despised — was of all illusions the 
 vainest, of all errors the most fatal. The little 
 they had done towards repairing the ruins of 
 
 1 Ezra ix. 7. 2 lUA. 9. 
 
EZRA AT JERUSALEM. 
 
 the past, the few faltering steps they had 
 taken in the path of progress, did not warrant 
 them in trusting either to their own strength 
 or to the unconditional continuance of divine 
 protection. It was but ' for a little moment ' 
 that God had shown them grace. They were 
 but the ' escaped remnant ' of what had once 
 been a mighty people. As yet their eyes had 
 been lightened by only the first streaks of the 
 dawn of the coming day. As yet they had 
 received only 'a little reviving' — a mere 
 trifling instalment of the full and free national 
 life to which they were justified in looking 
 forward.^ As yet they were simply ' bondmen ' 
 in their own land.^ The thought of all this 
 should be sufiicient to make them shrink in 
 fear from the slightest approach to those paths 
 which had led their forefathers to destruction. 
 The glorious sun of ancient Israel had been 
 totally eclipsed : how much more easily their 
 j)ale flicker of prosperity ! The great tree, the 
 growth of a millennium, had been torn up in a 
 day : how much more easily the feeble sapling 
 that had sprung from its roots ! It was by 
 transgressing the limits divinely laid down, by 
 1 Ezra ix. 8. 2 mg^ 9_ 
 
AFTER THE EXILE. 
 
 mixing, with the heathen, by admitting them 
 into the community, by first tolerating and then 
 imitating their idolatrous practices, that the 
 men of a former generation had drawn down 
 on themselves the wrath of heaven. What 
 hope was there for the men of the present 
 generation, if they, heedless of the past and its 
 warnings, should bring about a repetition of 
 the chastisement by a repetition of the offence ? 
 If that should happen, the end might be 
 foreseen with absolute certainty. There would 
 be no softening of the second blow, should it 
 fall ; no sparing of its force. Not even a poor 
 remnant, such as the past had spared, would 
 survive the more awful visitation of the future. 
 Israel would be simply annihilated by that arm 
 of doom, which Ezra seemed to see already 
 poised over the head of his people.^ 
 
 ' Behold, we are before thee in our guilti- 
 ness ; for none can stand before thee because 
 of this ' ^ — was the general confession with 
 which Ezra closed his prayer. By this time 
 the uncontrolled emotion of the speaker had 
 communicated itself to his audience. They 
 could scarcely realise as yet what it was that 
 
 1 Ezraix. 13, 14. 2 lUA. 15. 
 
EZRA AT JERUSALEM. 23 
 
 had led to such a display of violent agitation. 
 They had not hitherto been conscious of having 
 committed a deadly sin which might awaken 
 at any moment the slumbering judgments of 
 Jehovah. Now they were assured, by one 
 whose authority all felt and owned, and whose 
 sincerity was attested by groans and tears, 
 that their iniquities were ' heaped up over 
 their heads,' that their guilt had 'grown up 
 unto the heavens,' and that this holy man ' was 
 ashamed ' and ' blushed ' at the knowledge of 
 what they had done.^ The vague dread of 
 an unknown danger, the quick sympathy and 
 impressibility which give the fakeer or moUah 
 his sway over an oriental crowd, the sorrowful 
 feelings called up by Ezra's vividly contrasted 
 pictures of past and present — thrilled and 
 melted the whole assembly. They lifted up 
 their voice and wept aloud. The temple 
 courts resounded with the wailings of a people. 
 One man at least was ready to seize upon 
 this moment of popular excitement, so favour- 
 able to the designs of the reformers. A member 
 of that minority among the Jewish nobles 
 which had attached itself to Ezra heart and 
 
 1 Ezra ix. 6. 
 
24 AFTER THE EXILE. 
 
 soul, Shekaniah ben Jehiel, of the great house 
 of Elam/ stood boldly forward, and made him- 
 self the mouthpiece of Israel at this turning- 
 point in its destinies. If Shekaniah was the 
 son of the Jehiel mentioned in the list which 
 closes the Book of Ezra,^ he must have been a 
 zealot indeed, as in that case his own father 
 ■was among the culprits who had married 
 foreign wives. He was at all events an un- 
 compromising reformer, and brought forward 
 his plan with a patness and precision which 
 showed that it was by no means the birth of a 
 sudden impulse. Indeed, by his own avowal, 
 he was speaking Ezra's miud,^ and had reason 
 to know that the course he proposed would 
 have his leader's approval. It was undeniable, 
 said Shekaniah, that a great trespass had been 
 committed. But the wrong that had been 
 done might be undone. Now, at last, there 
 was ' hope in Israel ' * — now, at last, they 
 had a man in the midst of them who was fit 
 to grapple with the evil, and a people whose 
 tears and wailings proclaimed them conscience- 
 
 1 Supra, vol. i. p. 72, note. ^ ^^ra x. 26. 
 
 3 ' According to tlie counsel of my lord ' ; Ezra x. 3. 
 
 * Ibid. 2. 
 
EZRA AT JERUSALEM. 25 
 
 stricken and anxious to fulfil the Law. Let 
 them make a covenant with God. Let them 
 swear, on the spot, to dissolve the guilty 
 marriages, to send away the foreign women — 
 to send away, not only the wives, but the 
 children born of those unhallowed nuptials, 
 that so Israel might be free henceforth and for 
 ever from all contamination of alien blood. 
 Turning to Ezra, the speaker called upon him to 
 take up the sacred task committed to him, and 
 assured him of the support of all good Israelites : 
 — 'Arise, for the matter lieth upon thee, and 
 we are with thee ; be strong, and do.' ^ 
 
 Ezra, thus adjured, needed no further 
 prompting. He rose from his knees and faced 
 the people. They were still quivering with 
 the excitement of the scene they had witnessed 
 and the words they had heard ; their highly- 
 wrought feelings broke forth in cries and 
 gestures ; for the moment they were plastic as 
 wax in Ezra's iron hand. Among the throng 
 were men who kept a cool head, and clearly 
 foresaw the troubles which this sweeping 
 measure of reform must bring on the commu- 
 nity ; men whose hearts revolted against this 
 
 1 Ezra X. 4. 
 
26. AFTER THE EXILE. 
 
 cruel straining of the Law, which threatened 
 to break up their homes, and to sever the ties 
 they held dearest and most sacred. But the 
 counsels of prudence and the promptings of 
 natural affection were alike powerless for the 
 time. Against that demonstration of popular 
 feeling, that universal assent which Ezra now 
 commanded, it was useless to urge objections, 
 even to plead for delay. The boldest spirits 
 quailed before that figure of menace and re- 
 solve, dimly seen through the dusk that now 
 shrouded the temple precincts, as before a 
 visible embodiment of the majesty of the Law 
 against which they had offended. Not a 
 murmur of dissent was raised as Ezra's stern 
 voice rang forth, calling on all Israel there 
 present to take the oath and avert the judg- 
 ment. The voice of the people answered him. 
 "With apparent unanimity, they pledged them- 
 selves to obey the Law.^ 
 
 ^ Ezra X. 5. 
 
CHAPTEE II. 
 
 H IRattonal Hssembls. 
 
 T?ZEA lost no time in following up this 
 •^-^ victory. After the crowd had dispersed, 
 he withdrew to one of the chambers ^ connected 
 with the temple, which had been placed at his 
 disposal, and there spent the night ^ in con- 
 ference with the leading men of his party and 
 the official heads of the community. These 
 latter, whatever their private feelings might 
 be, had for the time no alternative save to 
 fall in with the plans of the reformers. It 
 was vain to think of stemming the tide of 
 popular feeling ; they could only hope that it 
 might ebb as suddenly as it had flowed, and 
 
 1 Known in the Chronicler's clay as 'the chamber of 
 Jehohanan ben Eliashib,' the fifth in order of the post-exile 
 High Priests : Ezra x. 6 ; cp. Neh. xii. 23. 
 
 ^ 1 Apoo. Ezra ix. 2. 
 
2 8 AFTER THE EXILE. 
 
 meanwhile it seemed their wisest course to go 
 with it, at least in appearance, and direct it 
 into the least dangerous channels possible. 
 They had to deal with a man who was absorbed 
 in his one idea, who held the ways of politicians 
 in supreme contempt, and who was quite ready 
 to ruin the state for a principle. Now launched 
 in full career of reform, conscious of the power 
 which the popular mandate had put in his 
 hands — a power tenfold greater for his purpose 
 than that given him by the mandate of the 
 Persian king — Ezra was in no mood to make 
 concessions ; the feverish excitement of the 
 scene in the temple courts still clung to him ; 
 after his day of fasting, he still refused to eat 
 or drink until his work was advanced at least 
 another stage. The debate in this midnight 
 conclave, doubtless fierce and prolonged, re- 
 sulted in a compromise. The covenant entered 
 into by the crowd in the temple courts, 
 snatched from them as it were by surprise, 
 was not to be held as a final decision, com- 
 mitting all Israel, present or absent ; it must 
 be ratified by the voice of a national assembly, 
 summoned for that purpose by formal pro- 
 clamation. So far this was a gain for the 
 
A NATIONAL ASSEMBLY. 29 
 
 chiefs of the colony. But this national 
 assembly was to be convoked with the least 
 possible delay, before time and reflection had 
 done anything to weaken the impression that 
 Ezra had made. It was to meet within three 
 days after the issue of the proclamation, and 
 any failure to appear was to be visited with the 
 severest penalties — the defaulter's property to 
 be forfeited to the uses of the temple, and he 
 himself excommunicated, cut ofi" from the 
 ' congregation of the Exile.' ^ The urgency and 
 stringency of these provisions may be traced 
 to the influence of the imperious Reformer and 
 his partisans. 
 
 On the appointed day — the twentieth day 
 of the ninth month (Kislev, November) of the 
 year 459 B.c. — from towns, villages and fields, 
 the people poured into Jerusalem. 'All the 
 men of Judah and Benjamin,' says the 
 Chronicler, obeyed the summons ; there was no 
 murmuring or hanging back ; Israel was no 
 longer recalcitrant, rebellious, as it had been 
 of old, but docile, tractable, submissive to all 
 authority that seemed of divine institution. 
 The place of assembly was the great open 
 
 1 Ezra X. 8. 
 
30 AFTER THE EXILE. 
 
 square in front and eastward of the temple, 
 hard by the Water-gate ^ — a locality which had 
 been the scene of many popular gatherings in 
 time past, but never of one so momentous as 
 this, for now Israel found itself at the parting 
 of the ways, and was to make a choice that 
 must shape its whole after development. The 
 winter rain fell in torrents, the north wind 
 blew chill ; the people, crouching on the sodden 
 ground, shivered with cold and fear ^ as Ezra 
 rose to harangue them. His address was brief 
 but trenchant, as became the occasion. They 
 had sinned in intermarrying with the Gentiles. 
 They had added another count to the long 
 indictment against Israel.^ Let them do the 
 one thing that might yet turn aside the wrath 
 of heaven — confess their guilt ; separate them- 
 selves completely from the peoples of the land ; 
 send away the foreign women. To do this 
 was to do God's pleasure * — Ezra had all the 
 
 1 A locality variously known as ' the open place of the 
 house of God,' Ezra x. 9 ; ' broad place of water-gate,' Neh. 
 viii. 16; 'the open place before the water-gate,' Neh. viii. 
 1 ; ' the broad place on the east,' 2 Chron. xxix. 4. See 
 Unruh, Das alte Jerusalem u. seine Bauwerke, 25. 
 
 2 Ezra X. 9. ^ Ibid. 10. * Ibid. 11. 
 
A NATIONAL ASSEMBLY. 31 
 
 Puritan's unfaltering conviction that his own 
 will must be God's will, with all the power 
 such conviction gives for good or evil. His 
 words struck home to the people like a blow. 
 Cowering under the pitiless weather and before 
 the pitiless judge, they cried out with pathetic 
 submissiveness that as he had spoken, so must 
 they do.-' 
 
 Still the other side claimed a hearing. The 
 Zadokites and their allies among the Jewish 
 aristocracy, deeply committed to that policy 
 which Ezra so unsparingly condemned, could 
 not aiford to let judgment go against them by 
 default. They put forward their spokesmen, 
 whose names the Chronicler has carefully 
 recorded,^ but without mentioning on what 
 grounds they based their opposition to Ezra, 
 whether theoretical or practical, or both. This 
 attempt to turn the tide of popular feeling was 
 
 1 Ezra X. 12. 
 
 2 lUd. 15. The rendering of K.V., 'Only . . . stood up 
 against this,' is certainly correct. Herzfeld {Gesch. ii. 18) 
 supposes that these persons were, not opponents of Ezra, but 
 partisans more zealous than even their chief ; and that what 
 they ' stood up against ' was the proposal for delay. But it 
 is much more probable that these were representatives of 
 the opposition. 
 
32 AFTER THE EXILE. 
 
 in vain. The supreme court of Israel, which 
 was Israel itself met in solemn convention, 
 had given its decision, and from that there 
 was no appeal. Panic-stricken at the thought 
 of the 'fierce wrath of their God,'^ which 
 rested upon them, and must continue so to 
 rest until the cause of it was removed, the 
 crowd clamorously demanded that Ezra should 
 have his way, and would listen to neither 
 argument nor persuasion. The headlong 
 zealot felt himself master of the situation, and 
 would have had the matter settled in summary 
 fashion, without an instant's delay — the 
 offenders impeached before the assembly, con- 
 demned on the spot, and forced there and then 
 to choose between repudiation of their wives 
 and deprivation of their rights as members of 
 the commonwealth. There were, however, 
 some among the reformers themselves who had 
 more coolness of judgment than theic impetu- 
 ous chief, and who saw the unreasonableness, 
 even the absurdity, of his proposal. A mass 
 meeting, they urged, was no fit court to try 
 the cases of individuals. The assembly had 
 voted the principle, and that was work enough 
 
 ^ Ezra X. 14. 
 
A NATIONAL ASSEMBLY. 33 
 
 for one day. There were many cases to try ; 
 people from the villages and rural districts 
 could not be expected to remain at Jerusalem 
 until all these were disposed of; the inclem- 
 ency of the weather was itself a sufficient 
 argument 'against further proceedings in the 
 open air.i They suggested accordingly that a 
 special court should be constituted for the 
 trial of every case with all the forms of justice ; 
 that it should be composed of ' heads of houses' 
 in whom the people would have confidence ; 
 that it should be chosen by Ezra himself,^ and 
 sit under his presidency. They proposed 
 further that this court should not confine its 
 sessions to Jerusalem, but should go on circuit 
 to every town and village where the scandal 
 was reported to exist, consult with the local 
 authorities, take evidence, and pronounce 
 judgment. Ezra's opponents were ready to 
 grasp at anything that held out the prospect 
 of delay. He himself had no reason to be dis- 
 satisfied with a proposal which gave him the 
 office of Chief Inquisitor, and the power to 
 select his colleagues. By common consent the 
 matter was thus arranged. Ten days later, '^ 
 
 1 Ezra X. 13. -I Apoc. Ezra ix. 16. = Ezra x. 16. 
 II D 
 
34 AFTER THE EXILE. 
 
 Ezra had set up his tribunal at Jerusalem, and 
 some of the noblest in the land were standing 
 as culprits at its bar. 
 
 Thus began the bitter struggle which for 
 years to come was to absorb Ezra's whole 
 energy, which seriously retarded the further 
 and more important reforms he, had in view, 
 and brought his enterprise to the brink of ruin. 
 So long as he had the people at his back, he 
 might bid defiance to the priestly patricians 
 and their connections among the Jewish 
 nobility ; but the ferment of popular feeling 
 he had succeeded in stirring up was little to 
 be depended on in a prolonged and stubborn 
 contest. The ruling caste, from motives of 
 prudence, might consent to waive its hereditary 
 rights for the moment, but would certainly 
 never surrender them. The vote of the 
 national assembly, in appearance a final settle- 
 ment of the question at issue, was in reality 
 only the beginning of a controversy which 
 long divided Jewish society, and has left its 
 mark on Jewish literature. The position 
 taken up by Ezra in provoking this contro- 
 versy was far from being unassailable. If the 
 Law which he represented to be tlie one 
 
A NATIONAL ASSEMBLY. 35 
 
 supreme authority had given a distinct ruling 
 on the matter — if the foreign women whom he 
 was bent on driving out of the community 
 had been idolaters — his course would have 
 been easy and his triumph sure. But the 
 Law contained no such decisive ruling ; ^ and 
 though Ezra's followers, in the rashness of 
 their zeal, might appeal to the Law,^ he him- 
 self knew better than to take up such un- 
 tenable ground, and justified his action by a 
 vague reference, not to the Law, but to 'the 
 prophets.'^ It was necessary for him to 
 assume that those foreign women over whom 
 the quarrel raged were heathens, and that to 
 marry such persons was to bring the taint of 
 heathenism into the sanctuary of Jewish 
 homes. But this assumption was in reality 
 unfounded,* and to cite the instance of 
 Solomon,^ beguiled into idolatry by the 
 inmates of his cosmopolitan harem, was a 
 mere begging of the question. Tradition and 
 precedent were against the reforming party. 
 The great Lawgiver himself had done precisely 
 what the present chiefs of Israel were now 
 
 1 Supra, p. 11. 2 g^ra x. 3. ^ Ezra ix. 11. 
 
 * Supra, vol. i. p. 257. ^ Neh. xiii. 26. 
 
36 AFTER THE EXILE. 
 
 blamed for doing, and those who had acted 
 Ezra's part in that episode of the life of Moses 
 had been visited with a striking proof of the 
 divine displeasure. '^ The great king, David 
 himself, had been guilty, if this were guilt. ^ 
 If Ezra appealed to the prophets, his opponents 
 might quote against him the high authority of 
 Ezekiel, whose view as to the ' inheritance of 
 strangers,' the rights of naturalised foreigners, 
 was not easily reconcilable with the Puritan 
 demands.^ It might be said for Ezra that he 
 acted ' from the Mosaic motive.' * But more 
 could not be said. The principle and practice 
 which he sought to establish were in truth an 
 innovation, for which no sanction existed 
 either in law or in custom. 
 
 Ezra's sole justification was in the circum- 
 stances of the time. He had come to the 
 conclusion that Jewish religion could not be 
 preserved in its purity except on the basis of 
 Jewish nationality, and in this view of 
 Judaism under its present conditions he was 
 unquestionably right. He had further con- 
 
 1 Numb. xii. 1-10. 2 j Claron. iii. 2. 
 
 s Ezek. xlvii. 22, 23. 
 
 ■* Pliilippson, Israditische Eeligionslehre, 248. 
 
A NATIONAL ASSEMBLY. 37 
 
 vinced himself that the pohcy of the chief 
 priests and rulers, in offering the hand of 
 friendship to the Gentiles, was simply sui- 
 cidal ; that the bringing of foreigners on 
 equal terms into the community was relaxing 
 the bond of nationality, and thereby under- 
 mining the foundations of Jewish monotheism. 
 The ideal of a religious federation which 
 should embrace Judea and her Gentile neigh- 
 bours — of Jerusalem as the holy city where 
 Samaritan, Moabite and Ammonite should 
 worship with the Jew — seemed to him equally 
 wicked and ridiculous. Whatever steps had 
 been taken towards realising that ideal must 
 be at once retraced. Already the injury done 
 to the true religion had been great ; in a little 
 time, it might be irreparable. 
 
 The situation might not be so desperate as 
 Ezra imagined, but the results which had 
 already followed from the Gentile alliance^ 
 showed that the dangers he apprehended, if 
 exaggerated, were by no means chimerical. 
 It was no doubt true that a milder form of 
 treatment might have cured the ills of the 
 state ; that a less drastic measure might have 
 
 1 Supra, vol. i. p. 262. 
 
38 AFTER THE EXILE. 
 
 removed the danger which existed, without 
 plunging the community into other dangers, 
 almost as critical, though of another kind. 
 But the circumstances made it scarcely possible 
 for Ezra, even if it had been in his nature, to 
 act otherwise than as he did. The Puritan is 
 of necessity an 'ultra.' He dare not make 
 concessions or offer terms ; his power is lost, 
 if he yield an inch to the suggestion of 
 compromise. Wedded to his theocratic ideal, 
 Ezra would have no reform that was not 
 tlioTough, in the sense of not merely checking 
 abuses for the future, but of sweeping away 
 the last trace of those that had been allowed 
 to grow up in the past. Political troubles 
 from without, discords within, the sufferings 
 of individuals, the breaking up of homes — 
 these seemed to him as nothing in comparison 
 with that great principle of national life which 
 was at stake, and which at all costs and 
 hazards must be asserted and defended. The 
 Law, it was said, contained no explicit, positive 
 enactment on this mixed marriage question. 
 In that case, the Law must be supplemented 
 and the defect made good. The intention of 
 the Mosaic code, as Ezra and his party under- 
 
A NATIONAL ASSEMBLY. 39 
 
 stood it, was self-evident — it was to make 
 and keep the people and kingdom of Jehovah 
 separate from all other peoples and from all 
 earthly kingdoms. If the ancient legislative 
 barrier proved ineffective for that purpose, 
 then a new barrier must be erected to meet 
 the wants of a new age. In this lay the real 
 significance of the stand which Ezra made on 
 the question of alien marriages. His demand 
 for the dissolution of those marriages, on theo- 
 cratic grounds, was the first attempt to carry 
 out into practice the famous maxim of his 
 school — to ' set a hedge about the Law.' It 
 was the first invocation of an authority which 
 proclaimed itself the equal of the written 
 Torah, and in time became its superior; the 
 first imposition of that yoke of traditionalism 
 which was never henceforth shaken off, which 
 succeeding centuries weighted more heavily 
 and bound on more firmly, and which sits to 
 this day on the neck of the Jewish people. 
 
CHAPTEE III. 
 
 5b)?U anb HUegorg. 
 
 rpHE opposition to Ezra on this question ran 
 -*- in two distinct currents. Against him 
 were the politicians who had hitherto guided 
 the affairs of the colony, and who now saw the 
 results of all their efforts to cultivate a friendly 
 feeling between the Jews and their neighbours 
 put in jeopardy by what they regarded as an 
 outburst of reckless fanaticism. Against him 
 also were men who had no love for the poli- 
 ticians and no sympathy with their views, 
 but who fought on the same side in this con- 
 troversy, though with very different weapons 
 and for very different ends. Prophecy was 
 now moribund in Israel. But the party of 
 prophecy was not yet extinct; and to men 
 who drew their inspiration from the great 
 minds of the past, who lived upon hopes which 
 
IDYLL AND ALLEGORY. 41 
 
 had touched with quenchless light the darkest 
 pages of the national history, such views as 
 those now put forward by Ezra and his dis- 
 ciples seemed a denial of their creed and a 
 frustration of their aims. Against the particu- 
 larism of the Law they upheld the universalism 
 of the prophets. Realising, as Ezra did not, 
 the temporary character of the institutions of 
 Mosaism, they were bound to resist measures 
 and tendencies which arrested growth while 
 they offered protection. They held that Israel 
 must take its place and play its part in the 
 world as a people, in the broadest sense of 
 the term, whereas Ezra's principles, if carried 
 out, would make it simply a caste. They 
 held that Judaism must give place to some- 
 thing better and more perfect than itself — 
 that the Jewish church was but the seed-bed 
 from which the universal church of the future 
 was to spring : consequently, instead of draw- 
 ing tighter the bonds of legalism, they would 
 have had these bonds relaxed ; instead of 
 setting up additional ' hedges ' about the Law, 
 they would have had the existing barriers 
 gradually levelled away. To men of this way 
 of thinking, Ezra's reform seemed a retrograde 
 
42 AFTER THE EXILE. 
 
 step of the most serious character — an injury 
 done to religion in the pretended interests of 
 mere nationality. The principles they held, 
 the hopes they cherished, forbade them to keep 
 silent while the attempt was being made to 
 deprive the Gentiles of all share in Jewish 
 privileges, and to banish from the community 
 individuals wh(5se only crime was their foreign 
 birth or extraction. It was theirs to show that 
 reverence of spirit, beauty and nobility of 
 character, were not a Jewish monopoly, but 
 might be found among the despised heathen ; 
 to show that Israel in the past owed much to 
 Gentile adherents ; to show that the God in 
 whose name this grievous wrong, as they con- 
 sidered it, was being perpetrated, was the 
 Father of the Gentiles as of the Jews. 
 
 Two books which have gained a place among 
 the sacred writings of Israel, each unique in its 
 way, indicate the position taken up by the 
 broad churchmen of that time. These books 
 are strangely contrasted. One is a cameo of 
 literature, exquisitely finished by the deft 
 hand of an artist who knew how to conceal his 
 art, and to produce the finest efiects from the 
 simplest materials. The other is a torso. 
 
IDYLL AND ALLEGORY 43 
 
 grandly incomplete, uncouthly powerful ; a 
 work of the highest order of genius, in which 
 deep thoughts struggle for expression, some- 
 times clashing against each other, sometimes 
 beating against the bars of their literary form. 
 One is a drama of domestic life, enacted on the 
 narrow stage of a Jewish village ; the other 
 has the great world for its scene, and the hero 
 of the piece plays out his part against the 
 colossal background of the mightiest of pagan 
 empires. The spirit of the one is bland, peace- 
 ful, harmonious ; the other is all gloom and 
 storm. Yet these books, so strangely con- 
 trasted, are strangely akin. Both had their 
 origin in the same controversy, and embody 
 the views of the same school of thought. 
 
 The author of the little book which takes 
 its name from its heroine, Euth, goes back for 
 the setting of his story to ' the days when the 
 Judges judged.'^ How barbarous those days 
 were, how little favourable to the idyllic in real 
 life, history shows with sufficient clearness. 
 The gentle shepherds who flute and dance in 
 the pastorals as much resemble the rough hill- 
 men of the real Arcadia, as the peaceable rustics 
 1 Ruthi. 1. 
 
44 AFTER THE EXILE. 
 
 of Ruth resemble the men and women of the 
 wild times of the Judges. But to one writing 
 in the fifth century before Christ, those times 
 were sufficiently remote for his purpose ; they 
 might be idealised, touched with the golden 
 light of romance, invested with the glamour 
 which a nation whose present is dull and 
 sombre delights to weave round its primitive 
 past. 
 
 The Book of Ruth, apart from its moral 
 
 altogether, would be among the most charming 
 
 of stories, unsurpassed for its artistic naivete, 
 
 its delicate character-drawing, and the vein of 
 
 true and tender feeling which runs through it.^ 
 
 But apart from its moral, the Book would 
 
 never have existed at all. Jewish writers of 
 
 that time had no thought of making literature ; 
 
 they wrote always for a purpose more or less 
 
 theocratic. The author of Euth had higher 
 
 ends in view than to present a pretty picture 
 
 of old-world rustic life and manners, or to 
 
 supply the missing link in a genealogy. His 
 
 art is mainly unconscious, his literary form is, as 
 
 it were, accidentaJly perfect ; the really studied 
 
 1 ' A precious pearl of our Biblical literature,' Geiger calls 
 the Book {Ursdhrift, 49). 
 
IDYLL AND ALLEGORY. 45 
 
 part of his composition is its motive. That 
 motive was too plain to be missed, at least by 
 contemporaries. At a time when the question 
 of ' mixed marriages ' stirred the community 
 to its depths, this story of a mixed marriage 
 could not fail to be understood as a plea for 
 the Gentiles, a vindication of Gentile rights, 
 an answer to the extremists of reform, all the 
 more pungent as being made by implication 
 and suggestion through the apparently inno- 
 cent medium of a fireside tale. 
 
 This didactic purpose points the story 
 throughout. A Jewish family of good stand- 
 ing and repute emigrate from their native 
 place under pressure of famine, and seek a 
 home in the ' Field of Moab.' There the head 
 of the household dies. His two sons marry 
 women of Moab — the writer mentions this as 
 a perfectly natural thing in the circumstances, 
 and, by abstaining from any hint to the con- 
 trary, clearly indicates his own opinion that 
 these young Hebrews were not breaking any 
 law, or doing anything which a good Israelite 
 need be ashamed to do.^ Ten years pass ; 
 
 1 Very different was the view of the Talmudist {Baha 
 batra, 91, h.) who finds in the marriage of these young 
 
46 AFTER THE EXILE. 
 
 the two sons are dead without issue ; Naomi, 
 their mother, hearing that the famine is over, 
 determines to return to her native Bethlehem..^ 
 Her foreign daughters-in-law, widowed hke 
 herself, resolve to go with her — even to a 
 Moabitess, the marriage tie is sacred ; the dead 
 husband's land and people are hers. On the 
 way, yielding to Naomi's mournful pleading, 
 shrinking from the bleak prospect before her, 
 the younger son's widow turns back, not with- 
 out sorrow : but Ruth, the widow of the elder 
 son, stands firm to her loving purpose; no 
 matter how cheerless the present, how for- 
 bidding the future, she will not desert the 
 forlorn woman who is now childless, but for 
 her. It is a Gentile who shows this unselfish 
 attachment to the living, this pious faithfulness 
 to the memory of the dead ; who pours out in 
 immortal words ^ that love of a woman's heart 
 which triumphs over all distinctions of race 
 and religion, and raises the despised Moabitess 
 to an equality with the noblest in Israel. And 
 itvsras a woman of this heroic mould whom the 
 
 men with Moabitish women tlie explanation of their pre- 
 mature and childless end. So also the Targum of Ruth, 
 i. 4. 1 Ruth i. 6. 2 Ruth i. 16, 17. 
 
IDYLL AND ALLEGORY. 47 
 
 ruthless reformers of a later day would have 
 banished from the commonwealth as unworthy ! 
 Among those foreign women who were all 
 brought under the same sweeping decree of 
 expulsion, there might be some like Orpah, 
 holding lightly the tie that bound them to 
 Israel ; but was there no counterpart of Euth 
 the Moabitess, Gentile by birth but true 
 Jewish in heart, who had ' come taking refuge 
 under the wings of the Lord God of Israel ' ? -^ 
 Was this the fitting ' recompense and reward ' ^ 
 of such devotion ? Was it right that such 
 converts should be refused an asylum — sent 
 back in shame and sorrow to their native 
 land, in which they must feel themselves 
 henceforth strangers, and to their native 
 gods, which they had learned to hold in con- 
 tempt ? 
 
 How differently such claims were esteemed 
 in Israel of old, before the rise of the new 
 doctrines of exclusiveness, the author shows 
 by touch after touch, leading up to his most 
 effective point, with which he closes the story. 
 The solitary Naomi, friendless among her 
 friends, finds her only stay and comfort in 
 
 1 Ruth ii. 12. 2 /jifZ. 
 
48 AFTER THE EXILE. 
 
 the 'stranger'^ wlio remains true to her 
 in her fallen fortuneis. Euth's virtues are 
 freely owned by all; at Bethlehem, she is 
 ' known in all the Gate as a good woman.' ^ 
 Others of the men of Bethlehem, besides the 
 farmer-warrior Boaz, are suitors for her hand.^ 
 The grave elders met in the Gate, as witnesses 
 to the quaint formality by which Boaz buys 
 wife and land, see no fault, no bar to the 
 transaction, in the fact of Ruth's foreign 
 birth ; they invoke a blessing on their towns- 
 man's nuptials, praying that this Moabitess 
 who has ' come into the house of Boaz ' may 
 prove ' like Rachel and like Leah, which two 
 did build the house of Israel.' * A son is born 
 to Ruth ; the women of the place heap con- 
 gratulations on Naomi, and praises on the 
 foreign daughter who has ' loved her, and been 
 better to her than seven sons.' '" This son of 
 the Moabitess is the ancestor of David." The 
 hero whose exploits filled so large and glorious 
 a space in Jewish history, the ' man after God's 
 own heart,' the mirror of all kingly virtues, 
 
 1 Rutli ii. 10. 2 E^tli iii. 11. 
 
 3 Ihid. 10. -4 Ruthiv. 11. 
 
 ^ lUd. 15. (i Ruthiv. 17. 
 
IDYLL AND ALLEGORY. 49 
 
 as he appeared to posterity — was sprung from 
 one of those very 'mixed marriages' which 
 were now being condemned as fatal to the 
 national wellbeing and accursed in the sight 
 of heaven. 
 
 No mention is made in Jewish history of 
 this descent of the founder of the native 
 dynasty from a woman of Moab/ But though 
 the statement rests entirely on ,the authority 
 of the writer of this little prose-poem, it may 
 
 1 It is scarcely surprising that the Chronicler should pass 
 over what would seem to him. a blot on the scutcheon, in 
 view of hi a sentiments of hatred towards Moab and Ammon 
 in particular, as shown in such a passage as 2 Chron. xxiv. 
 26. On the other hand, a remarkable feature of David's 
 career as a warrior and policy as a ruler, to which history 
 gives full prominence, finds its explanation in the bio- 
 graphical fact recorded by the author of Ruth. It was 
 to a great extent by foreign help that David gained and 
 kept his throne. From foreigners he received much faith- 
 ful service (2 Sam. x. 2 ; xv. 32-37 ; xvii. 27-29), dealt 
 with them as trusty allies (1 Sam. xxii. 3), found an asylum 
 among them (1 Sam. xxvii. 3), gave them high commands 
 in his armies (2 Sam. xxiii. 37-39), had his foreign body- 
 guard (2 Sam. viii. 18) like the Swiss of the French 
 kings, and not less faithful (2 Sam. xv. 18). David's 
 perfect freedom from all prejudice in regard to foreigners, 
 his intimate relations with them, his unlimited confidence in 
 them and the unlimited devotion with which they repaid it 
 (2 Sam. XV. 19-22), are accounted for in no small measure 
 by the mixed blood that ran in his veins. 
 
 II E 
 
5° AFTER THE EXILE. 
 
 be accepted as strictly historical. His book 
 would have lost almost all point if the con- 
 clusion to which he leads up with such fine 
 literary tact had been mere invention, and not 
 a truth known to his contemporaries, handed 
 down to them through centuries of tradition. 
 For the rest, he is at little pains to disguise 
 his tale in the garb of history. The names he 
 gives his personages^ are sufficient in them- 
 selves to show that his work is in the main a 
 work of imagination, in which the past is made 
 to live again and teach a lesson to the present. 
 His pathetic figure of the alien Euth, gleaning 
 behind the reapers in the fields of Bethlehem, 
 reminded his people for all time that a type of 
 sweet and modest womanhood might be found 
 among the Gentiles ; and rebuked the sour 
 fanaticism which would have denied such con- 
 verts a share in the life of Israel, and dismissed 
 such wives and mothers from Jewish homes.^ 
 
 1 The two sons, dying in their youth, are called MacUon 
 (' Sickly ') and Kilion (' Pining '). Naomi (' Gracious ' or 
 'Lovely') makes a play on her own name (i. 20). Orpah 
 is 'she that bends the neck' — 'turns herself away.' Buth 
 is ' the Friend,' ' the Companion.' The author's introduction 
 from time to time of the Chorus of Women (i. 19 j iv. 14, 
 17) is another indication of the same kind. 
 
 2 This didactic purpose of the Book of Kuth was iirst 
 
IDYLL AND ALLEGORY. 51 
 
 The Book of Jonah so far resembles the 
 Book of Euth, that it is ' truth embodied in a 
 tale,' points a kindred moral, and conveys a 
 similar warning and reproof. But while the 
 writers' aims have a certain affinity, their 
 methods are widely divergent. The author of 
 Euth weaves a graceful, simple story, in which 
 characters and incidents of real life, otherwise 
 commonplace enough, are refined and beauti- 
 fied by the touch of the poet's hand. The 
 author of Jonah chooses a different literary 
 form, more suited to the depth and scope of 
 the thoughts that move him to utterance. 
 His allegory is greater in conception than in 
 execution. From time to time it falters and 
 halts, and seems almost on the point of 
 breaking down ; throughout it is ill-compacted, 
 disjointed, and in the end stops short rather 
 than finishes. One is conscious that the writer 
 finds the style he has adopted unfamiliar, un- 
 manageable. Ideas crowd upon him, one 
 calling forth another ; all must go into the 
 allegory ; hence complexity and confusion. 
 Judged by canons of art, his work is far 
 
 suggested by Umbreit (Stvd. u. Krif. 1834, ii. 308), and 
 developed by Geiger (Urschrift, 49). 
 
52 AFTER THE EXILE. 
 
 inferior to the Book of Job, its nearest analogue 
 in Scripture. But, poorly constructed as it is, 
 it shows a higher originality, a more daring 
 imagination, than even that Book, and rises to 
 a loftier pitch of dramatic interest. The author 
 is one of those great artists who can venture 
 with impunity into the region of the grotesque. 
 And he heightens the effect — it would be too 
 much to say, enlivens the prevailing gloom — 
 of his allegory, by strokes of a grim, saturnine 
 humour, which would be sufficient in them- 
 selves to give the work a marked individuality 
 of its own. 
 
 In this narrative of the imaginary adventures 
 of an imaginary prophet — imaginary, in all 
 but his name ^ — the author sets forth a philo- 
 
 1 The historical Jonah ben Amittai was a prophet of the 
 northern kingdom, a native of Gath-hepher, who flourished 
 under the second Jeroboam more than three centuries before 
 this time (2 Kings xiv. 25). Why the author should have 
 chosen this prophet rather than another as the nominal hero 
 of his tale is not discoverable ; possibly for the reason that 
 little more than the name of this personage had been handed 
 down in history. Bloch (Studien aur Gesch. der Sammlung 
 der althebr. Lit. 85) finds a reason in the name itself: 
 Amittai = Truth, and absolute Truth is the attribute of God ; 
 Jonah = Dove, and the Dove is the symbol of Israel : Jonah 
 ben Amittai is thus Israel, son of God (Exod. iv. 22 ; Dent, 
 xiv. 1) — which is ingenious, but scarcely satisfactory. 
 
IDYLL AND ALLEGORY. 53 
 
 sophy of Jewish history, as read by men of 
 the prophetic school. His Jonah is Israel, in 
 its relation to the Gentile world — Israel, as 
 entrusted with a great mission to the heathen, 
 on the faithful or unfaithful discharge of which 
 its own ultimate destiny depends. Dark and 
 difficult as the allegory may be, this idea is 
 found lying not far under the surface, and it 
 yields a clue to the understanding of the book 
 which has been called ' the riddle of the Old 
 Testament.' Jonah represents Israel ; Nineveh, 
 ' that great city ' which long before the writer's 
 day had Ipst its greatness,^ represents the 
 Gentile world ; the divine command to Jonah 
 is, ' Arise, go, preach unto Nineveh ' — to Israel, 
 ' Bear My message, make My name known, to 
 the heathen.' Jonah disobeys, rebels, flees : so 
 Israel, self-centred in its jealous exclusiveness, 
 clutching the privileges it refuses to share, 
 had failed wilfully in its duty to mankind. 
 The storm comes ; Jonah is tossed overboard 
 by the heathen and gulped down by the sea- 
 monster — a vivid picture of the calamity 
 which overwhelmed the nation, of the judg- 
 ment in which the ' Gentile destroyer ' ^ 
 
 1 Jonah iii. 2. ^ Jer. iv. 7 . 
 
54 AFTER THE EXILE. 
 
 wrought the vengeance and fulfilled the pur- 
 pose of the Eternal. The metaphor was not 
 new. Already a prophet of the Exile had 
 described under this same figure the Captivity 
 and the Eestoration : — ' Nebuchadrezzar the 
 king of Babylon hath devoured us ... he 
 hath swallowed us up like a great beast of the 
 sea ; he hath filled his maw with my best ; he 
 hath cast its out.'^ Jonah, entombed in the 
 belly of the great fish, is represented as making 
 prayer to God, or rather — with an inconsist- 
 ency characteristic of the writer — as intoning 
 a song of thanksgiving for a deliverance not 
 yet accomplished ; a composition made up of 
 tags from the psalter,^ whose exilic reference is 
 not to be mistaken. It was during the Exile, 
 during that sepulture of Israel in its living 
 tomb, that the chosen people turned to God 
 and learned to pray ; ' when my soul fainted 
 
 1 Jer. li. 34, cp. Isa. xxvii. 1, where the great world- 
 power is called 'leviathan.' If an original for the 'great 
 fish ' in Jonah must be sought for, it is much more likely to 
 he found in this passage of a still recent prophecy, than in 
 the Greek myth of Perseus and Andromeda, the Babylonian 
 Oannas, or the Assyrian Semiramis. 
 
 2 Cp. Jonah ii. 2 with Ps. xviii. 6, cxx. 1 ; 3 with Ps. 
 xli). 7 ; 5 with Ps. xviii. 5, Ixix. 2 ; 7 with Ps. xviii. 6, 
 cxlii. 3; 9 with Ps. xxvi. 7, 1. 14. 
 
IDYLL AND ALLEGORY. 55 
 
 within me, I remembered Jehovah ; and my 
 prayer came to Thee, into Thy holy temple.' ^ 
 Jehovah heard the voice of His people, uplifted 
 from the ' abyss ' : ^ prayer was followed by 
 deliverance. Jonah, 'vomited upon the dry 
 land,' ^ is Israel ' rescued from the ' maw of 
 Babylon,' and restored to national existence 
 on its native soil. The mission to Nineveh, 
 the prophetic calling of Israel, is resumed. 
 The Ninevites give ear to the Hebrew prophet, 
 as he stalks through their streets in the lonely 
 grandeur of his office, crying aloud his warning 
 cry.* They hear, and repent, and God suspends 
 the judgment. So had Israel found the 
 heathen not deaf to its voice, not inaccessible 
 to its influence, but ripe for that preaching of 
 the One God and the true worship, which it 
 was the high function of the chosen people to 
 make heard all the world over. The Gentiles 
 also are God's children. He who has accepted 
 the repentance of Israel will not reject theirs. 
 Most significant, in view of the circum- 
 stances of the time when the allegory was 
 composed, is the situation in which the writer 
 
 1 Jonah ii. 7. ^ IWd. 6. 
 
 3 lUi. 10. * Jonah iii. 4. 
 
56 AFTER THE EXILE. 
 
 leaves his prophet. Jonah, in his ' booth ' 
 outside of Nineveh — some poor handiwork of 
 his own, which cannot shelter him from the 
 vertical rays of the blazing sun — is Israel, 
 struggling painfully and with scant success to 
 constitute an independent polity, among the 
 nations, yet apart from them. Beyond the 
 environs of Nineveh Jonah sits, fainting under 
 the fierce heat of the day, yet clinging with 
 convulsive energy to the hope born of his 
 hatred — the hope of seeing the vast heathen 
 city, whose power and splendour and crowded 
 life seem to mock his solitary feebleness, 
 swept away in sudden and awful destruction.^ 
 A lesson of mercy is taught him in the finely 
 conceived incident of the growth and withering 
 of the miraculous gourd. ^ Whether or not 
 the lesson took eff"ect is left significantly 
 untold. The last glimpse given of Jonah- 
 Israel shows him still sitting outside' of 
 Nineveh, impatient, implacable, nursing his 
 sullen anger and bitter sense of wrong, and 
 waiting day after day for the stroke of doom 
 that does not fall. 
 
 Unfortunately, but perhaps inevitably, the 
 
 1 Jonali iv. 5. 2 lUi. 6, 7. 
 
IDYLL AND ALLEGORY. 57 
 
 didactic purpose of this strange Book was lost 
 sight of in later times, and its form utterly 
 misunderstood. A people greedy of the mar- 
 vellous, for ever ' seeking a sign,' ^ seized with 
 ignorant avidity on the ' miracles ' in Jonah, 
 and completely missed the moral and spiritual 
 teaching of which these were but the fantastic 
 drapery. Especially was this the case with 
 the crowning marvel of the whole, the episode 
 of the great sea-fish ; an episode which has 
 provoked so much unmerited ridicule from one 
 side, and so much ill-advised apology from 
 the other. On the strength of his unique 
 experience, his unheard-of deliverance from an 
 unheard-of danger, Jonah, the antiprophet, 
 was canonised, and given a place among the 
 great seers and teachers of his nation. To the 
 Jewish -Christian, misled by the prevailing 
 typomania of his age, the three days' entomb- 
 ment in the belly of the sea-monster seemed a 
 ' sign ' of the Eesurrection of Jesus Christ.^ In 
 
 1 1 Cor. i. 22. 
 
 ^ That the passage Matt. xii. 40 formed part of the ori- 
 ginal utterance of our Lord, or even of the original Gospel, is 
 in the last degree improbable. The allusion to the Eesurrec- 
 tion is entirely out of keeping with the context, and has all 
 the appearance of being the interpolation or annotation of a 
 
S8 AKIKK THE EXILE. 
 
 Arab legend, ' JAnAs ' is ' the traveller by the 
 great fish,' ' the man of the fish.' ^ Islam 
 honours his supposed grave at Mosul, and the 
 Eomish Church displays his supposed relics at 
 Venice and Eavenna. Such has been the 
 singular fate of a book which was meant to 
 carry a lesson, and has floated a myth. But 
 the lesson, however obscurely taught, cannot 
 quite have failed of its immediate purpose. 
 The writer, whoever he was, gave powerful 
 and timely expression to thoughts and feelings 
 which stirred some of the finest minds of that 
 day — the day in which Judaism, under Ezra's 
 impulse and direction, took up the attitude of 
 unyielding antagonism to the Grentiles. To 
 
 copyist wliose Christianity liaci not raised him above the 
 level of Rabbinical exegesis. The words are wanting in the 
 parallel passage in Luke (xi. 29-32). They not merely 
 interrupt our Lord's argument, but are actually at variance 
 with it. In answer to the demand of the Pharisees, who 
 ' sought of Him a sign from heaven ' (Luke xi. 1 6) — some 
 miracle of a higher, more indisputable sort than His works 
 of healing— He expressly declares that »o such sign shall be 
 given; no sign save such ' preaching ' as had converted -the 
 Ninevites of old. In this place it is the emphatic teaching 
 of Jesus that the ultimate proof of His divine mission does 
 not rest on outward marvels, but on the inward conviction 
 that His word is true. 
 
 1 Friedr. Bergmann, Jonah, 103. 
 
JUYLL AND ALLEGORY. 59 
 
 him this movement seemed essentially anti- 
 prophetic, a dereliction of duty, a breach of 
 trust ; and on this ground he entered his pro- 
 test against it. He foresaw and deplored the 
 result of the policy into which the nation was 
 being dragged at the heels of the new Puritan- 
 ism. The Law of Israel, becoming in such 
 hands as Ezra's an instrument of repulsion, 
 would be despised by the Gentiles instead of 
 being honoured, detested instead of being loved, 
 as it might have been. There would be no 
 more an opening for that propaganda of which 
 the great prophets of the past had dreamed, 
 no more a prospect of winning over the heathen 
 world to the true faith, if the churlish, grudg- 
 ing Jonah-spirit prevailed, and the Law was 
 made a badge of ineffaceable difference, a 
 barrier of eternal separation. The ages that 
 followed amply justified the warning. Jewish 
 ' misanthropy ' provoked Gentile hatred of the 
 Jew. The Law became the target for all 
 the poisoned shafts of heathen malice ; while in 
 persecuted Israel the spirit of the persecutor 
 burned with fierce intensity under the mask 
 of humble submissiveness. Outside of many a 
 great Gentile city, in the course of the centuries, 
 
6o AFTER THE EXILE. 
 
 . Jonali has sat, hatred in his heart, waiting with 
 vengeful impatience for the bolt to fall. But 
 the lesson taught by this allegorist of the fifth 
 century before Christ has not fallen utterly 
 dead. His humane and catholic views have 
 found upholders in every age, even the most 
 bigoted. His plea for toleration is re-echoed 
 from quarters whence such a sound might be 
 least expected to come.^ It is, in truth, char- 
 acteristic of Judaism — that fountain of sweet 
 and bitter waters, that strange soil in which 
 fairest flowers and rankest weeds grow side by 
 
 ^ £.(/. sucli passages in the Talmud : — ' As the Egyptians 
 sank drowning in the sea, the angels made ready to raise a 
 chant of joy. Then spake the Lord with reproving voice, 
 " My creatures lie drowned in the sea, and ye would sing a 
 joyful song !"' {Sanhedrin, 39 b.) 'When the hour of the 
 destruction of the heathen comes, in order to make place for 
 the triumph of Israel, Heaven will break forth in the cry : — 
 " Those and these are alike my creatures ; how can I destroy 
 the one for the advantage of the other ? " ' (Sanhedrin, 98 h.) 
 ' Righteousness is no special inheritance, and does not go by 
 pedigree. Only the priests are priests, only the Levites are 
 Levites ; he who would be priest or Levite, not being such 
 by descent, could not ; any who will can be righteous, even 
 the Gentile' (Eabboth, 225 a.) 'When God comes to judge 
 Israel, He will choose the hour when Israel is busied about 
 the holy Law ; when He comes to judge the nations of the 
 earth, He will choose the hour when they are not doing evil ' 
 {Aboda Zara, 3 b.) 
 
IVYLL AND ALLEGORY. 6i 
 
 side — that an epoch in which the odium 
 humani generis took its rise, should have 
 given birth to this assertion of the fatherhood 
 of God and the brotherhood of man. 
 
CHAPTER IV. 
 
 Puritanism an& IReaction. 
 
 TJ^QU ALLY unmoved by hostile criticism or 
 ^-^ by any 'compunctious visitings of nature,' 
 fearless and pitiless, Ezra pushed on his self- 
 appointed task to its bitter end. With the 
 dry, matter-of-fact statement that, by a certain 
 day, ' they had finished with all the men that 
 had married strange women,' ^ the veil is 
 dropped over many harrowing scenes, tragedies 
 of the hearth, which made the closing months 
 of the year 459 a dark and sorrowful time at 
 Jerusalem. Nothing but the sternest necessity 
 could justify a measure so cruel in its 
 operation.^ Ezra had convinced himself of its 
 
 1 Ezra X. 17. 
 
 2 Jost (Gesch. des Judenthums u. seiner Secten, i. 32) 
 suggests that ' the measure loses much of its cruelty when it 
 is considered that in a land where polygamy prevails the 
 sending away of a wife is nothing so veiy unheard-of.' But 
 see Mai. ii. 13-16. 
 
PURITANISM AND REACTION. 63 
 
 necessity, and no spectacle of grief, no appeal 
 to mercy, could have any effect against that 
 conviction. Once again Hagar must leave 
 the Hebrew tents and go out into the 
 wilderness, an innocent victim on the altar of 
 legalism. And in some cases Ishmael, too, 
 had to go. It does not seem to have been laid 
 down as a positive rule that children born of 
 'mixed marriages' must be sent away along 
 with their mothers. But this rigorous applica- 
 tion of his principles was certainly approved 
 of, recommended by Ezra, as a 'counsel of 
 perfection ' which all would do well to follow ; 
 and there were some at least among the 
 transgressors who yielded on this point, and 
 consented to separate from their children as 
 well as from their wives.'' 
 
 The special commission of which Ezra was 
 president sat during three months,^ and, 
 according to the Chronicler's account, dissolved 
 
 ^ This seems to be the sense of the obscure passage Ezra x. 
 44. Neteler {Buchsr Esdras, etc. 55) supposes that the word 
 banim (' children ') here is used metaphorically for ' pro- 
 selytes ' ; and that the meaning is that only those foreign 
 women who refused to give up their pagan worships were 
 sent away. But this is certainly incorrect. 
 
 2 Ezra X. 16, IV, 
 
64 AFTER THE EXILE. 
 
 in all one hundred and thirteen marriages. 
 Of the culprits, seventeen were priests, ten 
 Levites, and eighty-six laymen. Of the priests, 
 four belonged to the high -priestly house of 
 Joshua ben Jehozadak, and these were com- 
 pelled not only to put away their foreign 
 wives, but to purge their offence and make 
 public confession by bringing a guilt-offering 
 to the altar. -^ An official list^ was drawn up, 
 containing the names of the delinquents, by 
 way of a security against relapse. 
 
 From the figures given by the Chronicler, 
 it might be inferred that the evil which had 
 roused Ezra's alarm and indignation was not, 
 after all, so very widely spread. But the 
 figures are in reality deceptive. It would 
 seem that in the first instance only the more 
 prominent members of the community, men 
 belonging to the higher grades of Jewish 
 society, were dealt with ; Ezra began at the 
 top, and, if he had had his will and oppor- 
 tunity, would have meted out the same severe 
 judgment to all Israel as to its peccant chiefs. 
 Obviously a period of three months was more 
 than sufficient to dispose of little over a 
 1 Ezra. X. 19, cp. Levit. v, 15, ^ Ezra x. 18-42, 
 
PURITANISM AND REACTION. 65 
 
 hundred cases, which cannot have presented 
 much difficulty in ascertaining the facts, or 
 given rise to nice questions of evidence. The 
 natural conclusion is that other cases came 
 before the tribunal, which ended in a way less 
 satisfactory to the reforming party. Not all 
 the men who had married foreigners con- 
 sented to divorce their wives. Whether the 
 extreme penalty — confiscation and excom- 
 munication — was put in force against those 
 who persisted in their contumacy, is not stated 
 in the fragmentary records of the time. But 
 there may have been, there probably were, 
 men who preferred beggary and banishment 
 to separation from their wives, left their 
 country, and threw in their lot with the 
 Gentiles to whom they were bound by family 
 ties. And apparently there were others whose 
 high rank and social influence enabled them to 
 brave, or at least evade, Ezra's legislation ; 
 and who still, while renaaining members of the 
 Jewish community, kept up in private their 
 friendly relations with the chiefs of the 
 surrounding foreign peoples.^ 
 
 ^ Such were the Shekaniah ben Arach and the MeshuUani 
 ben Berechiah mentioned in Neh. vi. 1 8. Geiger ( Urschrift,43) 
 
 II F 
 
66 AFTER THE EXILE. 
 
 On the first day of the year 458 Ezra's 
 eommission finished its labours, and at this 
 point his Book comes to a sudden termination. 
 Ezra's memoirs, so far as they are extant, 
 cover no more than the first six or seven 
 months of his residence at Jerusalem, and 
 are taken up exclusively with the 'mixed 
 marriage' question. If he carried his memoirs 
 further, which is at least probable, they have 
 been lost either by accident or suppression. 
 From this point there is a hiatus of about 
 thirteen years (458-445) in the history of the 
 time, very imperfectly filled up by a passage 
 which the Chronicler has inserted in his work 
 out of its chronological order, and which is 
 more valuable for what it suggests than for 
 what it gives in the way of actual informa- 
 tion. Nothing could better illustrate the hap- 
 hazard, eccentric construction of those Jewish 
 chronicles, than the manner in which Ezra 
 comes forward on the stage, fills it for the 
 time, begins to play the great part which has 
 
 seeks to show, from a comparison of 1 Chron. iii. 19, 21, that 
 these personages were descendants of Zerubbabel (the name 
 Artmn in Chronicles he supposes to be a corruption of 
 Arack). If this were so, it would give additional point to 
 the Book of Ruth, 
 
FURITANISM AND REACTION. 67 
 
 evidently been assigned to him ; then passes 
 behind the scenes with startling abruptness, 
 and for thirteen years seems utterly inactive, 
 even non-existent ; then comes forward again, 
 and takes a leading rdle. The events that 
 transpired during the interval between the 
 close of the Book of Ezra and the opening of 
 the Book of Nehemiah are almost entirely 
 unknown; conjecture has to make up, as best 
 it can, for the want of historical data. But 
 sufficient is known to make it certain that, if 
 Ezra wrote any narrative of those years, it 
 must have been a dreary record of baffled 
 aims, of fruitless toils, of defeated efforts : 
 that if any annalist ever undertook to follow 
 the fortunes of his people through this period 
 now all but blank, his work must have 
 contained passages little creditable to the 
 national character, and not such as patriotism 
 would care to preserve. 
 
 Ezra's measure of reform produced the re- 
 sults which the politicians had from the first 
 predicted. The modus vivendi they had suc- 
 ceeded in establishing with the neighbour- 
 ing Gentile nations was now at an end. The 
 women who had been dismissed from their 
 
68 AFTER THE EXILE. 
 
 homes and expelled from their adopted country, 
 returned to their friends, in some cases taking 
 their children with them ; and wherever those 
 hapless outcasts went, among fathers, brothers 
 and kinsmen, there sprang up once again a 
 passionate hatred of the Jew. Those leading men 
 among the Samaritans, Ammonites and Moab- 
 ites, whose daughters and sisters were now 
 thrown back contemptuously on their hands as 
 unworthy to be mated with the sons of Israel, 
 felt keenly this insult which touched them at a 
 most sensitive point. It was an assertion of 
 Jewish superiority, a denial of Gentile claims, 
 made in the most offensive form possible. To 
 be treated in this scornful fashion, their offers 
 of friendship spurned, their women repudiated 
 and disgraced — was more than the proud chiefs 
 of Samaria and Moab could tamely endure. 
 At once the smouldering ashes of old feuds 
 blazed up and burned fiercely. The former 
 allies of the colony became its bitter foes, and 
 began to cast about in all quarters for the 
 opportunity of retaliation and revenge. 
 
 One safeguard, and one only, Ezra possessed 
 against the enemies whom his reform had 
 raised up on all sides of him. This was the 
 
PURITANISM AND REACTION. 69 
 
 firman of the Persian king. So long as 
 Artaxerxes was represented in those regions 
 by officers who made his will their law, and so 
 long as Ezra held the letters patent which 
 appointed him Chief Judge, the other petty 
 nations in that remote corner of the Syrian 
 satrapy — themselves, like the Judeans, vassals 
 of the Great King — had to refrain from open 
 violence. There were, however, other and not 
 less effective methods open to them, and to 
 these they promptly had recourse. They might 
 compass their end, if not by arms, then by 
 intrigue. Once again they set themselves to 
 work the ruin of the Jewish colony, by a re- 
 petition of the manoeuvres which had succeeded 
 so perfectly in the days of Cyrus and of 
 Xerxes ; by stirring up the suspicion and ill- 
 will of the local Persian authorities, and per- 
 suading them to carry their complaints and 
 accusations to the king's ear. 
 
 The compiler of the Book of Ezra does not 
 attempt to give a connected narrative of the 
 course of those intrigues. Either in the 
 archives of Jerusalem, or in the historical work 
 from which he drew his materials, he found 
 certain official documents — letters that had 
 
70 AFTER THE EXILE. 
 
 passed between the Persian government and 
 its local representatives, of which copies had 
 in some way come into the hands of the chiefs 
 of the Jewish colony. One of these documents 
 he simply alludes to ; ^ another he transcribes, 
 with what degree of verbal accuracy it is 
 impossible to say. Of the personages who 
 figured prominently among the enemies of 
 Israel, little more than the names is recorded ; 
 their nationality, their official position under 
 the Persian crown, are left uncertain, their 
 motives virtually unexplained. The writer 
 tells of the plot entered into by the adver- 
 saries, but gives almost no information as to 
 the measures taken by the rulers of Judea in 
 self-defence, as to the length of time during 
 which the struggle went on, or the circum- 
 stances which in the end laid the colony 
 prostrate at the feet of its foes. And to 
 crown the confusion which reigns in this 
 portion of his work, he has inserted the whole 
 passage out of its place in the sequence of 
 
 1 Ezra iv. 7. Evidently the compiler had a copy of this 
 
 •letter before him, as he remarks in passing that it 'was 
 
 written in the Aramaic character, and translated into Aramaic' 
 
 What the language of the original was he either did not 
 
 know or does not state. 
 
PURITANISM AND REACTION. 71 
 
 events, either in error, or, as is on the whole 
 more likely, in accordance with a theory of his 
 own as to how history should be written.^ 
 
 1 Either Ezra iv. 6-23 is a parenthesis, a break in the 
 chronological order of the narrative ; or else the kings 
 mentioned in ver. 6 (Ahasuerus, Heb. Achashverosh) and 
 ver. 7 (Artaxerxes, Hob. Artachshashta) must be respectively 
 Canibyses and Bardes-Gavimata, since they were the pre- 
 decessors of Darius (ver. 24). Keasons in favour of the 
 former view are the following : — (1) The names Achashverosh 
 and Artachshashta, elsewhere in Scripture, denote invariably 
 the two well-known kings Xerxes I. and Artaxerxes I. No 
 doubt these names are dynastic ; they may be of the nature 
 of titles ; and it is the case (as Eawlinson argues ad he.) 
 that 'Persian kings had often two names.' But there is 
 absolutely no evidence that any Biblical writer ever meant 
 by Achashverosh another king than Xerxes I., or by Artach- 
 shashta another than Artaxerxes I. (2) This paragraph relates 
 solely to the building of the walls of Jerusalem. In what 
 immediately precedes and follows the paragraph, the building 
 of the temple is the subject-matter. (3) In the letter ad- 
 dressed to the king, his correspondents speak of ' the Jews 
 which came up from, thee' (ver. 12), which can scarcely 
 refer to anything else than the Eeturn led by Ezra in the 
 reign of Artaxerxes Longhand. (4) In the same letter, 
 the king is requested to order that ' search be made in the 
 book of the records of his fathers' (ver. 15). To speak of 
 'fathers' in the case of Bardes-Gaumata would have been 
 absurd, since that impostor passed as the son of Cyrus, 
 founder of the Achsemenian dynasty. (5) Bardes-Gaumata 
 reigned only seven months (suprd, vol. i. p. 131) — a period 
 much too short for the interchange of communications, search 
 into records, issue of decrees, etc., described in the text. — 
 
72 AKIEK '1\HK KXILK. 
 
 To disentangle this imbroglio is scarcely 
 possible ; still, with the help of profane 
 history, and of certain highly significant 
 passages in the memoirs of Nehemiah, one 
 may construct at least a general outline of 
 Ezra's administration during those thirteen 
 eventful years, and dimly discern the nature 
 of the crisis which for the time undid Ijis work 
 and broke his power. 
 
 ' In the days of Artaxerxes,' says the 
 Chronicler, without giving any more precise 
 date, ' Bishlam, Mitredath, Tabeel and the 
 rest of his associates, wrote to Artaxerxes 
 king of Persia.' In the absence of any in- 
 formation as to who or what these personages 
 were, and as to the contents of their missive, 
 it can only be guessed that Bishlam and 
 Mitredath may have been Persian officials 
 resident in Samaria ; that ' Tabeel and his 
 
 Ewald is of opinion that the view wMch takes the section as 
 a parenthesis, and not as a clironological advance in the 
 narrative, ' does a monstrous -vvrong to the history itself, as 
 vi'ell as to the Chronicler' {Hiit. of Israel, v. 106). In 
 reality, any other view makes confusion worse confounded. 
 And this artificial grouping of names and events, out of 
 their chronological order, is quite in the Chronicler's 
 manner, as appears from the instance mentioned supra, vol. 
 1, p. 184, note. 
 
PURITANISM AND REACTION. 73 
 
 associates ' were Samaritans ^ who had per- 
 suaded those Persian officials to support their 
 an ti- Jewish designs ; and that their letter to the 
 king contained the usual insinuations against 
 Jewish loyalty, and the usual warnings that 
 rebellion was being hatched in Judea. Ap- 
 parently Jewish influence at the court of 
 Susa was still sufficiently strong to counter- 
 act the effect of this letter, and to clear the 
 accused nation of the charge of disaffection. 
 The first move of the adversaries was foiled ; 
 but they had no thought of throwing up the 
 game. 
 
 1 Ewaltl supposes that Bishlam, Mitredath and Tabeel 
 were not foreigners, but inhabitants of Jerusalem, 'dis- 
 tinguished members of the community ' ; and that their 
 letter was a petition forwarded to the Persian king (History, 
 V. 107). But the context does not favour this view, the 
 whole paragraph being evidently intended as a cursory 
 review of the several attempts made against the Jews by 
 their enemies. If this had been a plea from the Jewish side, 
 the Chronicler would almost certainly have said so. Vaihinger 
 (in his article Zur Aujhellung der nachexil. Gesch. Israels, in 
 Stud. u. Krit. 1857, i. 91) remarks on the fact that the 
 names of those ' distinguished members of the community ' 
 do not occur elsewhere ; and that Ezra, in whose name any 
 such petition would naturally have been drawn up, is not 
 mentioned. The name Mitredath is pure Persian, but this 
 does not tell either way, as foreign names were not un- 
 common among the Jews in post-exilian times. 
 
74 AFTER THE EXILE. 
 
 The problem which Ezra had to face, as Chief 
 Judge over his countrymen, was one that must 
 have taxed his patience and strained his energy 
 to the utmost. His path was strewn with 
 difficulties and beset with dangers. Abroad, 
 he had to make head against a combination of 
 powerful and utterly unscrupulous enemies — 
 Gentiles, men of mixed foreign and Hebrew 
 race, and Jewish refugees — bound together in 
 a league of hatred, and sworn to effect his 
 downfall. At home also he had opponents 
 to reckon with. To the whilom rulers of 
 Judea, he was the man who had filched their 
 power from them, who had disturbed them 
 in the peaceable enjoyment of their heredi- 
 tary privileges ; and they hated while they 
 feared him. It was to be expected in the 
 circumstances that an understanding should 
 exist between the declared foes without and 
 the secret foes within. Chief priests and 
 nobles, who had lived for years on terms of 
 intimacy and had formed ties of kinship with 
 their Gentile neighbours, by no means broke 
 off those amicable relations, however carefully 
 they might conceal them. Members of the 
 community who had been laid under the ban 
 
PURITANISM AND REACTION. 75 
 
 of the Church, and outlawed from their country, 
 still kept up communication with their friends 
 in Judea. By a hundred underground, hidden 
 channels, intelligence of all that took place at 
 Jerusalem was carried to Samaria and other 
 centres of anti-Jewish feeling. Ezra lived and 
 worked under a sleepless espionage, which 
 tracked his proceedings with malevolent in- 
 tention ; if he made a false step, it was certain 
 to be known, seized upon, and turned to his 
 disadvantage. 
 
 To hold those various enmities in check, to 
 make the best of a situation so delicate and 
 complex, would have required an astuteness 
 which Ezra did not possess. He was a 
 zealot, and could only go straight to his 
 end. If an obstacle presented itself, he must 
 attack it at once, in face. Engrossed in his 
 mission, obstinate against hindrances, impatient 
 of delay, he made no attempt to smooth the 
 way for his reforms by any arts of conciliation. 
 Severe with himself, he demanded from all 
 others a like severity, an equally austere con- 
 ception and strict performance of duty. It 
 would not be at all slirprising if the mass of 
 the people, sinking back from the crest into 
 
76 AFTER THE EXILE. 
 
 the trough of the wave of excited feeling, 
 should have begun to regret the popular vote 
 which had raised this stern Puritan to be their 
 ruler — if the citizens of Jerusalem should in 
 time have grown weary of their Ezra, as the 
 Genevese did of Calvin, or the Florentines of 
 Savonarola. The inevitable reaction against 
 the Puritan ascendency set in ; the former 
 leaders of Jewish society, whom Ezra had 
 thrust from the place of power, began to 
 recover their influence over the people. They 
 pointed to the contrast between the old days, 
 when, under its hereditary chiefs, the colony 
 had lived at peace with its neighbours and had 
 prospered, and the present days of strife and 
 confusion and insecurity. They sought to per- 
 suade the people that they had done a foolish 
 thing when they exchanged the rule of experi- 
 enced statesmen for that of a fanatical ideal- 
 ogue, to whom it counted for nothing that his 
 theories were being carried out at the expense 
 of their material welfare. Thus the spirit of 
 discontent spread, the undercurrent of opposi- 
 tion, deepened ; and by and by the conviction 
 must have forced itself on Ezra's mind, how- 
 ever unwilling he might be to entertain it. 
 
PURITANISM AND REACTION. 77 
 
 that not only was the further development of 
 his scheme of reform impracticable for the 
 moment, but that the ground already gained 
 was in danger of being lost, and must be 
 defended. He was not without resources. 
 Against his enemies without he had his com- 
 mission from the Great King, which they 
 durst not openly defy. Against his enemies 
 within, he had the support of the men who 
 had followed him from Babylon, and who had 
 not faltered in their devotion to his person and 
 his aims. Warned by the symptoms of declin- 
 ing zeal which appeared among the people, 
 fearful lest they should drift back in spite of 
 all his efforts into their former habits of 
 intercourse with the Gentiles, conscious of the 
 difficulty of concentrating on questions of 
 religious reform the thoughts of men who 
 were perpetually distracted with fears for their 
 goods and their lives — Ezra formed a resolu- 
 tion which showed perhaps more courage than 
 prudence, and which was in keeping with the 
 determined character of the man. He resolved 
 to wall Jerusalem. From the earliest days of 
 the colony, the defenceless condition o£ the 
 city had been a cause of grief and anxiety to 
 
78 AFTER THE EXILE. 
 
 the people and their rulers.^ They could 
 never rest content while Jerusalem remained 
 an open town, and other places, historically 
 insignificant iu comparison, had their gates 
 and walls : the want of fortifications was felt 
 to be a reproach as well as a danger. Hitherto 
 all attempts to raise Jerusalem once more to 
 the dignity of a ' fenced city ' had proved 
 unsuccessful. Even the kings most favourable 
 to Jewish aspirations, such as Cyrus and 
 Darius Hystaspes, had proved obdurate on 
 this point ; petitions for leave to build had 
 met with summary refusal ; the very sugges- 
 tion of such a design had been sufficient to 
 excite the suspicion of the Persian crown and 
 its officials.^ Discouraged by repeated failures, 
 the Jewish rulers had given up the thought of 
 restoring the fortifications, and had sought a 
 substitute for material defences by entering 
 into alliance with the people who might have 
 taken advantage of their openness to attack. 
 Now, under the Puritan regime, this sub- 
 stitute had been swept away, and other pro- 
 tection was needed in its place. 
 
 1 Supra, vol. i. p. 163. 
 3 Supra, vol. i. pp. 153, 228. 
 
PURITANISM AND REACTION. 79 
 
 It was a bold and in many respects a hazard- 
 ous step tliat Ezra took, in beginning to fortify 
 Jerusalem. He knew that the bare rumour of 
 such a design would be enough to raise a storm 
 against him in Samaria; that the charges of 
 sedition already brought against the Jews 
 would be pressed more urgently than ever, and 
 would now have an appearance of confirmation. 
 He knew that the firman of the Persian king 
 gave him no authority to undertake any such 
 work, that he was deliberately going beyond 
 the bounds of his commission, and allowing 
 himself a latitude of action which was contrary 
 to all the traditions of Persian autocracy. But 
 Ezra was not the man to shrink from responsi- 
 bility, or to hesitate where duty seemed to 
 point his way. No doubt he trusted to the 
 favour which Artaxerxes had shown for him 
 personally, to the impression which the Jewish 
 religion had made on the king's mind, to the 
 easy amiability of his character, to the influ- 
 ence of distinguished Hebrews who held high 
 places at his court. On these grounds he 
 might hope that his offence, if such it were, 
 would be overlooked, and his work, once 
 finished, allowed to stand. In any case, his 
 
8o AFTER THE EXILE. 
 
 action seemed justified by an imperative 
 necessity. Patriotism in this instance was not 
 his ruling motive ; the mere strengthening of 
 the city against siege or surprise was not the 
 primary object he had set before him. Until 
 Jerusalem was walled, he could not hope to 
 realise in its integrity his ideal of a civitas 
 Dei — -a community absolutely isolated from 
 the pagan world, cut off from all traflSc and 
 association with the Gentiles, living apart 
 its life under the Law. In Ezra's view, the 
 walls of Jerusalem were needed, above all, as 
 a bulwark of the Torah. They were needed, 
 not merely that the city might stand a siege 
 in actual warfare, but that it might resist that 
 leaguer which never ended, and which was 
 more menacing in time of peace than of war — 
 the gathering round the citadel of Judaism of 
 those who claimed place among its garrisoD, 
 and who, if admitted, must bring about its 
 fall. So Ezra took up this task, which seemed 
 to lie beyond his proper sphere, in the spirit 
 of a religious reformer. Until it was done, he 
 could not feel himself master in his own house. . 
 He must be able to interpose a rampart of solid 
 masonry between those within the community 
 
PURITANISM AND REACTION. 8i 
 
 who still hankered after the Gentile alliance 
 and murmured against his doctrine of exclus- 
 iveness, and the ' peoples of the land,' who were 
 only too ready to take the hand stretched 
 out to them. Jerusalem must have gates, that 
 they might be shut against the Gentiles. 
 
 It is not probable that these motives 
 were fathomed by the citizens generally. 
 They imagined, no doubt, that their Chief 
 Judge had authority to undertake this work, 
 which commended itself to patriotic feeling. 
 Nothing could be more galling to a proud 
 people, nothing could more painfully remind 
 them of their fallen state, than the sight of 
 that cincture of rubbish-mounds and crumb- 
 ling stones, which was all that remained of 
 the historic battlements of old Jerusalem. 
 Ezra's popularity revived with his proposal to 
 repair those breaches of the past. Dissensions 
 and discontents were for the time forgotten, 
 and the citizens threw themselves with energy 
 into the work of rebuilding their walls. 
 
 Meanwhile, on a broader stage and a vaster 
 
 ^scale, events were taking place which had an 
 
 indirect but most important bearing on Jewish 
 
 affairs. Megabyzus, satrap of Syria, whose 
 
 ir G 
 
82 AFTER THE EXILE. 
 
 valour had quelled the revolt of Egypt and 
 saved that province to the empire/ had of late 
 been wavering in his loyalty to the Great King. 
 The causes of his disaffection are variously 
 stated by Greek writers. According to one 
 version of the story, he had put away his wife, 
 a sister of the king, on account of her notorious 
 immoralities ; and thus had made a deadly 
 enemy of the Queen-Mother, who used all her 
 influence at court to compass his ruin. Accord- 
 ing to another version, Inarus, chief of the 
 insurgent Egyptians, had surrendered himself 
 to Megabyzus on condition that his life should 
 be spared ; had been sent as a prisoner of war 
 into Persia, and had there been cruelly put to 
 death by orders from the court ; which viola- 
 tion of an honourable engagement had roused 
 the satrap's anger and driven him into treason- 
 able courses. In reality, romances of this sort 
 are not necessary to account for a situation 
 which came about in the natural order of 
 things. The man who had reconquered Egypt 
 had become too powerful a subject to escape 
 the jealousy of an Eastern court ; suspecting 
 an intention to deprive him of his province, 
 
 1 Supra, vol. i. p. 303. 
 
PURITANISM AND REACTION. 83 
 
 Megabyzus — the Wallenstein of his age — 
 resolved on taking the initiative, gained over 
 the troops under his command, threw off his 
 allegiance, and established himself in Syria as 
 an independent sovereign. Twice were great 
 armies sent against the rebel satrap, and twice 
 the skill and prowess of Megabyzus drove back 
 the royalist forces in utter rout. Artaxerxes 
 lacked the spirit to persist in such a conflict. 
 He did what no Achaemenian before him had 
 ever done — gave up the idea of crushing the 
 rebellion by arms, and condescended to treat 
 on equal terms with the subject who had defied 
 his authority. ^_ As the result of these negotia- 
 tions, Megabyzus returned to his allegiance, 
 but kept his province — a concession on the 
 part of Artaxerxes which gave that monarch 
 peace at home for the rest of his days, but 
 which set a precedent of ominous significance 
 for the future of the empire. 
 
 These events took place during the latter 
 part of Ezra's twelve years' administration at 
 Jerusalem. Though completely ignored in 
 sacred history, it is certain that they must 
 have immensely aggravated the difficulties of 
 
 1 Justi, Qeach. des alien Persiens, 128. 
 
84 AFTER THE EXILE. 
 
 his position, and made it in the end all but 
 untenable. The outbreak of the Syrian rebel- 
 lion cut away at one blow the mainstay of his 
 authority. There came a time when the ' long 
 arm ' of Artaxerxes scarcely reached ' beyond 
 the River ' ; when royal edicts no longer com- 
 manded slavish deference, and royal officials 
 ceased to be mere tools of an all-powerful 
 despot. Ezra's enemies in Samaria felt that 
 they had him at their mercy, that their hour 
 had come. Still, they proceeded with a certain 
 degree of caution in carrying out their scheme 
 of vengeance. Though the sovereign power 
 was weakened for the moment, they did not 
 consider it prudent to presume on its weak- 
 ness, to take the law into their own hands, 
 and to rush into hostilities without the king's 
 knowledge and consent ; that would be indeed 
 a needless indiscretion, since they were now in 
 a position to press their demands at court with 
 an emphasis that left little chance of a refusal. 
 At this critical time for the empire, when the 
 Trans-Euphratene was in revolt, these Samari- 
 tans brought their petition to the foot of the 
 throne as faithful and dutiful servants of the 
 Great King. They judged rightly that pro- 
 
PURITANISM AND REACTION. 85 
 
 fessions of loyalty, coming from any quarter of 
 the disturbed satrapy, would be highly esteemed 
 at Susa. They counted on a favourable answer 
 to their suit, if for no other reason, as a bribe 
 to purchase their continued fidelity. And they 
 knew, and played upon, the sensitiveness of 
 the Persian monarchy to any symptom of dis- 
 affection, in even the remotest part of its vast 
 dominions — a sensitiveness always extreme, 
 and at this particular time almost morbid. 
 Ezra had in truth placed a dangerous weapon 
 in the hands of his enemies when he took it on 
 himself to fortify Jerusalem. They were quick 
 to see and to profit by their advantage. In 
 name of ' Eechum the Commander ' and ' Shim- 
 shai the Secretary ' ^ — the two chief ofiicers, 
 military and civil, of the Persian crown in 
 Samaria — a letter was drawn up and despatched 
 to the king, in which, with no little craft, 
 
 1 Ezra iv. 8. Eechum's title (in A. V. and E.V. ' chancellor ') 
 is literally 'lord of judgment' or 'lord of command' — 'prob- 
 ably the official title of the Persian governor of Samaria' 
 (Bertheaii-Ryssel, 51). Herodotus (iii. 128) states that in the 
 administrative system of the Persian empire ' all the governors 
 had royal secretaries ' — civil officers, whose duty it was to act 
 as a check on the military commanders, and report directly 
 to the king. 
 
86 AFTER THE EXILE. 
 
 every point was made that could tell in favour 
 of the Samaritans, and against the Jews. 
 
 Of this letter the Chronicler gives the follow- 
 ing transcript, preserving to some extent the 
 form and style of the original : — Thy servants, 
 the people of the lands west of the River, and 
 so forth : Be it known to the king that the 
 Jews who came up from thee are come to us, 
 to Jerusalem; and they are building that 
 rebellious and wicked city ; they are restoring 
 its walls and digging its foundations. Now, be 
 it known to the king, that if this city be rebuilt 
 and its walls restored, they ivill no longer pay 
 tribute, tax, or toll ; and, in the end, this city 
 will work harm to the king. Now, forasmuch 
 as we eat the salt of the palace,^ and it is not 
 meet for us to look on while the king is dis- 
 honoured, for this reason do we send and 
 inform the king, so that search may be made in 
 the book of the chronicles of thy fathers ; and 
 thou shaltfnd and learn by that book of the 
 chronicles that this city has been a rebellious 
 city, and harmful to kings and countries, and 
 that from days of old there have been risings 
 
 1 i.e. 'draw our pay from the royal purse' ; cp. the word 
 ' salary.' 
 
PURITANISM AND REACTION. 87 
 
 in the midst thereof; for 'which cause the city 
 was destroyed. We certify the king that, if 
 this city be rebuilt and its ivalls restored, thou 
 shalt have as a consequence no portion any 
 more in the lands west of the River.^ 
 
 This cleverly drafted letter was well fitted 
 to alarm the timid Artaxerxes, and to pre- 
 judice his mind against his Jewish subjects. 
 For the first time, from this hostile source, he 
 learned of the unauthorised attempt that was 
 being made to fortify Jerusalem. In the 
 superscription of the letter,^ he was adroitly 
 reminded that among the motley population 
 of Samaria, settled there by the great Assyrian 
 kings, were Persians,^ Elamites, and Susanians 
 — people of his own race, whose cause he was 
 now called upon to espouse against a race of 
 foreigners. The description of Jerusalem as a 
 nest of rebels was purely fanciful, for the 
 Jews, ever since their return from Babylon, 
 had been among the most peaceable and 
 orderly subjects of the Achsemenian dynasty ; 
 
 1 Ezraiv. 11-16. ^ Ibid. 9, 10. 
 
 3 If the name Apharsathchites and its kindred forms = 
 Persians, which, however, Schrader disputes on grounds both 
 of philology and history {Keilinschriften, ii. 376). 
 
88 AFTER THE EXILE. 
 
 but if those researches into ancient Jewish 
 history which the Samaritans are said to have 
 recommended were ever really made, and if 
 any materials for that purpose were found 
 available, the result could not but be un- 
 favourable to the innocent and much maligned 
 inhabitants of Judea. No doubt over this 
 letter a battle was fought at court, though not 
 the faintest trace of it has come down in 
 history. Both Jews and Samaritans had their 
 supporters, their agents, in the palace of Susa, 
 and brought every manner of influence, by 
 every manner of means, to bear upon the weak 
 and vacillating king. How long intrigue and 
 counter-intrigue went on, how long the issue 
 hung in doubt, is unknown ; the conflict ended 
 in the victory of the Samaritans. The im- 
 pression made by Ezra had long since faded 
 away from the unretentive mind of the good- 
 natured but fickle autocrat. His previous 
 patronage of the Jews had had its source 
 in mere sentiment, in the passing impulse of 
 a passing hour. When reasons of state came 
 into competition with reasons of sentiment, 
 the latter must give way. One passage in the 
 Samaritan letter — the significant hint with 
 
PURITANISM AND REACTION. 89 
 
 which it closed — had an effect which no efforts 
 of the Jewish party at court could undo. 
 Artaxerxes was assured, by functionaries of 
 high rank who professed to speak out of loyal 
 concern for his interests, that if the men of 
 Jerusalem were allowed to rebuild their walls, 
 the king would have no longer any 'portion 
 in the lands west of the River.' A sinister 
 meaning might well underlie the phrase. 
 Already the king's hold on the great territories 
 beyond Euphrates was sufficiently insecure. 
 To disappoint the wishes of the Samaritans 
 might have the result of driving that people 
 into discontent and rebellion ; they were a 
 numerous and warlike nation, while the Jews 
 were few and weak ; there was nothing lost 
 by granting their request, and something 
 risked by refusing it. Policy prevailed, and 
 the king who had once shown himself the 
 patron and protector of the Jews, now tossed 
 them carelessly to their enemies, as a sop to 
 keep those enemies quiet. 
 
 While this struggle was going on at the 
 Persian court, the most intense anxiety was 
 naturally felt at Jerusalem. Into the wild 
 griefs and terrors of that critical time which 
 
90 AFTER THE EXILE. 
 
 oblivion has now covered, its fluctuations be- 
 tween hope and despair, its frenzies of im- 
 potent rage under the sting of calumny and 
 insult — a momentary glimpse is given by a 
 poet of that day, but for whose voice all would 
 be silence. In numbers that throb with the 
 passion of patriotism and religion blended, 
 this psalmist portrays the actual situation — 
 a situation which seemed desperate, charged 
 with utter ruin, unless Jehovah, as in days of 
 old, should come to the help of His persecuted 
 people. The enemies of Israel had ' lifted up 
 their heads ' and ' taken crafty counsel ' against 
 God's people ; they had said, ' Come, let us 
 cut them off from being a nation, that the 
 name of Israel may be remembered no more.' ^ 
 All the neighbouring nations and tribes of the 
 Gentiles had joined in the conspiracy : Edom, 
 Ammon, Moab, Philistia, Phoenicia, Samaria^ 
 — all were banded against Israel, who stood 
 alone, but for her God. One seems to catch 
 in this poem an echo of many fervid prayers 
 in which Ezra and his Puritans poured out 
 their soul to God during that time of national 
 extremity. They had, indeed, no resource but 
 
 1 Ps. Ixxxiii. 3, 4. ^ 'Assyria'; ihid. 8. 
 
PURITANISM AND REACTION. 91 
 
 in prayer, no protector to look to but the 
 Eternal, no hope save in a divine interposition, 
 such as had saved Israel from dire distress in 
 ancient days.^ If their present foes were to 
 share the fate of Zeba and Zalmunna, if they 
 were to be driven as dust or chaff before the 
 tempest, devoured as a forest by the flames^ 
 — that could only be done by the arm of the 
 Almighty : the Jews of those days, who had 
 been denounced as dangerous to others, were 
 too feeble and un warlike to defend themselves. 
 Ezra was no Cromwell. He could legislate 
 for his people, or pray for them : he could not 
 lead them in battle. So soon as the Persian 
 king spoke the word, their adversaries, already 
 straining at the leash, would be upon them, 
 and Jerusalem must fall for anything that her 
 citizens could do to avert such a calamity. 
 
 At last the king's word was spoken. An 
 answer came from court to the Samaritans 
 which gave them the liveliest satisfaction, 
 while it completely dispelled any lingering 
 hope cherished by the Jews. Full investiga- 
 tion, according to the Chronicler's version of 
 the royal message, had been made into the 
 
 1 Ps. Ixxxiii. 9-11. 2 iiig_ 13 14, 
 
92 AFTER THE EXILE. 
 
 ancient history of tlie incriminated people, so 
 far as that was recorded in those annals of the 
 Assyrian and Chaldean empires to which the 
 Persian had fallen heir ; and the result, how- 
 ever flattering to the pride which the Jewish 
 nation might take in its past, was distinctly 
 adverse to its aspirations in the present. It 
 was found that great kings had reigned at 
 Jerusalem in former days ; that they had 
 extended their sovereignty over all the lands 
 west of the Eiver, and had received tribute, 
 instead of paying it/ It was found, moreover, 
 that Jerusalem had ever been rebelliously in- 
 clined,^ and certainly, if any documents were 
 in existence relating to the sieges which the 
 city had stood in Nebuchadnezzar's day, they 
 would bear out the necessity of caution in 
 the case of the Jews, who had a reputation 
 for fighting behind walls equal to that of 
 Spaniards or Turks in modern times. Arta- 
 xerxes accordingly empowered his faithful 
 vassals in Samaria to put a stop to the pro- 
 gress of those defensive works at Jerusalem 
 which threatened the peace of his realm. The 
 Jews had received no authority to fortify their 
 
 1 Ezra iv. 20. 2 ^Kd. 19. 
 
PURITANISM AND REACTION. 93 
 
 town ; until such authority was given, until 
 further orders came from court, they must be 
 forced to desist.-' 
 
 No time was lost by the executive in Samaria 
 in taking fullest advantage of their oppor- 
 tunity. The royal message had bidden them 
 to ' be not slack ' ^ in carrying out their instruc- 
 tions, and accordingly they marched ' in haste ' ^ 
 upon Jerusalem. In two words * the historian 
 signifies that this was a military expedition, 
 half campaign, half foray ; then hastens away 
 from an episode so profoundly humiliating to 
 Jewish patriotic feeling. Apparently the invad- 
 ing force was composed partly of the Persian 
 army which garrisoned Samaria, partly of an 
 
 1 The provisional character of the message is noted by 
 Schrader, in his article Die Bauer des zweiten Tempelbaues, in 
 Stvd. u. Krit., 1867, iii. 467, 468. The 'until' of Ezra 
 iv. 21 disposes of an objection brought against the view 
 which takes the whole section as parenthetical — that it 
 makes Artaxerxes first prohibit, then, not long after, permit 
 the building of the walls. 
 
 2 Ezra iv. 22. 3 /jj^. 23. 
 
 * The words 'by force and power' (Ezra iv. 23 R.V. 
 should rather be rendered ' with men-at-arms and troops ' 
 (so Schultz and Bertheau). The Septuagint has ' with horse 
 and power ; ' the Peshito, ' with a great army ' ; Apoc. Ezra, 
 ii. 30, ' with a troop of horsemen and a multitude of people 
 in battle array.' 
 
94 AFTER THE EXILE. 
 
 undisciplined rabble of native Samaritans, 
 which accompanied the regular troops, eager 
 to have a hand in the downfall of the rival 
 city. Against an attack of this kind, con- 
 ducted by imperial officers at the head of an 
 imperial army, there was no possibility of 
 resistance. Ezra and his partisans had simply 
 to look on, with what feelings may be imagined, 
 while the defences on which they had spent so 
 much labour were ruthlessly demolished — the 
 walls breached and the gates burned.^ 
 
 The quarrel of the Samaritan chiefs had 
 been all through with Ezra and his party, 
 rather than with the Jewish people as a whole ; 
 and among the Jews themselves they had 
 avowed allies and secret sympathisers. Con- 
 sequently their reprisals were limited to the 
 destruction of the fortifications. There was 
 no sack of Jerusalem ; no injury done to the 
 terror-stricken inhabitants. And not a hand 
 was raised against the temple. As yet, the 
 house of Jehovah was a holy place to the 
 Samaritans as well as to the Jews ; they 
 claimed the right to worship in its courts, to 
 take part in the religious life of the commu- 
 
 1 Neh. i. 3. 
 
PURITANISM AND REACTION. 95 
 
 nity of which it was the centre ; they respected 
 the sanctuary, and would not enter as enemies 
 where they hoped to be received as friends and 
 co-religionists. But this hostile attack, though 
 not carried to the worst extremes of warfare, 
 had a most disastrous effect on the prosperity 
 of Jerusalem. To it may be attributed the 
 facts, which become apparent at a later but 
 not distant time, that many of the citizens left 
 their homes and sought a more secure asylum 
 in other parts of the country ; ^ and that the 
 temple service was once more to a great extent 
 disorganised, owing to the poverty of the 
 people, and consequently of the priesthood.^ 
 As to the bearing of these events on Ezra's 
 position, though there is no exact information, 
 there can be little doubt. He came out of 
 this crisis, for which public opinion held him 
 mainly accountable, with his influence dimin- 
 ished and his official authority virtually gone. 
 Though still nominally Chief Judge of Israel, 
 he was no longer supported by the favour of 
 the Great King and the respect of all the 
 Persian functionaries beyond the Eiver ; he 
 had fallen into evident disgrace ; he had been 
 
 1 Nell. vii. 4. 2 ]sfeh. xii. 47. 
 
96 AFTER THE EXILE. 
 
 practically disavowed by his royal master. 
 Many voices which had hitherto been silent, 
 or had only dared to hint or whisper dis- 
 approval, were now raised in loud blame of 
 the man whose intemperate zeal and obstinate 
 insistence on his theories had brought reproach 
 and misfortune on the nation. Ezra's power 
 and popularity fell with the walls of Jerusalem. 
 The fiasco in which his policy had ended 
 seemed to justify the counter-policy of his 
 opponents ; the Zadokites, the sacerdotal- 
 political party, gained credit accordingly, and 
 once more took into their hands the conduct 
 of affairs. There is no reason to suppose that 
 Ezra, even at this hour when his mission 
 seemed to have closed in blank failure, had 
 any thought of abandoning what he still looked 
 upon as his post of duty.^ He was not the man 
 to desert the followers who had trusted him 
 and trusted him still. Welcome and honour 
 awaited him, if he chose to return to Babylon 
 
 1 Hitzig considers it ' inconceivable that Ezra should ever 
 have gone back to Babylon,' bnt supposes that, ' being perhaps 
 already an aged man,' he may have died at Jerusalem before 
 Nehemiah's arrival. Any mention of Ezra in the book of 
 Nehemiah Hitzig assumes to be interpolated (Gesch. des 
 Volkes Israel, i. 287). 
 
PURITANISM AND REACTION. 97 
 
 and resume the place he had held among the 
 Golah ; but the inner voice that had called 
 him to Jerusalem bade him stay, and assured 
 him that his work there was not yet done. 
 He had still a numerous body of supporters, 
 drawn chiefly from the ranks of the earnest 
 and faithful men who had come with him from 
 the East ; and with these at his back, he was 
 able to maintain himself at Jerusalem, and 
 even yet to make a stand for the doctrines 
 that were his and theirs. But for the time 
 the forces of reaction were too strong to be 
 resisted. One by one the results which Ezra 
 had gained were swept away; the principles 
 he had striven to establish were flouted and 
 disregarded ; the law he had come to teach 
 remained ' in his hand,' as yet unpublished to 
 the people. The Zadokites and their adher- 
 ents among the nobility resumed their friendly 
 relations with the Gentiles and the half- Israel- 
 ites of Samaria, and entered into formal alli- 
 ance with their chiefs. Refugees whom Ezra 
 had banished from the community now re- 
 turned, and leaders of Jewish society took 
 back their foreign wives. ^ It was a complete 
 1 Neh. vi. 18. 
 II H 
 
98 AFTER THE EXILE. 
 
 reversal of his policy, and popular sentiment 
 concurred in the change. A man with less 
 strength of faith and tenacity of purpose might 
 have been tempted to admit failure, and to 
 retire from the field on which he had been 
 worsted. The Puritan Ezra was made of 
 sterner stuff. He was disappointed, but not 
 despondent. Under a weight of obloquy and 
 a keen sense of national ingratitude which 
 might have crushed a lesser man, he held 
 himself erect and firm. The convictions 
 that had sustained him during long years of 
 struggle did not fail him, now that struggle 
 had ended in seeming defeat. He still had 
 his credentials, given him by a higher than 
 any earthly king. He still had his Book of 
 the Law, and still looked forward to the 
 coming of a day when he should bring forth 
 that sacred volume, unroll it in sight of the 
 people, and demand and obtain for it universal 
 assent and recognition, as the one supreme 
 rule of the national life. In this unfaltering 
 confidence, during months and years of acti- 
 vity arrested and hope deferred, Ezra waited 
 at Jerusalem till his day should come. 
 
CHAPTER V. 
 
 IRebemtab anb tbe IRing. 
 
 TT7ITH the twentieth year of Artaxerxes 
 ^' Longhand (445 B.C.), there opens 
 another and brighter chapter of Jewish 
 history, which has for its hero Nehemiah ben 
 Hakaliah, by birth a Jew, by training, habits 
 of life, to some extent habits of thought,^ a 
 Persian. Of Nehemiah's ancestry, of his 
 family history, of the circumstances which 
 raised him to high office at the Persian court, 
 absolutely nothing is known. ^ He is one of 
 
 1 Note Neheiuiali's use of the expression ' God of heaven ' 
 (1. 5 ; ii. 4, 20), which is rather Persian than Jewish, and as 
 a rule is found in the mouth of Gentiles (2 Chrou. xxxvi. 
 23 ; Ezra i. 2 ; vii. 12). 
 
 - Talmudic tradition represents Nehemiah to have heen, 
 like Zerubhabel, a descendant of David. But in the Talmud 
 the periods of Zerubhabel and Nehemiah are continiially 
 mixed up, and the two men frequently identified. Eosen- 
 zweig (Jahrhundert, 104) conjectures that Nehemiah's 
 
100 AFTER THE EXILE. 
 
 the earliest and most distinguished examples 
 of a type familiar in the history of courts, 
 Asiatic and European : a man of that wonder- 
 ful Hebrew race of which so many brilliant 
 representatives have made their way into the 
 confidence of monarchs by powers of mind, and 
 won their affection by charms of person and 
 manners. Nehemiah, when he appears on the 
 scene, holds ofiice as one of the cup-bearers of 
 Artaxerxes ; an office which native Persians of 
 princely rank were proud to hold, which neces- 
 sarily implied the unreserved confidence of the 
 sovereign, and whose occupant might be em- 
 ployed, not merely in ceremonial functions, 
 but in diplomatic services of high importance. 
 Fortunately Nehemiah wrote a memoir of the 
 most interesting period of his life, and fortu- 
 nately that memoir has been preserved. There 
 is no other book in the canon of ancient 
 Scripture more clearly stamped with the 
 impress of its author's character, none that 
 presents a personality more engaging and 
 sympathetic. Its simplicity of style, its naive 
 
 reference to tlie ' sepulchres of his fathers ' may have sug- 
 gested the 'kings' tombs' at Jerusalem, and hence have 
 given rise to the notion that he was of royal lineage. 
 
NEHEMIAH AND THE KING. loi 
 
 candour of self-revelation, give it a unique 
 place among Jewish histories. One feels that 
 the writer was just the man, neither greater 
 nor less, that his autobiography with uncon- 
 scious art represents him to have been. 
 Placed in early life in a situation that might 
 have brought out the most sordid and con- 
 temptible qualities of human nature, Nehemiah 
 developed a character which commands intui- 
 tive admiration and respect. In an atmo- 
 sphere peculiarly favourable to the growth of 
 a mean and cowardly egoism, he escaped the 
 taint, and showed himself on all occasions 
 generous, brave and unselfish. The influences 
 that might have made another man frivolous 
 and artificial, left him deeply earnest, perfectly 
 natural and unaffected. Amid the seductions 
 of an Eastern court, its enervating luxuries 
 and temptations to indulgence, he kept his 
 manliness fresh and strong. In daily contact 
 with the duplicities of court life, its petty 
 treacheries and trickeries, its often dark and 
 murderous intrigues — living among the elite 
 of a race famed among the races of antiquity 
 for its slipperiness and skill in subterfuge — 
 he remained open, honest and straightforward. 
 
AFTER THE EXILE. 
 
 Faithfulness to a foreign master he found not 
 incompatible with faithfulness to his religion 
 and his race. The king had no trustier 
 servant ; Israel, no more devoted son. At 
 heart the Persian courtier was a Jewish patriot. 
 To serve his people was his highest ambition ; 
 if the call came to him, he was ready for their 
 sake to resign wealth, honours, influence, and 
 to sacrifice what might well be a great career. 
 The deep piety of Nehemiah was the secret of 
 his strength and courage. He was a living 
 proof of what the Exile had done for Israel ; 
 a notable product of the stock which, more 
 than a century and a half before, had been 
 transplanted to foreign soil, and had there 
 blossomed out into new life and rare forms of 
 beauty. Like all true Israelites of the Golah, 
 Nehemiah was a man of prayer; and his 
 favourite petition, which was so often on his 
 lips that it drops quite naturally from his pen 
 — ' Eemember me, my God, for good ! ' — 
 sums up his life as it does his memoirs. This 
 man, who was neither priest nor scribe, who 
 was not specially versed in the ceremonial 
 laws or sacred literature of his people, showed 
 a spirituality, a simplicity of faith, an ever- 
 
NEHEMIAH AND THE KING. 103 
 
 active consciousness that work done in God's 
 name has God's help and will have His reward 
 — which priest and scribe have often failed to 
 show. Nehemiah stands out in the history of 
 Judaism as the first great layman who freely 
 sacrificed himself in the cause of his religion 
 and his country. 
 
 As a high officer of the royal household, 
 living near the king's person and in the enjoy- 
 ment of his favour, and with abundant wealth 
 at his command, Nehemiah had it in his power 
 to render important service to his people. 
 His was a well-known name among them ; 
 they looked to him for help, and not in vain. 
 To Nehemiah, every Jew was a brother.^ He 
 spent his money ungrudgingly in relieving 
 their necessities,^ and on many occasions, no 
 doubt, had used his influence on their behalf 
 It may be assumed that, during the recent 
 struggle between the Jews and the Samaritans, 
 he had been the foremost champion of his 
 people at court. In such a hot-bed of intrigue 
 and cabal as the palace of Susa, where every- 
 thing hung upon the whim of an irresponsible 
 despot, where the key to the royal closet 
 
 1 Nell. V. 8. 2 Hyi^_ 
 
I04 AFTER THE EXILE. 
 
 passed often out of the worthiest into the 
 vilest hands, where a man might be in favour 
 to-day and out of it to-morrow without in the 
 least knowing the reason of his rise or fall — it 
 is not surprising that Nehemiah should have 
 been for the time unsuccessful in frustrating 
 the schemes of the enemies of Israel ; that the 
 royal message which brought disaster on Jeru- 
 salem should have gone forth in spite of all 
 his efforts, perhaps even without his know- 
 ledge.^ There were men at Jerusalem who 
 knew what Nehemiah was — an ardent patriot 
 who ' prayed day and night ' ^ for his people ; 
 a fellow-worker who was with them heart and 
 soul. Their thoughts turned to him, as the 
 one man who might do something to raise the 
 Puritan cause from its present state of depres- 
 sion. They resolved to send messengers to 
 him — kinsmen of his own,^ eye-witnesses of 
 
 1 Vaihinger suggests that the successful intriguants may 
 have purposely concealed their success from Nehemiah, in 
 order to gain time for the execution of their plans, which 
 would account for the surprise and concern with which he 
 heard the news from Jerusalem (^Stud. u. Krit. 1857, i. 92). 
 
 2 Neh. i. 6. 
 
 2 Neh. i. 2". Nehemiah calls Hanani ' one of his brethren ' ; 
 the Hebrew word may mean either brother, kinsman, or 
 tribesman. Josephus {Ant. xi. 5, 6) gives a more romantic 
 
NEHEMIAH AND THE KING. 105 
 
 the late disasters, whose words he would 
 listen to and credit ; believing that if only he 
 knew the truth, he would be eager to help 
 them in their extremity. 
 
 These envoys of the Puritan party reached 
 Susa in the winter of 445, sought an interview 
 with Nehemiah in the palace, and told him 
 the harrowing tale of what had befallen 
 Jerusalem. Apparently he had been quite 
 unprepared for such evil tidings ; they moved 
 him deeply, even to tears. ^ Years after, the 
 impression made upon him by that hour of 
 grief was as vivid as ever ; the rush of emotions, 
 the fasting, the prayers, were as fresh in his 
 recollection as if they had been things of 
 yesterday ; and when he came to write his 
 memoirs, he could set all down in graphic 
 detail. It was characteristic of Nehemiah 
 that he completely identified himself with his 
 people. The circumstances that had separated 
 him from them, and, in a worldly sense, raised 
 
 account of the incident. Nehemiah, he says, was one day 
 walking in the city of Susa, when ' he heard certain strangers 
 that were entering the city after a long journey, speaking 
 one to another in the Hebrew tongue ' ; and, entering into 
 conversation with them, was made aware of the sad state of 
 things in Judea. ^ Neh. i. 4. 
 
io6 AFTER THE EXILE. 
 
 him above them — his foreign ways and tastes 
 and mode of life — had not impaired the 
 strong, secret sympathy which made him a 
 Hebrew of the Hebrews. Their guilt was his 
 guilt ; their sorrows were his sorrows ; the 
 promises made to them were his encourage- 
 ment.^ No sooner had he heard the story of 
 his country's ' great aifliction,' than he formed 
 a purpose which days and weeks of serious 
 and devout reflection ripeued into steadfast 
 resolve. He felt that his high place at that 
 foreign court imposed on him a great responsi- 
 bility with regard to his people. He felt that 
 'God had put into his heart '^ what he was 
 minded to do. To him, Jerusalem was 'the 
 holy city,' and work done for Jerusalem was 
 ' the good work.' ^ In this cause he was ready 
 to sacrifice rank, wealth, power, all that made 
 his lot enviable in men's eyes ; looking for no 
 higher reward, counting none higher, than 
 that his work should be pleasing to God, and 
 that his name should be remembered at 
 Jerusalem.* 
 
 Nehemiah's purpose was to go in person to 
 
 1 Neh. i. 6, 8, 9. 2 Neh. ii. 12. 
 
 3 Neh. xi. 1 ; ii. 18. * Neh. ii. 20. 
 
NEHEMIAH AND THE KING. 107 
 
 Judea, and there, on the spot, to take in hand 
 the task of restoring the national fortunes. 
 Without the king's permission he could not 
 leave the palace ; and in seeking that permis- 
 sion, there was a certain amount of risk 
 involved. He had need to pray that God 
 would ' grant him mercy in the sight of this 
 man,' ^ who seemed to hold in his hands the 
 destiny of ^ Israel. The position of a court 
 favourite, as Nehemiah well knew, was at best 
 precarious. It was doubtful how the capricious 
 monarch might relish a request to leave his 
 service ; whether the royal dignity might not 
 take offence at the thought of any claim being 
 preferred before his own, or any duty counted 
 more honourable than that of attending on 
 him. But Nehemiah needed more than a mere 
 conge ; he needed official authority, credentials, 
 in order to prosecute his design ; and this 
 made it the more necessary for him to bridle 
 his impatience, and await a favourable oppor- 
 tunity before venturing to broach the matter 
 to the king. Less or more, the courtier must 
 lead a dual life ; in the palace of the Persian 
 kings, the bondage of etiquette was peculiarly 
 
 1 Neh. i. 11. 
 
io8 AFTER THE EXILE. 
 
 severe ; it forbade the slightest exhibition of 
 grief in the royal presence, the faintest trace 
 of a tear or a care. Nehemiah, brooding in 
 private over the woes of Israel, wrestling in 
 secret prayer, consumed with the desire to 
 arise and be gone — had to hide all these 
 emotions under a joyous demeanour, and cease- 
 lessly watch himself, lest a look or a gesture 
 should betray him before the propitious hour 
 had come. 
 
 For months Nehemiah bided his time, as 
 only a man of uncommon prudence and self- 
 control could have done. At last, on a day in 
 the month Nisan, four months after the coming 
 of the Jews from Jerusalem, the opportunity 
 for which he had been longing and watching 
 presented itself in an unlooked-for fashion. 
 There was a banquet at court ; Damaspia, the 
 queen-consort, sate at table with the king ; 
 the Hebrew cup-bearer did his office, with the 
 smiling grace that etiquette required. It 
 chanced that Artaxerxes, looking into the face 
 of the handsome youth who, on bent knee, 
 was handing him the wine-cup, saw there 
 an expression that excited his curiosity. It 
 was not that Nehemiah had forgotten, or 
 
NE HE MI AH AND THE KING. 109 
 
 given up the attempt to dissemble his grief. ^ 
 It was not that he had dropped the mask, but 
 that the sharp eye of the king saw for an 
 instant behind it ; saw that the smile was 
 forced and the gaiety strained. The sus^ 
 picions of an Eastern potentate sleep lightly ; 
 a change of tone or look is enough to 
 waken them. Artaxerxes at once taxed his 
 favourite with having something to conceal, 
 and demanded to know what it was. Sick- 
 ness it could not be, since he was there, able 
 for his duties ; he must, then, have something 
 on his mind. Let him speak out, and 
 declare it. 
 
 Nehemiah frankly owns that at that critical 
 moment he was 'very sore afraid.'^ Still, 
 challenged thus suddenly, he did not lose his 
 presence of mind. In simple, pathetic words 
 he told the reason of his melancholy : his 
 people's city, the place of his fathers' graves, 
 was lying desolate and dishonoured, and there- 
 
 1 Nell. ii. 1. The ' beforetime ' of R.V. spoils the sense. 
 Nehemiah says, ' And I was not sad in his presence ' — i.e. 
 was making my usual effort to appear cheerful and light- 
 hearted. Reuss translates : — M quoique je ne fisse pas 
 pa/raitre mon chagrin, U roi me dit, etc. ^ Neh. ii. 2. 
 
AFTER THE EXILE. 
 
 .fore his countenance was sad.-^ The ring of 
 perfect truthfulness in the answer dispelled 
 any shadow of suspicion that had flitted across 
 the king's mind. The words appealed to the 
 feelings, attracted the sympathy of the Persian, 
 who, like his nation in general, held pecuUarly 
 sacred the resting-place of his ancestors. He 
 invited Nehemiah to proceed, to prefer the 
 suit to which his words evidently pointed-; 
 and the latter, first oflfering a silent prayer to 
 God^ for help and guidance at this juncture 
 so fraught with grave issues, found courage to 
 make the petition which had long been in his 
 mind. If he had found favour in the sight 
 of the king, let the king send him to Judea, 
 and give him authority to build up the city 
 of his fathers' sepulchres. That was the boon 
 he craved.^ 
 
 Artaxerxes knew little and cared less about 
 the Jews, and possibly had only a vague notion 
 as to where, in what obscure corner of his vast 
 empire, Jerusalem might lie. But he had a 
 very real liking for Nehemiah, and, in his 
 present gracious mood, an inclination to grant 
 him this desire of his heart. The one thing 
 
 1 Neh. ii. 3. 2 inj^_ 4^ 3 jjjj;, 5. 
 
NEHEMIAH AND THE KING. 1 1 1 
 
 that made him hesitate was the affection in 
 which he held the young Hebrew. He did 
 not wish to part with his cup-bearer, to lose 
 this attached and faithful servant, from whose 
 hands he could take the goblet without any 
 sense of lurking danger. It was therefore 
 stipulated that the favourite's leave of absence 
 should be limited to a certain time ; ^ and 
 on that condition, Nehemiah having passed 
 his word to return, all that he sought was 
 readily granted him. The preliminaries of 
 the mission, as arranged between Nehemiah 
 and his royal patron, testify alike to the practi- 
 cal sagacity and foresight of the one, and the 
 careless generosity of the other. Nehemiah 
 was appointed pehhali or governor of Judea ^ 
 — the same office that had been conferred on 
 Zerubbabel by Cyrus, ninety years ago. He 
 obtained full authority to rebuild those walls 
 of Jerusalem which, not very long before, 
 Ai'taxerxes had allowed to be destroyed. 
 He was furnished with letters under the royal 
 seal to the various Persian officials in the 
 region west of Euphrates, and with an order 
 addressed to the ' keeper of the royal forest,' 
 
 1 Neh. ii. 6. 2 j^eh. v. 14. 
 
AFTER THE EXILE. 
 
 which required that functionary to supply him 
 with timber for the various constructions and 
 repairs he had in view — the city gates, the 
 gates of the Bira or temple-fortress, and the 
 official residence of the pekhah at Jerusalem.^ 
 Escorted by a troop of Persian horse, accom- 
 panied by a chosen band of kinsmen and per- 
 sonal friends, and by a numerous suite of 
 attendants,^ he set out from Susa after the 
 briefest possible delay. The journey that 
 had been such a formidable undertaking to 
 Ezra's pilgrim caravan was as nothing to 
 Nehemiah and his followers, well mounted, 
 well armed, and unencumbered. Their way 
 smoothed for them by the king's passport,' 
 they travelled swiftly and safely towards 
 Jerusalem. 
 
 While yet on the way to his province, the 
 
 1 Neh. ii. 8. This ' royal forest ' was probably the ' para- 
 dise ' or hunting-park of the old Jewish kings in the 
 neighbourhood of Jerusalem, now included in the crovs'ii 
 domains of the Persian monarchy. Gratz supposes that the 
 Lebanon forest is meant. As to the Bira, see mYra, vol. i. 
 p. 205. 
 
 2 Neh. ii. 9 ; iv. 23. Among those 'brethren' or kins- 
 men of Nehemiah was that Hanani who had brought him 
 the news from Jerusalem, and who now returned with him 
 from Persia (Neh. vii. 2). 3 Neh. ii. 7. 
 
NEHEMIAH AND THE KING. 113 
 
 uew govei'iior of Judea, iu tlie course of com- 
 munications with the Persian officials ' beyond 
 the Eiver,' ^ had an opportunity of finding out 
 for himself who the enemies were that he would 
 have to reckon with iu his enterprise, and 
 what was the extent of their power to injure 
 or anuoy him. These enemies, also, found out 
 about Xehemiah, and were, as he himself 
 phrases it, excessively chagrined that there 
 should come ' a man to seek the welfare of the 
 children of Israel.' * There were in those days 
 three personages who made themselves con- 
 spicuous by their ill-wiU — not to the Jews as 
 a people, for they desired nothing better than 
 to be on friendly terms with the Jews — but to 
 that Jewish party which maintained the doc- 
 trine and practice of exclusiveuess, and which 
 hoped, by strengthening and consolidating 
 their nation from within, to secure its eternal 
 separation from the Gentiles. Chief of this 
 triumvirate was Sanballat the Horonite. The 
 natiouiility of this man is doubtful,* but his 
 
 I Xeh. iL 9. ^ IhiA. 10. 
 
 ^ If Honnite means 'of Hoionaim,' then Sanbailat was 
 by birth a Moabite (Isa. xv. 5) ; i^ ' of Beth-Horon,' then he 
 was a Samaritan ; i.e. a man of mixed Israelitish and foreign 
 blood. There were two Beth-Horons, ' the npper ' and ' the 
 
 II I 
 
114 AFTER THE EXILE. 
 
 official position seems clearly indicated in the 
 
 narrative— lie was governor of Samaria under 
 
 the Persian crown, just as Nehemiah was 
 
 governor of Judea, but apparently with a 
 
 higher standing than the latter, for he had an 
 
 army at his disposal.^ In close relationship 
 
 and alliance with Sanballat was Tobijah, 
 
 governor of the land of Ammon beyond 
 
 Jordan \ "' while the third in the confederacy 
 
 was an Arab emir named Gashmu, possibly chief 
 
 of those Nabatheans who had recently 'laid 
 
 waste the heritage of Edom,' and begun to 
 
 establish themselves as an independent power 
 
 on the south of Palestine.' Though the names 
 
 nether ' (Josh. xvi. 3, 5 ; 2 Chron. viii. 5), both situated in 
 the territory of ancient Ephraim. Josephus (Ant. xi. 7, 2) 
 states that Sanballat \ras a 'Cuthean' or Samaritan. The 
 name is probably of Assyrian origin, meaning 'Sin (the 
 Moon-God) giveth life.' 
 
 1 Neh. iv. 2. 
 
 2 Throughout Nehemiah's memoirs Tobijah is called ' the 
 servant, the Ammonite.' The word rendered ' servant ' {EheS) 
 seems to have been his official title as governor or adminis- 
 trator of Ammon — ' servant ' of the Great King ; not, as Gratz 
 supposes {Gesch. ii. b, 1 1 9), a derisive nickname given him by 
 his enemies in allusion to his supposed servile origin. Reuss 
 translates ' the Ammonite officer.' 
 
 3 Mai. i. 3. From the Assyrian inscriptions it appears 
 that Sargon, in the 8th century B.C., had settled Arab tribes 
 
NEHEMIAH AND THE KING. 115 
 
 of Sanballat and Tobijali do not appear in any 
 documents before this time/ there can be little 
 doubt that they had been the moving spirits 
 in the intrigues and hostile demonstrations 
 that had led to Ezra's downfall and the de- 
 struction of the walls of Jerusalem ; and they 
 were quite ready to transfer their enmity to 
 Nehemiah, whose policy, as they had reason to 
 suspect, would not be at all more favourable 
 to their aspirations than Ezra's had been. For 
 these ' adversaries ' of Israel were adversaries in 
 a special sense of the word, and, as was only 
 natural in the circumstances, met with some- 
 thing less than justice at the hands of Jewish 
 historians. They were not actuated in their 
 hostility by racial hatred, or by the ordinary 
 jealousies which might prevail among a group 
 of petty nations in a state of vassalage ; their 
 attacks were directed not against the Jews as 
 a people, but rather against men, measures, 
 parties among the Jews. The Arab Gashmu 
 might have no other motive in joining the 
 
 in Samaiia (see swprd, toI. i. p. 108) ; hence a tie of blood 
 between Arab and Samaritan. 
 
 1 The memorial to Artaxerxes (supra, p. 85) was drawn 
 up in name of of5cials who were Persians, the native chiefs 
 of Samaria keeping themselves in the background. 
 
ii6 AFTER THE EXILE. 
 
 confederacy than, the Arab's love of fighting 
 and hope of plunder ; but it was otherwise 
 with Sanballat and Tobijah. Those ' children 
 of Lot ' ^ were genuinely eager to have a share 
 in the religious privileges of Israel. They 
 sought recognition, for themselves and their 
 countrymen, as members of the ' aristocracy of 
 nations.' They clamoured at the gate, desir- 
 ing peaceable admittance, but, if this were 
 refused them, ready to storm their way into 
 the commonwealth, sword in hand. There is 
 every reason to suppose that both Sanballat 
 and Tobijah were already proselytes to Juda- 
 ism ; the name of the latter, and that of his 
 son,^ are Jewish and have a religious mean- 
 ing. Bold, crafty, tenacious of his purpose, 
 Sanballat seems to have been no ordinary 
 man. To form of Jews and Samaritans 
 one united people ; to give the motley popu- 
 lation of his country the element of stability 
 and cohesion it needed, by setting up the 
 Jewish cultus in its midst ; to extend the 
 sphere of his own authority southwards, over 
 Jewish territory — such were the aims which 
 the ambitious Horonite had set before him, 
 
 1 Ps. Ixxxiii. 8. 2 Neh. vi. 18. 
 
NEHEMIAH AND THE KING. 117 
 
 and which, for years he kept steadily in 
 view. ' His opposition to Nehemiah, as the 
 representative of Jewish patriotism, was thus 
 more serious than if it had sprung from mere 
 blind resentment or the petulance of wounded 
 vanity. Sanballat had his policy. From the 
 line of that policy he never swerved, and for 
 its success he worked with tireless energy. 
 He was perfectly unscrupulous as to the means 
 he used ; all means, gentle or rough, fair or 
 foul, were legitimate, so long as they advanced 
 his end. Already one man of the Jewish 
 nation had crossed his path and thwarted his 
 policy ; that man had been crushed. It re- 
 mained to be seen whether Nehemiah would 
 succeed where Ezra had failed. 
 
 It was fortunate for the Judeans that in 
 their new Governor they had a man exception- 
 ally qualified, by temperament and training, 
 to cope with this formidable coalition, and at 
 the same time to hold in check that party 
 within the community which made common 
 cause with the foreign enemy. Nehemiah 
 had this great advantage over Ezra, that his 
 powers were purely secular, and exactly de- 
 fined. The title of Chief Judge was ambigu- 
 
ii8 AFTER THE EXILE. 
 
 ous; it might mean anything or nothing. 
 The title of Pekhah was perfectly clear. As 
 civil governor, Nehemiah could go about his 
 work without stirring up the embers of con- 
 troversy or invading the privileges of caste. 
 He could appeal to public spirit without raisiag 
 sectional animosities. And he had this further 
 and very decided advantage over Ezra, that he 
 was a man of the world, accustomed to deal 
 with men ; deeply pious, but no bigot ; very 
 much in earnest, but no pedant ; one who 
 understood the art of conciliation, who had the 
 fine tact, the savoirfaire, the sympathetic and 
 persuasive power, from the want of \yhich 
 Ezra's difi&culties had in no small measure 
 arisen. The great Scribe was, in truth, too 
 much of the pedagogue to be a successful 
 ruler of men ; in the working out of such a 
 problem as Jewish society at that time pre- 
 sented to the reformer, the training of the 
 court was likely to be more valuable than the 
 training of the schools. Sanballat and his 
 fellow-conspirators had gained a comparatively 
 easy victory over Ezra, who had at the last 
 simply played into their hands. They soon 
 found out that Ezra's successor was more 
 
NEHEMIAH AXD THE KING. 119 
 
 troublesome to ded with. It was not for 
 nothing that Nehemiah, in the palace of Susa, 
 had served his apprenticeship to the trade of 
 Oriental diplomacy. Coming from the centre 
 of imperial affairs, the metropolis of the East, 
 into that obscure corner of the world, among 
 those petty, local rivalries and intrigues, 
 Nehemiah seems to have felt a kind of con- 
 tempt for his antagonists, with their clumsy 
 traps into which he was expected to walk 
 open-eyed. Between him and his opponents 
 there is a contrast, unintentionally brought 
 out in his memoirs — a contrast between the 
 man who is a past master in the diplomatic 
 art, and men who have not got beyond the 
 maladroit tricks and transparent devices of the 
 provincial intriguer. Sanballat and his allies 
 seem almost vulvar beside the high-bred 
 courtier : perhaps the one character of Old 
 Testament history who, without a ludicrous 
 sense of incongruity, may be called ' a perfect 
 gentleman."^ Naturally frank and straight- 
 forward, he could show on occasion a finesse 
 that completely baffled his opponents, whose 
 native weapons had neither the polish nor the 
 
 1 Charles Eeade, BtW« CAarartei-s : ' Nehemiah.' 
 
AFTER THE EXILE. 
 
 edge of his. Naturally hot-tempered, he 
 could appear outwardly imperturbable under 
 pro^'ocation, and gain the advantage by a 
 calmly courteous answer to an insulting 
 message. The foes without would have given 
 him comparatively little trouble and caused 
 him little anxiety, if it had not been that 
 many of the most influential men in Judea 
 were hand in glove with them, and secretly 
 did all they could to promote their designs. 
 To walk among pitfalls, to be surrounded 
 with treachery, to be wounded in the house 
 of his friends, was Nehemiah's bitter experi- 
 ence for many a long year. Under this 
 severe test, he showed rare qualities of patience 
 and self-command ; and in wariness, keenness 
 of insight, resource,^ proved himself through- 
 out more than a match for any combination 
 of his enemies. 
 
 1 Neliemiali's phrases are characteristic : ' I told no 
 man' ; 'I took counsel with myself ; 'I discerned' (ii. 12 ; 
 V. 7 ; vi. 12). 
 
CHAPTEK VI. 
 
 Ube 3ButlMna of tbe Malls. 
 
 TJ^ROM the messengers who had come to him 
 -■- in Persia, and the information which he 
 himself had gathered by the way, Nehemiah 
 had learned sufficient as to the state of matters 
 at Jerusalem to put him on his guard from the 
 very outset. So far from making a state entry 
 into Jerusalem, and an immediate public pro- 
 clamation of his office, he contrived to slip 
 into the city, unobserved or at all events 
 unknown ; and during the three following 
 days, which were spent in resting after the 
 long journey, preserved a strict incognito. 
 Before calling any one into his counsels, before 
 communicating his design even to the rulers 
 of the people, he wished to see with his own 
 eyes the dilapidations of Jerusalem, and to 
 form an independent judgment as to the 
 
AFTER THE EXILE. 
 
 feasibility of restoring them. Accordingly, on 
 the fourth night after his arrival, darkness 
 having fallen, he set forth on horseback, 
 accompanied by a few of his retainers on foot, 
 to make a personal inspection of the walls. 
 Passing out by the ' Valley-gate ' in the south- 
 western angle of the ancient city, and descend- 
 ing into the valley of Hinnom, he skirted the 
 southern wall along its whole extent, till he 
 reached the 'Dragon's Pool' at the south- 
 eastern angle.^ The moonlight or starlight 
 made visible the havoc that had been wrought 
 in the defences of Jerusalem : ruins lay heaped 
 upon ruins ; here the wall tottered and toppled, 
 there the great breach yawned ; the timbers of 
 the gateways, in which no gates hung, were 
 gnawed and blackened with fire. It was a 
 saddening spectacle to a true son of Israel ; 
 the history of his nation might seem to him 
 typified by those hoary battlements, once high 
 and strong, now fallen. The Greek historian 
 tells how the Athenian exiles, visiting the 
 ruins of the Acropolis, saw that the olive-tree 
 sacred to the goddess, though burned to the 
 ground, had thrown out a fresh shoot; and 
 
 1 Neh. ii. 12, 13. 
 
THE BUILDING OF THE WALLS. 123 
 
 how they took new courage from the portent. 
 No sign was needed to cheer Nehemiah's 
 heart or confirm his purpose. As he rode 
 along under the shadow of desolation, his mind 
 was busy, not in mournful retrospect, but in 
 closing those rents, stopping those gaps, and 
 filling up those empty gateways. Farther on, 
 at the ' Fountain-gate,' the way was found 
 blocked with rubbish and masses of fallen 
 masonry, which had rolled down the slope and 
 poured into the valley. To proceed on horse- 
 back was impossible ; Nehemiah dismounted, 
 and made his way, clambering over the d6bris, 
 down into the ravine of Kedron. Following the 
 channel of the stream, he passed along under 
 the base of the eastern wall, narrowly inspect- 
 ing ^ it as he went ; then, having reached the 
 north-eastern angle of the city, turned, retraced 
 his steps towards the ' Valley-gate,' and so 
 homeward.^ He had seen enough. Appar- 
 
 1 Neh. ii. 13-15. The word translated 'viewed' lias 
 this meaning. 
 
 ^ Or, it may be, completed his circuit of the whole city, 
 passing along under the northern and western walls, back to 
 the 'Valley-gate.' In this case, 'turned back' in ver. 15 
 should be 'turned' — i.e. rounded the N.E. corner of the 
 wall, going W. 
 
124 AFTER THE EXILE. 
 
 ently it was on the south side that the fortifi- 
 cations were worst damaged ; ^ if the difficulties 
 here were not insuperable, they might be 
 attacked elsewhere with a prospect of success. 
 The difficulties seemed to Nehemiah not in- 
 superable. He came back from his midnight 
 tour of the city, realising how great they were, 
 but hopeful of his ability to overcome them, if 
 only he could communicate something of his 
 own high spirit of confidence to the people and 
 their rulers. 
 
 Having thus gained the information he 
 
 1 ' It will be observed that the greatest desolation is found 
 on the south side of the city, as though the last assault had 
 taken place on that side. Nehemiah surveys the southern 
 walls and gates first — surveys them leisurely — mentions one 
 spot after another, and the impossibility of getting along; 
 and then hurries over his journey by the brook and round 
 the north of the city homeward. The impression we thus 
 get of greater destruction on the southern side is confirmed 
 by the description of the work of restoration in chapter iii., 
 where it would appear that a larger number of independent 
 workers find occupation on the southern side than on the 
 northern. It is generally assumed that, because the northern 
 part of the city afforded higher ground, from which the 
 assault could be delivered more easily, therefore the city 
 would always be assaulted on that side, and the southern 
 and south-eastern parts would not suffer much. But even 
 supposing this to be so during the actual assault, the 
 conqueror might take all the more delight in demolishing 
 
THE BUILDING OF THE WALLS. 125 
 
 wanted, so quietly that no man in Jerusalem 
 as yet suspected his design, and no whisper of 
 it could reach the enemies without, Nehemiah 
 dropped his incognito, made public his com- 
 mission, and installed himself as pekhah of 
 Judea. Still he let time pass — how long he 
 does not say — before bringing forward his 
 proposal to rebuild, the walls, and the mandate 
 given him for that purpose by the Persian 
 king. Meanwhile he was studying the char- 
 acter of the people he had come to govern, 
 which must have presented a far from simple 
 problem to a man of the Golah, trained as he 
 had been ; forming the acquaintance of the 
 chief men among the priesthood and laity ; 
 observing for himself the drift of opinions and 
 the balance of parties. There was one man at 
 Jerusalem to whom Nehemiah's arrival was 
 peculiarly welcome — in whose mind, darkened 
 with the sense of failure, new hopes sprang up 
 with the coming of this new leader. Between 
 Ezra and Nehemiah, unlike in many respects 
 as they were, there existed a strong bond of 
 
 afterwards the walls which had defied him.'^ — Article 
 NehemiaKs Night-riie, by G. St. Clair, in Palestine Explora- 
 tion Fund Quaiierly Statement, Jan. 1888, p. 48. 
 
126 AFTER THE EXILE. 
 
 sympathy. Both were deeply religious ; both 
 had made great sacrifices for their people; 
 both saw their highest duty in the service of 
 Israel and of Israel's God. Their standpoints 
 were different ; their methods of working were 
 different ; one was a priest, a scholar, a man of 
 thought, while the other was a layman, a 
 courtier, a man of action. But the magnetism 
 of a common purpose drew them together ; 
 and though Ezra's name is not mentioned in 
 Nehemiah's memoirs until a later point is 
 reached, it may be taken for granted that 
 Nehemiah had not been long in Jerusalem 
 before coming into contact with the great 
 Scribe. So far Ezra had failed as a reformer, 
 and his failure was a significant warning to 
 the man who came after him. Nehemiah was 
 much too clever not to take the warning ; and 
 if already to some extent he had come under 
 Ezra's influence — the influence of age, of pro- 
 found learning, and of an imperious will — he 
 was not yet drawn away by it from his own 
 independent line of action. To identify him- 
 self at that stage with Ezra and the extreme 
 Puritans would have been to put his enterprise 
 in peril. He needed the help of all men for 
 
THE BUILDING OF THE WALLS. 127 
 
 its success — of all classes, ranks and parties ; 
 and therefore he laid himself out to court 
 popularity, and above all to conciliate the 
 good-will of the chief priests and nobles. He 
 had at command one means of doing this, 
 which he used with much effect. He had 
 great wealth, and spent it freely. Before his 
 time, the Judeans had suffered from the 
 tyranny and greed, not only of their pekhah, 
 but of a swarm of the pekhah's retainers, who 
 lived, like their master, at the public expense.^ 
 jNehemiah, so far from practising or permitting 
 extortion, did not even exact his legal dues ; 
 and records with pardonable pride that, so long 
 as he held office at Jerusalem, neither he nor 
 his suite had cost the citizens a single shekel.^ 
 There could be no quicker road than this to 
 the favour of the populace, especially in days 
 of poverty and depression, as those days were. 
 With the upper classes of society, as with the 
 commons, the young Governor found his riches 
 a potent talisman. He lived in princely state, 
 and entertained on a grand scale. A hundred 
 and fifty guests sat down each day at his table ^ 
 
 ^ Bwpn-a, vol. i. p. 235 2 jjgh. v. 14, 15. 
 
 3 lUi. 17, 18. 
 
128 AFTER THE EXILE. 
 
 — men of rank and influence, for the most part, 
 who were able to make a return for this sumptu- 
 ous hospitality by helping him in his plans. 
 
 At last Nehemiah judged that the way 
 was paved sufficiently and the time ripe for 
 divulging his purpose. Calling together the 
 chiefs of the community — priests, nobles, 
 and magistrates, representing both city and 
 country — he made, in few but stirring words, 
 an appeal to their patriotism. He bade them 
 look round, and mark the wretched state of 
 Jerusalem. They were disgraced among the 
 nations, they could never hold up their heads, 
 while the city had no rampart save those heaps 
 of ruins. They were looked down upon by 
 the heathen, they were counted a race of 
 cowards and slaves; and they deserved the 
 reproach, so long as they did nothing to make 
 Jerusalem more worthy of her past and of 
 her future. It was a reproach which he, for 
 one, could not sit still under, which he was 
 determined to wipe out : let them join him, 
 and build up the walls. ^ 
 
 No Jew, to whatever party he belonged, 
 could listen to such an appeal unmoved ; but 
 
 1 Neh. ii. 17. 
 
THE BUILDING OF THE WALLS. 129 
 
 there was an objection to the proposal, not un- 
 reasonable in the circumstances — they had tried, 
 not long ago, to do this very thing, had been 
 treated in consequence as rebels, and had gained 
 nothing by the attempt save additional humilia- 
 tion. Who was to guarantee them against a 
 repetition of the late disasters? — Nehemiah 
 brought out his commission ; proved to them 
 that, for what he proposed, he had the royal 
 sanction given with all formality ; and, closiug 
 in a loftier strain to which some, at least, of these 
 worldly men were not irresponsive, declared to 
 them that he held a commission from a Mightier 
 than the king at Susa, and that what he did was 
 done ' under the good hand of God.' ^ Some 
 of the Jewish rulers were carried away, at all 
 events for the moment, by the simple eloquence 
 and pure enthusiasm of the speaker. Others, 
 who for reasons of their own preferred leaving 
 things as they were, were either shamed into 
 acquiescence, or feared to oppose this man who 
 was their ruler, and the favourite of the Great 
 King. With seeming unanimity, the assembly 
 agreed to join in the work of restoration. 
 Having carried his point with the Jewish 
 
 1 NeL. ii. 18. 
 II K 
 
130 AFTER THE EXILE. 
 
 notables, Nehemiah had no difficulty with the 
 mass of the people. Unlike the aristocracy, 
 they had no arriere-pensee of self-interest, no 
 class or family ambition to come into con- 
 flict Muth their patriotism. Both in city and 
 country, the Governor's proposal was heartily 
 received. He had struck the right chord when 
 he appealed to the national pride of his 
 countrymen. He found them eager as himself 
 to remove this reproach from Israel, and wilhng 
 to make great sacrifices in so good a cause. 
 
 Nehemiah's plans for the work, weE con- 
 sidered beforehand, bear witness to his saga- 
 city, his skill in organisation, and his dexterous 
 management of men. He was quite alive to 
 the fact that the success of the undertaking, 
 for various reasons, depended on the speed 
 with which it was begun and finished. The 
 entire circuit of the wall must be built at one 
 time ; it must, as it were, grow up round 
 Jerusalem under the builders' hands, all parts 
 simultaneously completed and equally strong. 
 Neither hired nor forced labour must be 
 thought of; the nation must volunteer to carry 
 out this national enterprise at its own cost 
 and by its own toil. Nehemiah knew well 
 
THE BUILDING OF THE WALLS. 131 
 
 that the impulse he had given, though sufficient 
 to make the people take the work on hand, 
 could not be counted on to do more ; he knew 
 that the enthusiasm of the hour would be only 
 too likely to evaporate, when the real diffi- 
 culties of the task came to be faced. And so, 
 by the plan he had devised, he sought to call 
 forth a spirit of generous emulation, which 
 should make each worker feel himself pitted 
 against his fellow in a kind of patriotic com- 
 petition ; bound in honour not to let his part 
 of the work fall behind another's, but to do 
 his utmost and his best. The entire wall was 
 portioned out into strips or sections, and to 
 each volunteer or body of volunteers one of 
 thege was assigned. The sections were of 
 unequal length; some required much labour 
 and many hands, others less and fewer; in 
 some cases a stretch of wall had to be restored, 
 in others a gate, in others again both gates 
 and wall. But in every case the builders — 
 whether private individuals, communities or cor- 
 porations — were made to feel that the part given 
 them was their own ; that they could point to 
 it afterwards as a thing done by themselves ; 
 that they were not only labouring for the 
 
132 AFTER THE EXILE. 
 
 common weal, but raising with their own hands 
 a ' memorial ' to themselves in Jerusalem. 
 
 It was of good augury for the success of 
 the undertaking that all ranks and classes, 
 from the highest to the lowest, joined in it 
 with apparent good-will ; that the hierarchy 
 vied with the laity ; and that not merely the 
 citizens of Jerusalem, but the inhabitants of 
 towns and villages round about, and even 
 members of Jewish communities beyond the 
 political limits of Judea, came forward to do 
 their part in restoring the capital city to a 
 position of safety and honour. One section 
 was undertaken by the High Priest and his 
 kinsmen ; another, by the priests who dwelt in 
 the environs of Jerusalem ; another, by the 
 Levites.-^ Great families, such as the Bene 
 Hassenaah ; ^ rulers of city wards and country 
 districts, with the people under their author- 
 ity ; ^ guilds of craftsmen and traders, such as 
 
 1 Neh. iii. 1, 17, 22. ^ 2jj^_ 3, 
 
 ° Ibid. 9, 12, 17,18. 'And his daughters' in ver. 12 
 means, not that women took part in the work, in itself a 
 most unlikely thing, but that the villages and hamlets of 
 the district (the daughters or dependencies of the place where 
 the ruler had his seat) sent their inhabitants to help in 
 building. See Neh. xi. 25, where the Hebrew word 
 ' daughters ' is rendered ' towns.' 
 
THE BUILDING OF THE WALLS. 133 
 
 the goldsmiths and spice- vendors' — voluntarily 
 contracted for particular gates or portions of 
 wall. Workers came in from country towns 
 and districts — from Jericho, from Tekoa, Beth 
 ha-Kerem and Beth Zur in the south ; ^ even 
 from such places as Gibeon and Mizpah in the 
 extreme north, which lay under the jurisdiction 
 of the satrap of Syria, but would not be de- 
 prived of their share in the national enterprise 
 by any accident of boundaries.' A very 
 considerable part of the work was done at 
 their own charges by private persons — great 
 nobles, rich merchants,* princes of the church ; 
 whUe poorer men, but not less zealous, re- 
 paired each that portion of the wall which 
 was ' over against his own house.' ^ 
 
 All these details Nehemiah carefully set 
 down in writing, naming the individual 
 workers, and specifying the work they did. 
 His elaborate statement has little interest 
 now, except to topographers in search of lost 
 landmarks. But once it had a living interest 
 
 1 Neh. iii. 32. ^ jj^^^ 2, 5, 14, 16. ^ TMA. 7. 
 * As Malchijah tlie goldsmith (31), and Uzziel the gold- 
 smith and Hananiah the spice-vendor in partnership (8). 
 ■' Xeh. iii. 23, 28, 29. 
 
134 AFTER THE EXILE. 
 
 — as much as the bulletin which the general 
 pens after a victory, describing the battle and 
 meting out praise to those who have borne 
 themselves bravely under his command. The 
 building of the walls of Jerusalem was 
 Nehemiah's battle and victory. He looked 
 upon this as the grand achievement of his life, 
 his title to remembrance among the people of. 
 God. And he desired that the names of those 
 by whose help he had won the victory should 
 not be forgotten : that future ages should 
 know — what matters nothing now — whose 
 hands set up the beams and fixed the hasps 
 and bars of the 'Fish-gate' or the 'Horse- 
 gate ' ; who repaired the bit of wall from this 
 corner to that house or tower. These men 
 had deserved well of their country, and this 
 was the reward he designed for them — the 
 only reward he coveted for himself — that 
 the record of their labour and self-sacrifice 
 should not pass into oblivion. To him, on 
 whose shoulders the whole undertaking rested, 
 whose whole thought and energy it had 
 absorbed for weeks by night and by day, no 
 detail of the work seemed trifling, and no 
 worker unworthy of honourable mention. If 
 
THE BUILDING OF THE WALLS. 135 
 
 any man's zeal made him take on hand two 
 sections of wall instead of one, Nehemiah duly 
 and approvingly notes the fact.^ Going his 
 daily rounds, he observes one who outstrips 
 his fellow-labourers in strenuous industty ; 
 and the name of Baruch ben Zabbai goes down 
 to posterity with a mark of special commenda- 
 tion.^ He thinks it not unworthy of mention 
 that Hanun was the 'sixth son' of Zalaph.' 
 And when he tells how certain men built the 
 piece of wall adjacent to their houses, he 
 carefully varies his phrase according as the 
 house in question fronted the wall, or turned 
 its gable towards it.'' Each gate, each stretch 
 of stonework, had its own story, its own 
 meaning, to the man who inspired and super- 
 vised the combined labours of his people. 
 Each was a position in the battle-field where, 
 in spite of many obstacles and in face of 
 many adversaries, a victory was won for Israel 
 by dint of steadfast courage and endurance. 
 . The stir and stress of this conflict may still be 
 felt, underlying the dry catalogue of buried 
 sites and forgotten names. 
 
 1 e.g. Neh. iii. 21. " Ibid. 20. 
 
 3 Ibid 30. * lUd. 23, 
 
CHAPTER VIT. 
 
 IRebemiab ant> tbe people. 
 
 TTy^HILE Nehemiah was engaged in marshal- 
 ' ' ling his army of workers, and portion- 
 ing out to each man his task, tbe enemy in 
 the north had begun to show signs of growing 
 irritation. The decision arrived at by the 
 meeting of Jewish notables had been promptly 
 reported to the Horonite and his allies. At 
 first they declined to take the news seriously. 
 In all matters apart from their religion, the 
 Jews of that time seem to have been very 
 lightly esteemed by their Gentile neighbours ; 
 and the rumour that this despised people had 
 resolved on fortifying their city, on renewing 
 the attempt which had already so dismally 
 failed, was received in Samaria with a chorus 
 of derisive laughter. ' Truly, this was a large 
 undertaking the Jews had set before them ! 
 
NEHEMIAH AND THE PEOPLE. 137 
 
 The next thing heard of them would be, that 
 they had rebelled against the king ! ' ^ — These 
 jeering speeches of the confederates were 
 carried to Nehemiah's ears. He retorted in 
 a message, dignified, but uncompromising 
 in its denial of their pretended rights and 
 its rejection of their asserted claims. The 
 Jews were in truth going to build ; they 
 were God's servants, and God would prosper 
 them; as for the Samaritans, they had 
 no portion in Jerusalem, and need hope for 
 none.^ 
 
 By and by it became apparent to the 
 Samaritan chief, who was kept perfectly 
 informed of all that passed in Jerusalem, that 
 a new spirit animated the Jews, and that a 
 man of power had come to be their ruler and 
 leader. The walls were beginning to rise ; 
 evidently the attempt to build was being 
 made in earnest. SanbaUat's scornful incredu- 
 lity changed into anger, as he recognised the 
 danger that threatened his cherished schemes. 
 In presence of his kinsmen, sateUites, and 
 soldiery, he gave vent to his feelings in an 
 outburst of mocking banter, which ill con- 
 
 1 Xeh. ii. 19. 2 jj;^ 20. 
 
138 AFTER THE EXILE. 
 
 cealed his alarm and dismay. ' What were 
 these wretched Jews about? Would they 
 make a burrow for themselves ? Did they 
 think that sacrificing — all they were good for 
 — would get their wall built? Did they 
 expect a miracle, and hope to finish in a day ? 
 Would they conjure fresh stones out of those 
 rubbish-heaps eaten by the fire?' — Then 
 Tobijah the Ammonite threw in his jibe : 
 ' Let them build/ he said ; ' a jackal's step 
 would be enough to knock down their wall of 
 stone ! ' ^ A report of all those insults and 
 threatening demonstrations was circulated in 
 Jerusalem. It failed to discourage or intimi- 
 date the builders, who continued to ply their 
 task vigorously.^ Nehemiah, though boiling 
 with indignation at those insolent and even 
 blasphemous taunts of the Gentiles, refrained 
 from making any reply. His feelings found 
 relief in a fierce imprecation on his and Israel's 
 enemies, and he went on with his work, out- 
 wardly unmoved. 
 
 The wall rose steadily, under the unceasing 
 labour of thousands of willing hands. It had 
 now reached half its height, and the breaches 
 
 1 Neh. iv. 2, 3. 2 m^^ g. 
 
NEHEMIAH AND THE PEOPLE. 139 
 
 were partially stopped.^ Sanballat's sneers 
 and vapourings before the army of Samaria 
 had not checked the work for a day; obvi- 
 ously something more was needed to produce 
 any effect on a man of Nehemiah's temper. 
 That something was now to be tried. 
 
 The Persian empire, highly organised in 
 theory, suffered, like all great empires of the 
 East, from weakness at its extremities. In a 
 remote province, many things might take 
 place that were never heard of at the seat of 
 government ; and officials in such a province, 
 who were theoretically mere creatures of the 
 one supreme will, might in reality conduct 
 themselves as if they had a free hand. 
 Probably the Great King's hold on those 
 regions of southern Palestine, never ab- 
 solutely tight, had been relaxed by the Syrian 
 rebellion; and it is possible that Persian 
 governors and sub -satraps in that distant 
 quarter of the empire may have had such 
 relations with the all-powerful Megabyzus as 
 made them show less respect to the declared 
 wish of the sovereign. Unless it were so, 
 Sanballat's proceedings could scarcely be 
 
 1 Neh. iv. 6, 7. 
 
I40 AFTER THE EXILE. 
 
 understood, for they virtually amounted to 
 a declaration of war, made by one Persian 
 governor against another. Enraged at the pro- 
 gress of the fortifications of Jerusalem, seeing 
 the prize on which he had set his desires 
 slipping out of his grasp, the daring Horonite 
 resolved on taking violent action, and drew 
 into an anti-Jewish league the neighbouring 
 peoples, which, like himself, had insults and 
 injuries to avenge. His friend Tobijah brought 
 the Ammonites into this alliance ; Gashmu 
 brought his Arabs ; and these were joined by 
 the Philistines of Ashdod. The plan of the 
 confederates was to make their preparations 
 and combine their forces quietly, then march 
 suddenly and swiftly on Jerusalem, carry it 
 with a rush, scatter the builders, and throw 
 down the half-built wall.^ But the secret of 
 the conspiracy was badly kept. If Nehemiah 
 had reason to complain that all his sayings 
 and doings were reported in Samaria, he had, 
 on the other hand, the advantage of receiving 
 useful intelligence from faithful Israelites who 
 dwelt among the enemies. Information reached 
 him now that mischief was brewing in the 
 
 1 Neh. iv. 7, 8. 
 
NEHEMIAH AND THE PEOPLE. 141 
 
 north, and that it were well for him to be 
 prepared. 
 
 Xehemiah seems to have been not at all 
 afraid of Sanballat and his associates, and at 
 first not apprehensive that an attack would 
 really be made. No doubt he trusted in the 
 firman given him by his royal master, and, 
 looking on such matters from the courtier's 
 point of view, coidd not conceive of the wdd 
 temerity which should set at defiance such 
 powers as he held. To give confidence to the 
 people, he posted sentinels round the city ; 
 and, commending the national cause in prayer 
 to God,^ urged on the builders to redoubled 
 effort. But now the builders themselves 
 b^an to give trouble. The necessity of tell- 
 ing off men to mount guard had thrown an 
 additional burden on those who still toiled at 
 the wall The work to a great extent con- 
 sisted in clearing away the immense accumu- 
 lations of rubbish which buried the ancient 
 ramparts of Jerusalem ; it was rather navvies' 
 work than masons' ; and the removal of those 
 heaps of earth and dust of crumbled stones, 
 carried on und er a burning sun, meant tedious 
 
 ^ Xeh. iv. 9. 
 
142 AFTER THE EXILE. 
 
 and exhausting labour. The people began to 
 cry out that their strength was failing, all but 
 spent ; that ' there was much rubbish,' and 
 that they were not able to do more/ In the 
 midst of these complaints, these first — and, it 
 must be said, last — symptoms of wavering 
 shown by the people, came the news that the 
 enemies were on the point of delivering their 
 assault. They had boasted that they would 
 be in the midst of Jerusalem before any man 
 had word of their coming, that they would 
 slay the workmen where they stood, and stop 
 the building by force of arms.^ It was plain 
 to Nehemiah that, if they chose to disregard 
 the royal commission which he held, they 
 might easily make good their threat. From 
 Samaria to Jerusalem was at most a two days' 
 journey ; by a forced march, the distance could 
 easily be covered in one day or night. Judea 
 was all but surrounded by enemies ; on the 
 north were the Samaritans, on the north-east 
 the Ammonites, on the west the Philistines, and 
 on the south the Arabs : from any quarter the 
 foe might come. A panic now added to Nehe- 
 miah's difficulties. People from the outlying 
 
 1 Neh. iv. 10. 2 /j^y. u. 
 
NEHEMIAH AND THE PEOPLE. i43 
 
 towns and villages which had sent contingents 
 to the building, such as Jericho, Tekoa, Mizpah, 
 came rushing to Jerusalem, crying out that the 
 enemy was on the march, and imploring their 
 friends and fellow-townsmen to leave thedoomed 
 city, and return to the defence of their menaced 
 homes.^ Already courtier, administrator, archi- 
 tect, Nehemiah had now to play the soldier's 
 part as well. Evidently it was of no use to 
 trust further in his mandate from Artaxerxes ; 
 he must defend with the sword what had been 
 wroucrht with the trowel. The valour of this 
 great Hebrew transformed the timorous, shrink- 
 ing people which- had come out of exile with 
 their spirit broken and their martial fire 
 quenched by almost a century's enslavement 
 — the people which their enemies scoffed at as 
 'those wretched Jews,' and of which it had 
 been said that the rustle of a driven leaf would 
 chase them. Under his inspiration, for the 
 first time since the fall of the kingdom, there 
 revived something of the warlike energy that 
 blazed out in after days against the Syrian and 
 the Eoman. Jerusalem stood at bay. In pro- 
 tected places behind the walls Nehemiah set 
 
 1 Neh. iv. 12. 
 
144 AFTER THE EXILE. 
 
 up engines of war ^ — balistae of the kind used 
 in Eastern sieges, ready to rain arrows and 
 stones on the assailant. He ranged the people 
 in order of battle, according to their clans, 
 all fully armed with sword, spear and bow. 
 And then, as their general, he harangued 
 them in stirring words, bidding them not to 
 fear their enemies, but to remember that the 
 Lord fought on their side, and to strike man- 
 fully for wives and daughters, for hearth and 
 home. 
 
 As the courage of the Judeans mounted, 
 that of their adversaries sank. Sanballat 
 had been wholly unprepared for armed 
 resistance from a people which past events 
 had taught him to despise. A sense of the 
 risk they ran in setting at open defiance the 
 orders of the Persian king damped the ardour 
 of the confederates. They had counted on 
 taking the Jews unawares, on carrying Jeru- 
 salem by a coup de main, on destroying the 
 
 1 This is a not improbable meaning of the exceedingly 
 obscure passage iv. 13. It will be observed that the object 
 of the first ' set ' is wanting ; and it is reasonably conjectured 
 (Bertheau-Eyssel ; Eeuss) that the dropped word is that for 
 such ' engines ' or catapults as are mentioned in 2 Chron. 
 xxvi. 15. 
 
NEHEMIAH AND THE PEOPLE. 145 
 
 fortifications and then rapidly withdrawing, as 
 they had done before. But to provoke a battle, 
 to undertake a siege, was going dangerously 
 far, and the thought of possible consequences 
 gave them pause. And in the minds of those 
 proselytes or would-be proselytes to Judaism, 
 there was an uneasy feeling that in fighting 
 against the Jews, the people of Jehovah, they 
 were fighting against Jehovah Himself: that 
 the ' God who had His dwelling at Jerusalem ' 
 protected the city, favoured its defenders, and 
 would show Himself the enemy of its enemies. 
 How else was it that their plan of attack had 
 been betrayed and foiled ? ^ How else that 
 this spiritless, unwarlike race had all at once 
 leapt to arms, and stood firm to meet the 
 shock of battle ? So the Samaritan army 
 either did not move, or — if it moved, and if the 
 warders of Jerusalem saw from their bastions 
 the heads of the advancing columns — fell 
 back : the danger passed over, and the builders 
 returned with fresh vigour to their toil. 
 
 From this time forward the work assumed 
 a certain military character, being carried on 
 under regulations which at once guarded 
 
 1 Neh. iv. 15. 
 II L 
 
146 AFTER THE EXILE. 
 
 against surprise or panic, and kept alive the 
 fighting spirit that had sprung up among the 
 populace. Hitherto the country folk had been 
 in the habit of retiring at nightfall to their 
 villages or homesteads, and coming in again 
 in the morning ; they were now ordered not 
 to leave the city, but to bivouac on the scene 
 of their labours, so that the general might 
 have his whole force under his hand in the 
 event of a night attack.^ Nehemiah's personal 
 followers, the bodyguard of the pekhah, were 
 divided into two companies, one forming a 
 fatigue party, the other standing constantly 
 under arms. Both divisions of the workers — 
 those engaged in the actual construction of 
 the wall, and those who cleared away the 
 rubbish ^ — went about their task sword at side 
 and ready to their hand.^ In rear of the Une 
 of builders were stationed the chiefs of Israel, 
 each at his post, prepared on a given signal to 
 rally the men under his command. ' Nehemiah 
 
 1 Neh. iv. 22. 
 
 2 No doubt in baskets, after the Eastern fashion. 
 
 3 Neh. iv. 17. When Nehemiah says that they wrought 
 with one hand, and held their weapons with the other, he 
 uses a figure of speech to describe their readiness for instant 
 action. 
 
NEHEMIAH AND THE PEOPLE. 147 
 
 himself was everywhere. Not a man but felt 
 that he was working under the Governor's 
 eye, and worked the better in consequence. 
 Throughout the long day, from ' grey dawn to 
 the going up of the stars,' ^ all hands were 
 busily employed : night gave a brief rest to 
 the people, but little or none to Nehemiah, his 
 comrades and men-at-arms. It was theirs to 
 keep watch and ward over Jerusalem. A 
 bugler stood always at the general's side, 
 ready to sound the assembly at the first sign 
 of danger. During this anxious time, 
 Nehemiah and his followers did not once lay 
 aside their weapons, and even slept in their 
 harness.^ 
 
 Those weeks of toil and peril did more to 
 raise the character of the Jewish people than 
 all the decades since the Eeturn. Nehemiah 
 did a great thing for his countrymen when 
 he put arms in their hands. Along with 
 the walls of Jerusalem, he built up that 
 feeling of national self-respect which the 
 Captivity had broken down, and which events 
 
 1 Neh. iv. 21. 
 
 2 Nothing more than this can be made of iv. 23, the text 
 being hopelessly defective. 
 
148 AFTER THE EXILE. 
 
 since the close of the Captivity had done 
 little to restore. While assuring the people 
 that 'God would fight for them," he 
 nerved them to show a bold front to 
 the enemy, and to strike, if need were, in 
 their own defence. They had done it, and 
 might well take pride in the result. The 
 Gentiles had recoiled from the attack ; they 
 had been forced to confess that the Jews were, 
 after all, not a mere flock of sheep, to stand 
 still and be butchered, but a race of men, 
 capable of bearing arms and of using them. 
 The day when the Samaritan army fell back 
 before the citizen-militia of Jerusalem taught 
 a lesson to those 'hereditary bondsmen.' It 
 showed them what might be achieved by a 
 spirit of self-reliance, combined with trust in 
 God. It braced and invigorated the national 
 life, and stimulated the growth of civic virtues 
 which had so far been sadly wanting in the 
 Judean colony. It closed the epoch of dis- 
 honour, and foreshadowed the glorious days 
 when the Hasmonean princes, on their fields of 
 battle, reaped the harvest of which Nehemiah 
 had sown the seed. 
 
 1 Neh. iv. 20. 
 
NEHEMIAH AND THE PEOPLE. 149 
 
 This success over the enemy naturally won 
 unbounded popularity for the man to whose 
 bravery and resolution it was mainly due. 
 The people trusted in Nehemiah, looked to 
 him as their champion, and cheerfully per- 
 formed his commands. He had now, before 
 the walls were finished, an opportunity of still 
 further endearing himself to the commons of 
 Israel. The history of wars, revolutions, 
 famines and commercial crises, shows how a 
 time of national stress and danger brings out 
 the best and the worst, the highest and lowest 
 qualities of human nature ; how supreme self- 
 sacrifice and abject selfishness, unreckoning 
 generosity and grasping avarice, may flourish 
 side by side. This characteristic was not 
 wanting to the present crisis in Jewish affairs. 
 In those days Jewish society was made up of 
 rich and poor, with almost no gradation be- 
 tween the two classes. The wealth of the 
 country was in the hands of the comparatively 
 few, who formed a moneyed aristocracy, as 
 well as an aristocracy of birth. Seasons of 
 dearth, which had been periodic since the time 
 of the Eeturn, had delivered the small land- 
 holders into the power of their wealthier 
 
15° AFTER THE EXILE. 
 
 brethren, who held mortgages over their fields 
 and vineyards ; while many had been obliged 
 to borrow money at exorbitant rates of 
 interest in order to pay the king's taxes, and 
 had been sold up and evicted by their hard- 
 hearted creditors/ The normal distress of 
 the community was brought to a head by cir- 
 cumstances connected with the building of the 
 walls. The city was crowded, its population 
 perhaps doubled ; at the same time, the 
 hostility of the neighbouring nations restricted 
 the supply of provisions from without. Hence 
 scarcity of bread, famine prices, the bare neces- 
 saries of life beyond reach of the poor man's 
 purse. Many had left their fields and their 
 trades to take part in the national enterprise ; 
 many who had to earn their living by manual 
 labour had volunteered, out of pure patriotism, 
 to do this work without receiving any wage. 
 Their slender resources were soon exhausted, 
 and they found themselves at last unable to 
 obtain even the few handful s of parched corn 
 that would have sufficed for their simple 
 wants. In this state of matters, the Jewish 
 capitalists, so far from showing liberality or' 
 
 1 Neh. V. 4. 
 
NEHEMIAH AND THE PEOPLE. 151 
 
 even forbearance, took a cruel advantage of 
 their unfortunate debtors. Usurers pressed 
 for payment in full. Mortgagees seized the 
 opportunity to foreclose. Many of the poorer 
 citizens, who had hitherto struggled on under 
 increasing burdens, were now utterly ruined, 
 and saw their little patrimony — house, field, 
 vineyard, oliveyard — pass from them into the 
 hands of greedy priests and nobles. Others 
 had to satisfy the demand of Shylock in a 
 manner still more painful to natural feeling 
 — by giving up their sons, and even their 
 daughters, to be the slaves of merciless 
 creditors.^ 
 
 At last the long-suffering people rose 
 against a tyranny that had become insupport- 
 able. Partly impelled by sheer hunger, partly 
 by what they had learned of Nehemiah's 
 character, and by the hope that he would 
 right their wrongs, an excited crowd forced its 
 way into the Governor's presence, clamouring 
 
 1 In the same way that law and custom allowed a 
 ' brother who had waxed poor ' to ' sell himself to a creditor 
 (Lev. XXV. 39), it appears that children also might be sold 
 in payment of a debt (Exod. xxi. 7 ; 2 Kings iv. 1), tinder 
 conditions of mercy which were not, however, invariably 
 observed (Exod. xxi. 2 ; Jer. xxxiv. 9). 
 
152 AFTER THE EXILE. 
 
 for food and j ustice. ' Bread ! Bread, that we 
 may eat and live ! ' — was the cry they raised, 
 the shrill treble of the women -^ mingling with 
 the deep voices of angry men. It was the 
 beginning of a bread riot, that might well 
 prove dangerous. 
 
 Nehemiah, in presence of this sudden out- 
 break, showed himself perfectly cool and 
 collected. He spoke to the people, calmed 
 them somewhat, and gradually drew from them 
 their whole piteous tale. It was the old and 
 ever new complaint of a starving proletariat 
 against a grasping plutocracy ; the social 
 question of all the centuries, of East and West 
 alike. They, the people, were the many,^ and 
 their oppressors were the few. Were they 
 not of the same flesh and blood as their social 
 superiors ? Were their children not as dear to 
 them as the rich man's child to him ? ^ Was 
 their right to their bit of corn-land or vine- 
 yard not as sacred as that of the rich man to 
 his great estate ? Why should they continue 
 any longer the struggle to fortify Jerusalem, 
 if they were to be deprived of heritage and 
 
 1 Neh. V. 1 2 ing_ 2. 3 jjj^. 5_ 
 
NEHEMIAH AND THE PEOPLE. 153 
 
 freedom in the land which they had saved 
 from its enemies ? 
 
 This bitter cry of the multitude went 
 straight to Nehemiah's heart, and kindled his 
 anger against the men who had been guilty of 
 such gross injustice and inhumanity. It was, 
 indeed, almost enough to make a patriot 
 despair of his country, that such things should 
 be done at such a time. The oppression of 
 class by class, the exactions of usury, had 
 been conspicuous among the causes that led to 
 the fall of the ancient kingdom. Again and 
 again the prophets had declared woe upon 
 those that ' coveted fields and houses,' that 
 ' swallowed up the needy and made the poor 
 of the land to fail.'^ The Exile had not 
 eradicated this evil ; rather, by the impulse it 
 gave to the Jewish instinct for commerce, had 
 tended to root it deeper. During the Exile 
 the prophets are found denouncing those who 
 ' take usury and increase,' who refuse to ' undo 
 the heavy burdens and let the oppressed go 
 free ' ; "' and after the Exile the same parable 
 is taken up against the same abuses. ^ But to 
 
 1 Micali ii. 1, 2 ; Amos viii. 4. 
 2 Ezek. xxii. 12; Isa. Iviii. 6. ^ Supra, vol. i. p. 172. 
 
IS4 AFTER THE EXILE. 
 
 find such malpractices rampant in the present 
 circumstances of the community was peculiarly 
 disheartening to a man like Nehemiah, who 
 had his ideal of what the State should be, and 
 had never shrunk from sacrificing his own 
 interests to its welfare. These poor people 
 had a claim upon him of the strongest kind. 
 They had cheerfully responded to his call; 
 they had freely lent their services in building 
 the walls of Jerusalem ; and it was intolerable 
 that the immediate reward of their patriotism 
 should be the loss of their worldly all. Usury 
 in such a case seemed to Nehemiah, as it 
 seemed to Cato, a crime second only to murder. 
 He had no feeling but one of wrathful con- 
 tempt for those unworthy chiefs of Israel, who 
 had thought it not beneath them to trade on 
 the necessities of their brethren, and to drive 
 hard bargains with their fellow-workers in the 
 common cause. But Nehemiah in so grave a 
 matter could not afibrd to act on impulse. 
 He had to keep in view the great enterprise 
 on which, under his leadership, the nation 
 had embarked; an enterprise which required 
 the united efibrts of a united people, and 
 which, if class were set against class, must 
 
NEHEMIAH AND THE PEOPLE. 155 
 
 inevitably fail. He was determined to redress 
 the grievances of the poor, but to do it, if 
 possible, without making enemies of the rich. 
 One irrepressible exclamation of withering 
 scorn broke from him — ' Ye take usury, brother 
 from hrother ! ' But immediately he mastered 
 his indignation, ' took counsel with himself,' ^ 
 and sought to gain his end by argument and 
 persuasion. 
 
 Nehemiah had the immense advantage of 
 taking up this question with clean hands. 
 He could honestly say, in words that recall 
 those of the great Roman who, like him, stood 
 between patricians and plebeians, that his 
 governorship had diminished, instead of in- 
 creasing, his private fortune.^ He and his 
 kinsmen, who had come with him from the 
 East, had bought no land in Judea, though 
 there was plenty in the market. They had 
 
 1 Nell. V. 7. 
 
 ^ Ibid. 14, 15; cp. the speech of Caius Gracchus (in 
 Aulus Gellius, xv. 12): 'I have been above two years in 
 the province, yet no man can say with truth that I -ever re- 
 ceived even the smallest present from him, or that he was at 
 any expense on my account. When I returned to Eome my 
 purse which I had carried out full I brought back empty, 
 whereas others, having carried into the province vessels full 
 of wine, have brought them back full of money.' 
 
156 AFTER THE EXILE. 
 
 lent money and corn to needy citizens, with- 
 out requiring a pledge in return. They had 
 kept a considerable body of men, hired and 
 paid by themselves, at work in the public 
 service.^ This honourable record enabled 
 Nehemiah to deal effectively with the greedy 
 nobles, whose behaviour contrasted so glar- 
 ingly with his own. In a public meeting 
 summoned for the purpose, he stated the case 
 to them in very plain terms. He and his 
 brethren in Persia, when they found a Jew in 
 bondage to a Gentile, had ransomed that Jew 
 and sent him back to Judea ; was it a fair 
 return for the patriotism of the Golah, that 
 those same men whom they had redeemed 
 from slavery abroad should be made slaves of 
 by their brethren at home ? The question 
 was unanswerable ; in defence of their con- 
 duct, thus shown up in its native ugliness, the 
 rulers found not a word to say.^ Nehemiah 
 went on to appeal to their better feelings. Ho 
 did not quote the Law against them, as Ezra 
 in a like case might have done : it was the 
 immorality of their conduct, rather than its 
 Illegality, that he sought to bring home to 
 
 1 Nell. V, 10, 16. 2 75i(;_ 3. 
 
NEHEMIAH AND THE PEOPLE. 157 
 
 them.'' He pled, reasoned with them simply 
 as one who walked in the fear of God and had 
 at heart the good of Israel, and was willing to 
 believe that they were actuated by similar 
 motives. He implored them to leave off this 
 usury, which crippled the national prosperity, 
 and made them despised of the Gentiles ; ^ to 
 restore to their debtors the usufruct of their 
 fields and vineyards ; and to reduce their rate 
 of interest.^ Partly conscience-stricken by 
 Nehemiah's appeal, partly overawed by the 
 threatening attitude of the people whom they 
 had driven to extremity, the rich men con- 
 sented to disgorge some part of their ill- 
 
 1 Graf (^Geschichtl. Biicher des Alt. Test. 71) finds an 
 evidence that the community was still without a recognised 
 Law-Book in the fact that ' Nehemiah, in seeking to put a 
 stop to the oppression practised by the rich Jews upon the 
 poor, rests his case not on ordinances of the Law-Book, but 
 on duty to God and to one's brethren, and on his own 
 example.' The Law strongly insisted on merciful dealing 
 with the poor (Deut. xv. 7 ; Lev. xxv. 35) ; and forbade 
 usury as between Jew and Jew (Exod. xxii. 25 ; Lev. xxv. 
 36), while sanctioning it as between Jew and Gentile (Deut. 
 xxiii. 20. ^ Neh. v. 9. 
 
 3 Ibid. 11. The rate of interest seems to have been 
 one per cent, per month. A rate of twelve per cent, per 
 annum, paid in kind — wheat for wheat, oil for oil, and so 
 on — would be ruinous in a time of dearth. 
 
iS8 AFTER THE EXILE 
 
 gotten gains, and to loosen the grip in which 
 they held their victims. Nehemiah made them 
 ratify this promise by an oath, taken in 
 presence of the priests to add to its solemnity ; 
 and then, with an eloquent gesture shaking 
 out the fold of his mantle — ' Thus', he said, 
 ' may God shake out and empty the man thai 
 performeth not this promise ! ' ^ 
 
 Thus another difficulty which threatened 
 the success of his plans was got over by this 
 man of many parts ; and the people, relieved 
 from the fear of famine and the prospect of 
 ruin, went back with lighter hearts to their 
 toil. 
 
 1 Neh. V. 12, 13. 
 
CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 IRebemfab anb JEsra. 
 
 TJ^ROM this time forward Nehemiali had no 
 -^ reason to complain of any want of enthu- 
 siasm on the part of the populace. Exerting 
 themselves to the utmost, working at high 
 pressure, they dug and built on till all the 
 breaches were stopped, and nothing remained 
 save to hang the gates in the gateways, which 
 seems to have been the most troublesome part 
 of the whole undertaking.^ And now, when 
 the wall was all but finished and Jerusalem all 
 but safe, the enemies without and within the 
 
 1 No doubt from the scarcity of suitable timber. Gratz 
 supposes that wood for this purpose would have to be brought 
 from Lebanon, and that to allow for this, the building must 
 have taken a considerably longer time than is stated in 
 Nehemiah's book. 
 
i6o AFTER THE EXILE. 
 
 community redoubled their intrigues, joining 
 in a last effort to get the better by craft and 
 treachery of the man against whom their 
 threats of violence had signally failed. Within 
 the community, among the ranks of the chief 
 priesthood and nobility, there were many men 
 who from the first had looked on Nehemiah 
 and his designs with suspicion, and who had 
 been dragged into the enterprise against their 
 will by the force of public opinion. While the 
 common people gave their Governor a loyal 
 and cordial support, many of the upper class 
 were secretly in sympathy, if not in alliance, 
 with his Gentile opponents, and would have 
 thought it no great misfortune if Sanballat 
 had succeeded in putting a stop to the building 
 of the walls. Among the builders were some, 
 at least, whose heart was by no means 
 in their work. Such men as Eliashib the 
 High Priest, who was on the friendliest terms 
 with Tobijah; MeshuUam ben Berechiah,^ 
 another connection of the Ammonite chief; 
 Malkijah ben Harim,^ who had married a 
 foreign wife — were probably at best only luke- 
 warm ; while others of their class, such as the 
 
 1 Neh. iii. 30 ; vi. 18. "- Neh. iii. 11 ; Ezra x. 31. 
 
NEHEMIAH AND EZRA. i6i 
 
 nobles of Tekoa, flatly refused to 'put their 
 necks to the work' at all/ 
 
 Possibly, as Nehemiah gained in favour 
 with the people, he may have lost in favour 
 with the aristocracy ; and his reform of usury, 
 though carried out with the utmost tact and 
 prudence, may have left a certain soreness in 
 the minds of those whose conduct he had been 
 obliged to challenge. And it is possible also 
 that by this time the man whom the Jewish 
 nobles hated tenfold worse than they hated 
 Nehemiah, who had long kept in the back- 
 ground and left the field clear for them, was 
 once more coming into 'prominence. Though 
 Ezra's name does not appear in the list of 
 builders, for reasons that may be guessed 
 without much difficulty, there was no man 
 who watched the progress of the wall with 
 keener interest, or attached a higher impoit- 
 ance to its completion. To Nehemiah, Jeru- 
 salem fortified was the capital of his nation 
 raised once more to honour and security. To 
 Ezra, Jerusalem fortified was the theatre for 
 his great experiment — the 'lists enclosed' 
 where he should do battle for the Law, and 
 
 1 Nell. iii. 5. 
 II • M 
 
i62 • AFTER THE EXILE. 
 
 realise his ideal of a community shut off from 
 the world, and living a life of holy obedience. 
 The powers which Nehemiah held from the 
 Persian king, his popularity with the masses, 
 his vigour and determination of character, all 
 pointed him out to Ezra as one who might 
 provide him with that opportunity for which 
 he had waited long — the opportunity of pro- 
 mulgating the Torah, and asserting its suprem- 
 acy over Israel. He had to make of Nehemiah 
 a convert to his views, that he might use him 
 as an instrument of his purpose ; and how 
 completely he succeeded in this the after 
 history of the two men shows. Already, 
 perhaps, the influence of the elder over the 
 younger man, of the religious over the political 
 reformer, had made itself apparent ; and if so, 
 if a suspicion gained ground among the Zadok- 
 ites and their party that in helping Nehemiah 
 to fortify the city they were preparing a field 
 of action for the Puritan Ezra, it would account 
 in some measure for the stealthy opposition in 
 which they now began to engage. And it 
 would explain also the support given to dis- 
 contented priests and nobles by a party, or the 
 dreo-s of a party, which had now fallen low 
 
NEHEMIAH AND EZRA. 163 
 
 indeed. Nehemiah's memoirs show that 
 among the most bitter and unscrupulous of 
 his enemies were men who called themselves 
 and were called by the people 'prophets'— 
 mere soothsayers for the most part, who prosti- 
 tuted a great name ; but who, worthless as 
 they were, represented a natural antagonism 
 and were impelled by a natural instinct of 
 self-preservation, for nothing could be surer 
 than that the supremacy of the Scribe meant 
 the eflfacement of the Prophet. 
 
 Those ill-wishers of Nehemiah within the 
 city now entered into close relations and made 
 common cause with his enemies in Samaria 
 and elsewhere. With Tobijah in particular 
 many of the Jewish nobles were on terms of 
 strict alliance, regularly corresponded with 
 him, and reported to him all Nehemiah's 
 sayings and doings.^ The hopes of Sanballat 
 and his confederates revived with those signs 
 of disaifection on the part of so many of the 
 leading men among the Jews. They paid 
 Nehemiah a high compliment by their new 
 line of attack, which was directed against him 
 personally, and him alone. Evidently they 
 
 1 Neh. vi. 17-19. 
 
i64 AFTER THE EXILE. 
 
 recognised in him the sole obstacle to their 
 schemes, and were satisfied that with his 
 removal the new-born spirit of independence 
 among the Judeans would at once die away. 
 Now that Jerusalem had been put in posture 
 of defence, or nearly so, an armed assault was 
 no longer to be thought of; but treachery still 
 offered a chance of success, especially with so 
 many traitors in the Jewish camp. So began 
 a series of intrigues, not marked by any excess- 
 ive ingenuity on the part of the intriguers, 
 but sufficient to test Nehemiah's fortitude and 
 discretion. 
 
 Sanballat and Gashmu opened the game by 
 inviting the Governor of Judea to a friendly 
 conference at Kephirim in the plain of Ono, a 
 place situated about thirty miles to the north- 
 west of Jerusalem, close to the Samaritan 
 frontier.-^ The net was spread vainly in sight 
 of the bird. Nehemiah had no intention of 
 presenting his enemies with an opportunity to 
 kidnap or make away with him. Accordingly 
 he sent the confederates a politely ironical 
 
 1 Neh. vi. 2. That Ono was in Jewish territory appears 
 from Neh. xi. 35. The word translated in K.V. 'the 
 villages ' (ha-Kephirim) is probably a place name. 
 
NEHEMTAH AND EZRA. 165 
 
 reply, to the effect that he was at present 
 very busily engaged at Jerusalem, that his 
 work was important, and that he saw no 
 reason why it should be interrupted by his 
 absence on any such errand as they proposed 
 to him. Sanballat thought so highly of this 
 device that he repeated it three times. On 
 each occasion Nehemiah sent back a like civil 
 
 refusal, 
 
 The next ruse was scarcely more skilful. 
 One of Sanballat's henchmen came to Jeru- 
 salem, bearing a letter addressed to the Jewish 
 Governor, but ' open,' ^ so that any might read 
 it, and its contents might be commonly known 
 and discussed in the bazaar. A report very 
 prejudicial to Nehemiah, said Sanballat, was 
 current among the Gentiles of the surround- 
 ing regions. It was rumoured that he was 
 planning a rebellion against the Persian 
 government; that for that and no other 
 purpose he was fortifying Jerusalem ; that 
 the Jews intended to set a crown on their 
 pekhah's head, and already certain prophets 
 had been heard to say, ' There is a king in 
 Judah ! ' There could be no doubt that this 
 
 1 Neh. vi. 3, 4. 2 jj^ g 
 
1 66 AFTER THE EXTLE. 
 
 report had fictually gone about, for Gashmu 
 said it ; if it reached the king's ears, it would 
 prove a serious matter for Nehemiah ; and 
 therefore he, Sanballat, out of pure friendship, 
 invited him to an interview, that they might 
 advise as to the best means of counteracting 
 the bad eft'ect of these slanders.-' The state- 
 ments made in this letter had a certain air of 
 plausibility. Nehemiah had gained the affec- 
 tion of the Judeans as no pekhah before him 
 had done. It may have been that some rash 
 patriots had begun to talk of the popular 
 favourite as a possible mesliiakh, or that some 
 of those so-called ' prophets ' who were in the 
 pay of his enemies had actually raised that 
 treasonable cry for the express purpose of 
 putting him in peril. But Nehemiah's con- 
 science was clear. He had never even in 
 thought been disloyal to his sovereign, and he 
 knew that the people under him dreamt of 
 nothing so absurd as a restoration of the 
 native monarchy in his person. It was true 
 that such stories, if carried to the Persian 
 court, and still more to the satrap of Syria, 
 mio'ht do him much harm. He must take 
 
 1 Neh. vi. 6, 7. 
 
NEHEMIAH AND EZRA. 167 
 
 the risk of that ; in any case, it was not to 
 the persons who had trumped up these charges 
 that he would go for the means of clearing 
 himself. Their letter, shown about openly 
 before coming into his hands, besides being a 
 deliberate insult to himself, was a malicious 
 attempt to weaken his position by sowing the 
 seeds of distrust and alarm in the Jewish 
 community. He returned a curt, contemptu- 
 ous answer, informing the confederates that 
 their story was a silly invention, and not 
 worth a moment's notice from him.^ 
 
 Foiled in this move, Sanballat, now acting 
 in concert with Tobijah, tried another plan, 
 suggested no doubt by the wily Ammonite. 
 There seems to have been at Jerusalem in 
 those days a revival of prophecy, or of a certain 
 kind of prophecy. Men, and even women, gave 
 themselves out as messengers of God, fore- 
 tellers of the future, and had a certain stand- 
 ing and influence in the community. Some 
 of those prophets were doubtless opposed from 
 genuine conviction to that policy of exclusive- 
 ness with which Nehemiah was now becoming 
 associated in the popular mind, and desired 
 
 1 Neh. vi. 8, 9. 
 
1 68 AFTER THE EXILE. 
 
 that the half-Israelites, and even the Gentiles, 
 should be admitted to a share in the heritage 
 of Israel. Others, and probably the majority, 
 were mere soothsayers, not above taking a 
 bribe. A number of those prophets, and at 
 least one prophetess,^ were in the pay of the 
 Samaritan and Ammonite chiefs, and by their 
 pretended revelations and forewarnings of 
 disaster did all they could to ' put Nehemiah 
 in fear.' He gives in his memoirs one typical 
 instance of their repeated attempts to intimi- 
 date him and divert him from his purpose. 
 A certain Shemaiah ben Delaiah, one of those 
 professing seers, sent for him to come to his 
 house ; ^ assured him, on the faith of one for 
 whom the future had no secrets, that there 
 was a plot on foot to take his life, which that 
 
 1 Neh. vi. 14. 
 
 2 On the whole more probable than that Nehemiah went 
 for the purpose of consulting him. The precise meaning of 
 'shut up' in vi. 10, is uncertain. It may mean, as Ewald 
 supposes, that Shemaiah was in a condition of legal unclean- 
 ness, and therefore unable, like Jeremiah in a similar case 
 (Jer. xxxvi. 5), to go into the temple ; which made his offer 
 to accompany Nehemiah all the more expressive of urgent 
 danger. Or it may simply mean that he was ill, or feigned 
 illness (Herzfeld), or that he pretended to be in fear of his 
 life (Reuss). 
 
NEHEMIAH AND EZRA. 169 
 
 very night would see accomplished ; and urged 
 him, as his only means of safety, to take 
 refuge in the temple, and shut its gates against 
 the assassins. It is significant of the excite- 
 ment of party feeling in Jerusalem at that 
 time, and of the fierce opposition which 
 Nehemiah had to encounter, that he saw 
 nothing surprising in this disclosure of in- 
 tended assassination. Neither had he any 
 doubt, at the moment, that Shemaiah was 
 warning him as a friend, and speaking out of 
 his supernatural knowledge of the future. 
 But his natural instinct as a brave and true 
 man guided him rightly, and without an 
 instant's hesitation he repelled the unworthy 
 proposal : — ' What ! I, the Governor, Jlee like a 
 coward f I, a layman, enter the holy place 
 and live ? ^ I will not go in ! ' — -Afterwards 
 Nehemiah found out his adviser had been 
 suborned by Sanballat and Tobijah, and that 
 the whole was a deep-laid scheme to discredit 
 him in the eyes of the people by what would 
 have been an act of poltroonery, while at the 
 
 1 Probably with a reference to the law in Num. xviii. 1, 
 which decreed that any ' stranger ' (i.e. non-Levite) ' coming 
 nigh to the altar ' should be put to death. 
 
lyo AFTER THE EXILE. 
 
 same time giving his enemies among the 
 priesthood an occasion of charging him with 
 the crime of sacrilege. '^ 
 
 These conspiracies, while adding to 
 Nehemiah's difficulties and anxieties, could 
 not prevent the accomplishment of his great 
 design. The 25th day of Elul (August), 444, 
 saw the wall finished, the broad leaves of the 
 gates fixed in their places, and fitted with 
 their massive bolts and bars. Nehemiah states 
 in his memoirs that the circumvallation of the 
 city was completed within a space of fifty-two 
 days^ — certainly a marvel of speed, which 
 could only have been achieved by the com- 
 
 1 Neh. vi. 13. 
 
 ^ IVa,. 15. Josephus (Ant. xi. 5, 8) gives two years 
 and four months as the time occupied in building the walls. 
 Ewald {Kist. v. 157) considers a space of fiftj^-two days so 
 ' extremely short ' as to be ' hardly credible,' and suspects an 
 error in the Hebrew text of Nehemiah. Gratz supposes that 
 the fifty-two days of Nehemiah are counted only from the 
 time when the work was resumed and energetically pressed 
 on (Nell. iv. 16) after being interrupted (Gesch. ii. 157). 
 But it does not seem impossible that the work may have 
 been actually begun and finished within a period of fifty-two 
 days, when its nature — repair, rather than complete recon- 
 struction — is taken into account. The old wall had appar- 
 ently been breached, not razed ; and the hewn stones for 
 mending the breaches were for the most part ready to hand, 
 
NEHEMIAH AND EZRA. 171 
 
 bined efforts of a people, straining every nerve 
 and working against time. This result was 
 looked upon not only by the Jews, but also 
 by their Gentile enemies, as a manifest proof 
 of the divine favour and protection ; and 
 while the former took confidence and rejoiced, 
 the latter were ' much cast down in their own 
 eyes,' ^ and for the time desisted from further 
 attempts to harass and injure the colony. 
 
 Now that Jerusalem was raised once more 
 to the status of a ' fenced city,' arrangements 
 had to be made for guarding its gates and 
 walls. This charge Nehemiah committed to 
 the Levites,^ under rules laid down by himself 
 
 and had only to be disinterred from under piles of rubbish. 
 Whether such a work could be completed within eight weelis 
 depended mainly on the number of labourers available, and 
 of these Nehemiah seems to have had sufficient. Nebuchad- 
 nezzar is said to have built the great palace at Babylon in 
 fifteen days ; Alexander the Great the walls of Alexandria 
 in seventeen days. Tobler (Topographie von Jerusalem,, i. 75) 
 estimates the circumference of the present wall of Jerusalem 
 at 4326 yards. That of Nehemiah's wall was probably 
 about the same. '^ Neh. vi. 16. 
 
 ^ Neh. vii. 1. Not only the warders, but also the singers 
 and Levites proper, were appointed to this special sernce. The 
 Levites no doubt adhered to the reform cause as stoutly as 
 the Zadokites opposed it. Reform must of necessity improve 
 their position as a class. Hence they formed a body of men 
 
172 AFTER THE EXILE. 
 
 with military strictness and precision. Night 
 and day the burghers of Jerusalem, each at 
 his appointed post, were to perform patrol 
 and sentry duty on the walls and at the gates. 
 The gates were not to be opened until some 
 hours after sunrise ; and in the evening, at the 
 hour of relieving guard, they were to be shut 
 with the utmost care, the Levites trying bars 
 and bolts with their own hands, and making 
 sure that all was fast.^ The duties of military 
 governor and chief of the police of Jerusalem 
 Nehemiah entrusted to two men jointly, in 
 whom he had implicit confidence — one, his 
 kinsman Hanani ; the other, the commandant 
 of the Bira, Hananiah, whom he describes as a 
 ' faithful and pious man, such as not many 
 were.' In making these appointments, 
 Nehemiah may have had in view the possi- 
 bility of his departure from Jerusalem at no 
 distant day. 
 
 These arrangements for the defence of the 
 city brought into prominence a serious want 
 from which Jerusalem sufi'ered — the want of 
 
 which could furnish Nehemiah with trustworthy agents and 
 officers (Stade, Gesc\i. des Volkes Israel, ii. 173). 
 1 Neh. vii. 3. 
 
NEHEMIAH AND EZRA. 173 
 
 citizens. The new wall followed the track of 
 the old, and enclosed an equal area ; but fehe 
 ancient city had had a population of at least 
 50,000/ which had fallen now to probably 
 about a fifth of that number. The contrast 
 between the wide extent of the walls, the sign 
 of past prosperity, and the vacant spaces 
 within, unbuilt on or strewn with ruins,^ the 
 signs of present decay, was too striking not to 
 attract Nehemiah's notice, and too grievous 
 not to rouse him to action. To go the rounds 
 of these walls, to mount guard at these gates 
 by night and day, was a task beyond the 
 power of the citizens to continue long, unless 
 their numbers were recruited. Having forti- 
 fied Jerusalem, Nehemiah must now proceed 
 to people it. 
 
 His manner of dealing with this new prob- 
 lem shows, perhaps, the growing influence 
 which Ezra, still behind the scenes, had begun 
 to exercise over the young Governor. Not all 
 and sundry were invited to take up their 
 
 1 Follows from 2 Kings xxiv. 14. 
 
 2 Neh. vii. 4. The ruinous state of Jerusalem had been 
 grievous to Jewish patriotism in Zechariah's time ; sufra, 
 vol. i. p. 163. 
 
174 AFTER THE EXILE. 
 
 dwelling within the battlements of Zion. 
 Jerusalem was the ' holy city ' ; ^ her citizens, 
 too, must be boly ; ^ and the prerequisite of 
 holiness in Ezra's eyes — and now, it would 
 appear, in Nehemiah's also — was purity of 
 race, freedom from all adulteration of Gentile 
 blood. In the archives of the temple 
 Nehemiah found the document drawn up at 
 the time of the first Return, almost a century 
 before — that 'Roll of the Congregation'^ 
 which contained the names and genealogies of 
 those who came out of Babylon with Zerub- 
 babel, and who proudly claimed to be ' the 
 holy seed.' He made this document, which 
 he has incorporated with his memoirs,* the 
 basis of his new measure. Many of the 
 first settlers had at various times forsaken 
 -the city for the country, partly because at 
 Jerusalem, wanting its walls and exposed 
 to the attacks of enemies, life was less 
 secure than elsewhere ; partly because they 
 
 1 Neh. xi. 1. 
 
 2 'He that is left in Zion, and he that reniaineth in 
 Jerusalem, shall be called holy ' ; Isa. iv. 3. ' Then shall 
 Jerusalem be holy ' ; Joel iii. 1 7. 
 
 2 Neh. vii. 5 : see supra, vol. i. p. 66 ff. 
 * Neh. vii. 6-73. 
 
NEHEMIAH AND EZRA. 175 
 
 needed arable land, being mainly dependent 
 on husbandry, and could not obtain suffi- 
 cient in the immediate vicinity of the town. 
 These stragglers Nehemiah now sought to 
 bring back, and the EoU of the Congregation 
 was his test of their right to be received. 
 Others of the inhabitants of Judea, who had 
 joined the colony since Zerubbabel's day, and 
 whose names were consequently not found in 
 the official register, were at the same time 
 invited to make their home at Jerusalem, but 
 under the same strict conditions of genealogi- 
 cal purity.^ 
 
 ' My God put it into my heart to take a 
 genealogical census of the people ' — Nehemiah 
 speaks here as Ezra might have spoken. In a 
 national assembly convoked for the purpose, 
 he proposed to transfer a tenth part of the 
 inhabitants of Judea from their present abodes 
 to the capital : an arbitrary method of increas- 
 ing a population with which, no doubt, his 
 Persian training had familiarised him. So 
 unbounded w^as his popularity at the moment, 
 that he might propose almost anything, and 
 
 ^ The names of Ezra's pilgrims stood in a separate register, 
 drawn tip by their leader himself ; &wpra, vol. i. p. 305. 
 
176 AFTER THE EXILE. 
 
 run no risk of a refusal ; and thougli this 
 sweeping measure meant hardship to many, it 
 was adopted without a murmur of dissent. 
 The choice of the new citizens was made hy 
 lot^ among those eligible in point of gene- 
 alogy ; every tenth man on whom the lot fell 
 was required to leave house and fields, and 
 move with his family into Jerusalem. Many, 
 however, in their patriotic zeal, volunteered 
 to take the place of their brethren who had 
 been drawn in this singular conscription, and 
 thereby won their praise and blessing.^ 
 
 Nehemiah, having thus redressed the balance 
 between capital and country, could now turn 
 his thoughts to matters of less gravity. He 
 was by far too skilful a -ruler of men to under- 
 
 1 Nell. xi. ] . 
 
 2 Md. 2. At this point tlie Chronicler interpolates one 
 of those interminable lists of names which are his delight 
 (xi. 3-36) — why here, it is difficult to say, as it has no parti- 
 cular connection with the measures taken to repopulate 
 Jerusalem. The same list of families and communes is 
 given, with variations, in 1 Chron. ix. It may have been 
 originally drawn up, as Smend suggests, for fiscal purposes. 
 A second list follows (xii. 1-26), containing names of priests 
 and Levites ; among them that of the High Priest Jaddua 
 (xii. 22), the contemporary of Alexander the Great, and, 
 chronologically, the last man whose name is mentioned in 
 the Old Testament. 
 
NEHEMTAH AND EZRA. 177 
 
 rate the importance of pageant and festival 
 as elements of national life ; and now that 
 a great and difficult undertaking had been 
 brought to a happy conclusion, he resolved 
 to celebrate the event in a fitting manner. 
 A joyous ceremony of dedication was to 
 crown the work of building the walls. The 
 people who had toiled so stoutly and borne 
 themselves so bravely under his leadership 
 were to have their reward. And as Jerusalem 
 was the holy city, and its walls protected, not 
 merely the dwellings of Israel, but the dwell- 
 ing of Jehovah, the dedication was to have a 
 certain religious character; the festivity was 
 to be not merely secular, but sacred as well. 
 So, at the appointed time,^ from the villages 
 
 I The Chronicler does not state at what time, but prob- 
 ably it was after harvest in the year 444. Chaps, i.-vii. of 
 the Book of Nehemiah are taken by the Chronicler, with 
 apparently only slight alteration, from Nehemiah's own 
 '■words' (i. 1) or memoirs. Chaps.- viii.-x. are from another 
 source, possibly from the memoirs of Ezra, but less faithfully 
 reproduced than the previous section. Chap. xi. 1, 2, is 
 probably borrowed from Nehemiah's memoirs, but misplaced, 
 as it obviously connects with vii. 4, 5. Then follow the 
 lists (see above note), which bear evident trace of the Chroni- 
 cler's hand. In xii. 27-43, the compiler comes back after 
 his long digression to Nehemiah's memoirs, verses 31-40 being 
 in the first person. The position which this section holds in 
 
 II N 
 
178 AFTER THE EXILE. 
 
 round about Jerusalem where tliey had their 
 homes, priests and Levites were gathered into 
 the city, that this memorable function might 
 be performed with the fullest ritual of sacrifice, 
 music, and song.^ 
 
 The ceremonies of the day began with the 
 priests and Levites 'purifying' themselves 
 and the people by sacrifices ; and also 
 ' purifying ' the gates and walls, by sprink- 
 ling; them with the blood of the victims.^ 
 
 tlie Chronicler's work, or patchwork, settles nothing as to 
 the time when the dedication of the walls took place. In 
 all likelihood, there was only a brief, necessary interval 
 between their completion and dedication, during which 
 Nehemiah took the measures described above for adding to 
 the population of the city. Rawlinson (in Speaker's Comment- 
 ary, iii. 462), from a supposed connection between this 
 section and what follows in chap, xiii., thinks it 'certain 
 that the ceremony was deferred for the space of nearly twelve 
 years ' ; and to account for this strange delay, suggests that 
 ' perhaps Nehemiah required an express permission from the 
 Persian king before he could venture on a solemnity which 
 might have been liable to misrepresentation.' But it seems 
 reasonable to suppose that leave to build would carry with it 
 leave to dedicate. l Neh. xii. 27-29. 
 
 2 lUd. 30. According to rabbinical tradition, this 
 ' purification ' of the walls consisted in the removal of the 
 bones of the dead from all burying-places within the circuit 
 of the city, and the sprinkling of the walls with the ' water 
 of uncleanness,' according to the law in Numbers xix. 9, 17. 
 Nehemiah is said to have ordered this to be done, leaving 
 
NEHEMIAH AND EZRA. 179 
 
 Then Nehemiah arranged priests, nobles, and 
 people in two great companies, each led by 
 a choir and band of Levites, intoning their 
 songs of thanksgiving to the accompaniment 
 of harps and shawms and cymbals. Immedi- 
 ately after the choir, at the head of one 
 procession, walked Nehemiah himself; the 
 place of honour at the head of the other pro- 
 cession was given to Ezra the Scribe, whom 
 that day brought forth from long obscurity 
 and restored to prominence and influence.^ 
 Behind either leader marched the priests ; 
 behind them, the nobles and magistrates ; and 
 last came the populace, men, women and 
 children, in full enjoyment of a national 
 festival such as Israel had not seen since the 
 dedication of the temple, more than seventy 
 years before. The wall was sufficiently broad 
 to allow of a procession passing along on its 
 top, and thus the people had the satisfaction 
 of traversing the ramparts which their labours 
 had reared. From the place of muster in the 
 south-western angle of the city, hard by that 
 ' Valley-gate ' through which Nehemiah had 
 
 untouched only the royal tombs of the house of David and 
 the tomb of the prophetess Huldah. 1 Neh. xii. 36. 
 
i8o AFTER THE EXILE. 
 
 gone out on his midnight ride, Ezra's cortege 
 took its way eastward along the southern wall, 
 rounded the south-eastern angle, and, leaving 
 the wall at the ' Fountain-gate,' ascended the 
 steps that led to the ' city of David,' passed 
 the ruins of the ancient palace of the Jewish 
 kings, and so northward towards the temple. ^ 
 Meanwhile Nehemiah and his train had pro- 
 ceeded along the wall in the contrary direction, 
 northward to the 'Fish -gate,' then eastward 
 past the Tower of Hananel, that famous land- 
 mark of old Jerusalem,^ to the 'Sheep-gate,' 
 where they turned southward to the appointed 
 meeting-place. The open space to the east of 
 the temple buildings, where Ezra had judged 
 the people under the winter rains, was now 
 the scene of a very different gathering. There 
 the two processions met and mingled ; the 
 bands of Levites joined in a grand outburst of 
 choral singing; the priests blew peal after 
 peal on their silver trumpets ; and the voice 
 of the multitude was uplifted in a shout of 
 joy, whose echo seemed as though it might be 
 wafted even to the distant Samaritan hills. 
 
 1 Neh. xii. 37. 
 2 lUd. 39, iii. 1 ; Jer. xxxi. 38 ; Zech. xiv, 10, 
 
NEHEMIAH AND EZRA. 
 
 Jerusalem kept high holiday, and great sacri- 
 fices offered on the altar of Jehovah expressed 
 the pious gratitude of the community for the 
 successful issue of their toils. 
 
 In the eyes of the populace, Nehemiah was 
 undoubtedly the hero of that day, the chief 
 figure in that festal march round the walls. 
 This was his triumph. He was the ' repairer 
 of the breach.' ^ By his hand Jehovah had 
 ' strengthened the bars of the gates of Jerusa- 
 lem, and blessed her children within her.'" 
 To his exertions it was owing that Jerusalem 
 was now a ' city compactly built.' ^ But if 
 this was Nehemiah's day, the morrow belonged 
 to Ezra. Nehemiah had done a greater thing 
 than he dreamt of at the time, a greater thing 
 than his rebuilding of the walls, when he 
 brought his illustrious contemporary out of 
 retirement and forced inaction, and lent him 
 all the support of his ofl&cial authority and 
 personal popularity. The honour shown to 
 Ezra in the proceedings of the dedication day 
 was indeed significant. When Nehemiah first 
 came to Judea as its Governor, he had taken 
 up a neutral position, identifying himself with 
 
 1 Isa. Iviii. 12. ^ pg. cxlvii. 13. « Ps. cxxii. 3. 
 
AFTER THE EXILE. 
 
 no party, and striving to reconcile all jealousies 
 and antipathies in a common effort for the 
 common weal. In this he had only partially 
 succeeded ; and the obstacles thrown in his 
 way by the priestly-patrician oligarchy which 
 had leagued itself with the foreign enemy, had 
 naturally made a deep impression on his mind. 
 This, together with Ezra's influence, had drawn 
 him more and more towards the Puritan party. 
 The dedication day made final and public the 
 breach between Nehemiah and the Zadokite 
 faction. The High Priest Eliashib and his 
 partisans took no part in the ceremonial ; and 
 that place in the procession which of right 
 belonged to the High Priest was given to his 
 rival the Scribe. Henceforward Nehemiah 
 was found among the Puritans, in fullest sym- 
 pathy with their views, and lending them his 
 powerful assistance in the attempt to work 
 out their theory of reform. 
 
CHAPTEE IX. 
 Zbc IReabing of tbe ^orab. 
 
 A S to the relations between Ezra and 
 -^--*- Nehemiah during the first year or years 
 of the latter's governorship, and the move- 
 ments beneath the surface of Jewish society 
 which led up to and paved the way for the 
 renewal of Ezra's public activity, the annals of 
 the time are tantalisingly silent. In his 
 selection of the significant, the Chronicler is 
 guided by considerations of a quite peculiar 
 kind. The history of the great Scribe is left 
 completely blank between the day of his abor- 
 tive attempt to build the wall of Jerusalem, 
 and the day when Nehemiah succeeded where 
 he had failed. His re- entrance on tlie scene 
 is as abrupt as his exit from it. But though 
 the narrative says nothing as to the develop- 
 ment of tendencies which at last gave Ezra the 
 
1 84 AFTER THE EXILE. 
 
 opportunity he had waited for so long, it may be 
 conjectured with some approach to certainty 
 what this was, and how it worked in his favour. 
 In his reform of the mixed marriages, Ezra 
 had at first the mass of the people on his side ; 
 he found them sensitive, ductile, quick to 
 respond to his appeals. The men in authority 
 — priests, and nobles bound by family ties to 
 the priesthood — were against him : for the 
 moment, having captured the sympathy of the 
 people, he was able to wrest the power out of 
 the rulers' hands. But it was only for the 
 moment. Circumstances proved too strong 
 for Ezra ; he lost his advantage, lost his grasp 
 of the multitude, and had to look on helplessly 
 while they fell back under the sway of their 
 hereditary rulers. Nehemiah's coming wrought 
 a change and altered the balance of parties. 
 As Governor of Judea, armed with authority 
 from the Persian king, he had the upper hand 
 of the Zadokites and their allies among the 
 aristocracy ; and, if he saw fit, might intro- 
 duce reforms in face of their opposition. But 
 Nehemiah had done for the community and 
 for Ezra what no mere exercise of official 
 authority could do. He had roused to a high 
 
THE READING OF THE TOR AH. 185 
 
 pitch the sentiment of nationality ; he had 
 brought back a spirit of self- trust and inde- 
 pendence to which the people had long been 
 strangers ; he had made the Jew proud of his 
 country and of his name. A revival of 
 religious feeling naturally accompanied the 
 patriotic enthusiasm called forth by the build- 
 ing and dedication of the walls. From the 
 seed which Ezra had sown years ago, and 
 which no doubt he had been sowing quietly, 
 as he had opportunity, during years of seclu- 
 sion from public life, a harvest now rushed up 
 and ripened. Escaping from their thraldom 
 to a selfish and unprincipled hierarchy, that 
 pedple, which desired with a pathetic eagerness 
 to do what was right, looked elsewhere for 
 guidance. The temple was not enough for 
 them ; they wanted the word of God. The 
 ritual did not satisfy them ; they sought a 
 rule of life and a means of attaining personal 
 holiness. The priesthood could not or would 
 not give them what they asked ; they needed 
 a teacher. So their thoughts turned to that 
 Torah of Moses of which as yet they knew 
 little more than the name ; and to Ezra the 
 Scribe, who had that Book in his keeping, and 
 
1 86 AFTER THE EXILE. 
 
 who was able, as no other man was able, to 
 interpret its contents and point out the path 
 of obedience to its commands. This much 
 appears from the unhappily defective record 
 of these movements and events, that the Law 
 was not, in the first instance, imposed upon 
 the people by the arbitrary act of Ezra, or of 
 Nehemiah, or of any other authority. The 
 people themselves asked for it, apparently 
 under no pressure save of conscience and con- 
 viction ; and Ezra, when he promulgated the 
 Torah, did so in compliance with a popular 
 demand.-' 
 
 It was during one of the ' holy convoca- 
 tions ' of Israel that this demand was made. 
 The first day of the seventh mouth, Tisri 
 (September) — one of the high days of the 
 sacred calendar — brought a great concourse of 
 people from all parts to Jerusalem.^ Men, 
 
 ^ Neh. viii. 1. 
 
 2 lUA. 2. The Clironicler gives month and day, but 
 not the year. In Neh. vi. 15 the sixth month, Elul, is 
 mentioned ; but the narrative is too disconnected to allow of 
 the assumption that the seventh month, Tisri, mentioned 
 here, fell in the same year as that Elul, i.e. 444 B.C. All 
 probability is against the idea that the promulgation of the 
 Law took place within less than a week after the com- 
 pletion of the wall. The precise date cannot be determined. 
 
THE READING OF THE TOR AH 187 
 
 women, and children of a certain age, were 
 assembled at the usual place of gathering — 
 the broad space between the eastern gate of 
 the temple and the ' Water-gate ' in the city 
 wall. Ezra had seemingly been not unpre- 
 pared for the demand that was to be addressed 
 to him, for a wooden rostrum or platform 
 had been erected, on which he might take his 
 stand in full view and hearing of the throng. 
 They called on Ezra to ' bring the book of the 
 Torah of Moses ' ; he brought it, and ascended 
 the lofty platform, accompanied by a select 
 band of Puritan priests, who grouped them- 
 selves around him, seven on his right hand, 
 seven on his left.^ A unique and most 
 impressive religious service began. Very 
 different was the calm and solemn dignity 
 with which Ezra now bore himself in face of 
 the congregation, from the frantic outburst 
 that had marked his first appearance almost 
 on that very spot. Reverently he unrolled 
 the sacred volume on which he had spent so 
 much labour of so many years, and with equal 
 
 1 A name is evidently omitted in viii. 4, and may be 
 supplied from 1 Apoc. Ezra ix. 43. Several names of these 
 priests appear in Nehemiah's list of builders. 
 
1 88 AFTER THE EXILE. 
 
 reverence the people rose to their feet, doing 
 from natural impulse what afterwards was 
 established as a custom. Then Ezra prayed, 
 offering thanks to 'Jehovah, the great God,' 
 for all his goodness to Israel ; and the people 
 responded with fervent Amens, lifting up 
 their hands, then kneeling, and bowing their 
 heads even to the ground/ The reading of 
 the Torah followed, and went on for many 
 hours — from early morn to mid-day — broken 
 by pauses on Ezra's part, during which chosen 
 men of the Levites, experts in the Law, ' read 
 distinctly' passage after passage, so that the 
 meaning was made clear to every person in 
 the assemblage.^ 
 
 1 Nell. viii. 5, 6. 
 
 2 IhiA. 7, 8. What tliese Levites did is plain enough 
 — they simply read so as to ' make the sense clear ' ; 
 did not give a running commentary of their own ; certainly 
 did not translate from Hebrew into Aramaic, which was 
 unnecessary, as the people had not yet forgotten their 
 mother-tongue. Bunsen (Bibelwerh, i. 59) considers the 
 phrase 'they caused the people to understand the Law' to 
 mean that they 'explained specially difficult or archaic 
 expressions, either by means of Aramaic or of simpler 
 Hebrew equivalents.' How the Levites performed their 
 task is not so plain : whether they stood on a raised 
 platform of their own (Neh. ix. 4), and read alternately in 
 the pauses of Ezra's reading; or, dividing the people into 
 
THE READING OF THE TO RAH. 189 
 
 Ezra had every reason to be satisfied with 
 his audience. They hung upon his lips, 
 forgetting the flight of time, careless of the 
 heat of the mounting sun, straining their ears 
 to catch every word that fell from Ezra and 
 his assistants.^ For a long time they listened 
 in silence, but with emotions which became 
 always the more difficult to restrain, and which 
 at last burst forth and interrupted the reading. 
 The contrast between the requirements of the 
 Law and their own practice struck terror to 
 their hearts. One commandment after another 
 sounded in their ears ; this, they had un- 
 wittingly broken; that, they had never been 
 taught to observe. They were crushed under 
 a sense of shortcoming and danger. ' Bless- 
 ing and ban' had been 'set before them, '^ 
 and they were painfully aware how little they 
 had done to merit the one, and how much to 
 draw down on them the other. It may be 
 that Ezra, in the course of his reading, had 
 come to that list of maledictions pronounced 
 on disobedience to the Law — to tliose ' curses 
 
 groups, read simultaneously ; or, as Herzfeld thinks, went 
 up and down among the people. 
 
 1 Neh. viii. 3. ^ Deut. xi. 26. 
 
igo AFTER THE EXILE. 
 
 of the covenant ' ^ which were so frightfully 
 comprehensive that they seemed to leave no 
 loophole of escape. The history of Israel 
 during the last hundred years gave such 
 passages a terrible significance to men who 
 heard them now for the first time. They had 
 been smitten before their enemies, and tossed 
 to and fro among the kingdoms of the earth.^ 
 They had been oppressed and spoiled alway, 
 and there had been none to save them.^ 
 Their sons and daughters had been given in 
 slavery to another people, and their eyes had 
 failed with daily looking for the lost.* Their 
 harvests had been blighted ; the fruits of their 
 soil and of their labours had gone to enrich 
 the Gentiles.^ In their own land they had 
 lain beneath a foreign yoke, had groaned under 
 the extortions ^ of foreign governors, and had 
 seen ' the stranger in the midst of them 
 mounting up above them higher and higher, 
 while they sank down lower and lower : he the 
 head, and they the tail. ' ^ The picture of life 
 in Judea since the Eeturn from the Exile was 
 
 1 Dent. xxix. 21. ^ Dgi^t. xxviii. 25. ^ IVid. 29. 
 
 * md. 32, 41 ; Joel. iii. 6. ^ m^^ 33^ 33. 
 
 « Ibid,. 30, 31. 7 lUS,. 43, 44. 
 
THE READING OF THE TORAH 191 
 
 realistic indeed ; and if Ezra now held up 
 this picture before the congregation, and they 
 recognised that all these things had come upon 
 them, and that worse might yet come, because 
 of their disobedience, it was little wonder that 
 they should give way to an outburst of weep- 
 ing and lamentation,^ which recalled that 
 scene in the temple courts years before, when 
 Ezra's prayer had wrought on their feelings 
 not more powerfully than now his reading 
 from the Law. 
 
 One man was present in that assembly, 
 who, whatever his zeal for the new doctrines, 
 did not allow it to run away with his good 
 sense and calm judgment. Nehemiah, though 
 not versed like Ezra in the Torah, knew the 
 book of human nature better than he. This 
 violent display of grief and fear on the part of 
 the populace did not seem to him a thing to 
 be encouraged. It was not thus, with tears 
 and wailings, that the Law should be received. 
 Israel in these days was already sufficiently 
 depressed by outward circumstances, and what 
 it needed was something that would take 
 away from its gloom, not add to it. It 
 
 1 Neh. viii. 9. 
 
192 AFTER THE EXILE. 
 
 appeared to Neliemiah, as he heard the groans 
 and sobs of the crowd, that this scene had 
 gone far enough ; that such a beginning was 
 inauspicious ; and that it would not be in the 
 true interests of reform to allow the popular 
 holiday, the ' seventh new moon,' to be 
 darkened and spoiled by the promulgation of 
 the Torah. So he stood forward, with all the 
 authority that belonged to him as Tirshatha ^ 
 and as popular favourite, to pacify and re- 
 assure the multitude. He bade them not to 
 mourn and weep on this their holiday, but to 
 go their way, to ' eat of the fat and drink of 
 the sweet ' and send portions to the poor, so that 
 all Jerusalem might rejoice together. ' This 
 day I he added in memorable words, ' is conse- 
 crated to our Lord : he not sad ; the joy of 
 the Eternal is your strength ! ' ^ Ezra and his 
 Levites joined in these wise counsels, and 
 made the people understand that their delight 
 at now having the Law might legitimately 
 
 1 Neh. viii. 9. Nehemiah is called by liis Persian title 
 of Tirshatha only here and at x. 1 ; elsewhere invariably 
 Pelchah. 
 
 2 ' Giving,' saj's Matthew Arnold, ' in one short sentence 
 the secret of Israel's religion and of the religion of the 
 Bible' (God and the Bible, 186). 
 
THE READING OF THE TORAH. 193 
 
 prevail over their grief at having lived hitherto 
 in ignorance and disobedience. The congrega- 
 tion readily obeyed the welcome command to 
 rejoice, and dispersed to hold the festival in 
 the accustomed fashion. So the day that had 
 begun in weeping ended in merriment and 
 good cheer.^ 
 
 The day following was devoted to another 
 reading from the Torah, but this time to a 
 more select audience, consisting only of ' heads 
 of houses,' representatives of both priesthood 
 and laity.' Apparently Ezra had come to the 
 sound conclusion that his work, to be done 
 thoroughly, must not be carried on amidst the 
 excitement of popular assemblies ; and that in 
 order to instruct the people, he must begin by 
 instructing their chiefs. In the course of that 
 day's reading, a passage was met with which 
 seemed to present an opportunity of inaugurat- 
 ing the era of reform, and of making a first 
 step in the new path of scrupulous obedience. 
 From the book of Leviticus,^ Ezra read the 
 
 I Neh. viii. 9-12. Hence the festival, still observed by 
 the Jews immediately after that of the New Year, called 
 the 'Feast of the Rejoicing of the Law.' ^ Neh. viii. 13. 
 
 3 Levit. xxiii. 39-43. 
 
 II O 
 
194 AFTER THE EXILE. 
 
 law as to the observance of the Feast of 
 Tabernacles. The chief point of novelty here 
 was the command that ' the children of Israel 
 should dwell in booths ' : the Deuteronomic 
 code, with which the priests must have been 
 less or more acquainted, made of Tabernacles 
 a kind of national harvest-home, but laid 
 down no rule as to the dwelling for seven 
 days in impromptu arbours, which for all 
 time was to keep Israel in remembrance of the 
 tent-life of the wilderness.^ The time of the 
 autumn festival was now drawing near ; this 
 was the second day of Tisri, and on the 
 fifteenth day of that month the celebration of 
 Tabernacles should begin. They resolved to 
 keep the feast as it had not been kept since 
 the first conquest of Palestine^ — to keep it 
 exactly as the Law prescribed ; and accord- 
 ingly sent heralds through the land, bidding 
 
 1 Deut. xvi. 13, 14. 
 
 2 Nell. viii. 17. Micliaelis supposes tliat the words 'ben 
 Nun ' in this verse are a later addition, and that the Joshua 
 referred to i.s the High Priest Joshua hen Jehozadak, in 
 whose days a Feast of Tabernacles was held (Ezra iii. 4) 
 since which time the feast had fallen into disuse. But the 
 meaning seems to be that the feast had been observed before 
 this time, only not with ceremonial completeuese. 
 
THE READING OF THE TO RAH. 195 
 
 the people go up to the hills and gather 
 branches of olive, oleaster, myrtle and palm, 
 with which to weave their holiday dwellings.'' 
 The people obeyed with joyous alacrity. 
 This was a pleasant way of showing their 
 reverence for the Law ; it had all the charm 
 of novelty ; and on the day when the festival 
 began they came in crowds to Jerusalem, bear- 
 ing with them an abundance of the spoils of 
 the woods. On the flat roofs of the houses, 
 in the courtyards, all over the open spaces of 
 the city, such as that in front of the ' Water- 
 gate,' the succoth or booths of branches were 
 set up ; priests and Levites camped out in the 
 temple courts ; Jerusalem was gay with 
 greenery. This national gala continued for 
 seven days. But the time was not all spent in 
 merrymaking ; there was a serious side to the 
 festivity. If the Deuteronomic code kept 
 silence as to the booth-building, it contained 
 an enactment which suited Ezra's purpose 
 admirably — it enacted that ' in the feast of 
 Tabernacles the law should be read before all 
 
 1 Neh. viii. 15. 'Thick trees' (R.V.) means ' trees with 
 dense foliage.' Probably a specific tree is meant, now un- 
 known by this name. Bertheau supposes the oak ; Bunsen, 
 the cypress. 
 
196 AFTER THE EXILE. 
 
 Israel in their hearing.' ^ On each day of the 
 feast, from first to last, he read to the people 
 ' in the book of the law of God,' ^ and made an 
 ever-deepening impression on an ever-widening 
 circle of hearers. 
 
 1 Deut. xxxi. 11. 2 Neh. viii. 18. 
 
CHAPTEE X. 
 Zbc Covenanters. 
 
 rpHE 22nd of Tisri brought the celebration of 
 -L Tabernacles to a close, with the usual 
 popular gathering held on ' the last, the great 
 day of the feast.' ^ That the transition from 
 feasting to fasting might not be too abrupt, 
 one day was given to the pursuits of ordinary 
 life ; then, on the 24th of the month, the 
 people once more assembled, probably in the 
 familiar square before the Water - gate, no 
 longer in holiday attire, but clad in sackcloth, 
 with dust sprinkled on their heads, and with all 
 the outward signs of self-abasement.^ To such 
 a fast, years before, Joel ben Pethuel had sum- 
 moned his countrymen. Now the call had 
 come to them, not from the Prophet, but from 
 the Scribe. And the observances of the day 
 1 Jolin vii. 37. 2 Ngh. ix. 1. 
 
igS AFTER THE EXILE. 
 
 were marked by a feature -which, to Joel, 
 would have seemed the strangest innovation 
 — with the public reading of the Torah of 
 Moses, without which no such meeting of the 
 congregation was now looked upon as complete. 
 Already, in those religious assemblies of 
 Israel, a certain formality and order of service 
 were observed. Ezra took his place on his 
 tribune, with his attendant priests on either 
 hand. For the Levites, a larger platform ^ had 
 been set up, from which they led the devotions 
 of the people. The exercises of the day began 
 with the reading of selected passages from the 
 Torah ; and in fulfilment of certain commands 
 found in the sacred Book, interpreted and 
 expounded in accordance with the strict views 
 of Ezra and his school, the people now took a 
 significant step in the direction of thorough 
 reform. Hitherto — so slight and transitory 
 had been the effect of all Ezra's teaching, until 
 Nehemiah came to his help — it had been the 
 custom to atlow persons who were alien by 
 birth, or whose claim to be considered Jews 
 by blood was doubtful, to take their place in 
 
 1 Neh. ix. 4 : in E. V. ' stairs.' The word means ' raised 
 place ' ; in margin of A.V. ' scaffold.' 
 
THE COVENANTERS. 199 
 
 the congregation of Israel, and to join in either 
 fast or festival. Those foreigners had been 
 naturalised; lived at Jerusalem, worshipped 
 the God of the Jews, and shared in the social 
 and religious life of the community. Now, 
 apparently for the first time, there had been 
 read to the people a full version of the story 
 of Israel's march from Egypt to the promised 
 land. They heard how Ammon and Moab had 
 refused their wandering forefathers water and 
 bread, and had hired the son of Beor to lay 
 them under a curse. They heard how Jehovah, 
 by the mouth of Moses, had set eternal enmity 
 between Israel and those two nations, and had 
 decreed that no Ammonite or Moabite should 
 'enter into His assembly for ever.'^ For the 
 moment, the views of Ezra were dominant, 
 and those of the author of Ruth found no 
 support. It was decreed that this alleged 
 ' law ' should be at once put in force ; that all 
 'strangers,' all the 'mixed multitude' which 
 dwelt with and among the 'children of the 
 Exile,' should be expelled from the congrega- 
 tion. This purgation took place accordingly. 
 ' The seed of Israel separated themselves from 
 
 1 Deut. xxiii. 3-6. 
 
200 AFTER THE EXILE. 
 
 all strangers ' : ' they separated from Israel all 
 the mixed multitude.'^ 
 
 The reading of the Torah had lasted for 
 three hours. ^ Now that Israel was by itself, 
 freed from the contaminating presence of the 
 foreigner, the people gave themselves for three 
 hours more to the worship of God.^ The 
 Levites began with an ascription of praise, in 
 chant or recitative : Stand up ! Bless the 
 Eternal, your God, from everlasting to ever- 
 lasting ! Blessed he Thy glorious name, 
 which is above all blessing and all praise ! * 
 Then Ezra stood forward, and, in name of 
 
 1 Nell. ix. 2 ; xiii. 3. Reuss supposes that by ' strangers ' 
 natives of foreign countries, accidentally present at Jerusalem, 
 are meant. But evidently the measure was directed against 
 the Erev or ' mixed multitude ' — the foreign element in the 
 population which had existed from the earliest times. The 
 short section Neh. xiii. 1-3, beginning, ' On that day,' refers 
 probably to the same incident as ix. 2 ; and was inserted in 
 its present place by way of explaining and justifying 
 Nehemiah's jiroceedings, as related in chap. xiii. 
 
 2 Neh. ix. 3. 
 
 2 Eeuss (Ghron. eccUs. 243) throws doubts on these 
 accounts of lengthy services, which he suspects of exaggera- 
 tion. A Scotch sacramental service in the eighteenth century 
 put a much severer strain on physical endurance than any- 
 thing described here. 
 
 * Neh. ix. 4, 5. 
 
THE COVENANTERS. 
 
 Israel, made confession of their sin/ During 
 these last days, the people had gone through 
 a course of instruction in their national history 
 from the earliest times, as unfolded in the 
 Torah ; and what Ezra did now, in this peni- 
 tential prayer, was to give a resume of that 
 history, bringing home to the conscience of 
 the congregation its salient feature — how God 
 had continually blessed, cherished, and de- 
 livered, and how Israel had continually 
 hardened its heart, disobeyed, and rebelled. 
 Grod had brought their father Abram from Ur- 
 Kasdim, given him the name ' Abraham,' and 
 made a covenant with him that his seed should 
 inherit the land of Canaan. God had brought 
 their fathers out of Egypt, after showing 
 mighty wonders ; had led them across the 
 Eed Sea, where the pursuers perished; and 
 then, on Sinai, by the hand of Moses, had 
 
 1 The text does not state who it was that made this con- 
 fession. But in the Septuagint, ver. 6 begins 'And Ezra 
 spake ' ; and internal evidence points to the conclusion that 
 Ezra was really the speaker. Both in form and contents, 
 the section ix. G-SV is much less like a chant of the Levites, 
 drawn from the Psalms, than a penitential prayer, made by 
 one man, and drawn from the Pentateuch. Its analogy to 
 Ezra's prayer on a previous occasion (Ezra ix. 6-15) is obvious. 
 
AFTER THE EXILE. 
 
 given them ' true laws and good statutes ' — of 
 which, characteristically, the giving of the 
 Sabbath law is singled out by Ezra for special 
 mention.^ All the marvels of the wilderness 
 were rehearsed ; the fiery and cloudy pillar, 
 the manna, the water from the rock, the per- 
 petual miracle by which their garments did 
 not wear out nor their feet swell during forty 
 years of wandering. All through, their history 
 had been that of a faithful God and a faithless 
 people. Scarcely had their fathers left Egypt 
 than they began to murmur against their 
 leader, and would have returned to their 
 bondage : still, God had shown Himself ' ready 
 to pardon, gracious and full of compassion, 
 slow to anger and plenteous in mercy.' ^ 
 While Moses was receiving the Law on Sinai, 
 their fathers were worshipping the golden Calf : 
 still, God ' in His manifold mercies forsook 
 them not in the wilderness.'^ After the con- 
 quest of the land, when with God's help they 
 had overcome kingdoms and peoples, and had 
 entered on possession of their fair inheritance. 
 
 1 Nel). ix. 14. 2 7j^ 17 . ^p jogj jj^ 13 . jonali iv. 2. 
 3 Neh. ix. 18, 19. 
 
THE COVENANTERS. 203 
 
 and were multiplied as tlie stars of heaven/ 
 they showed themselves recalcitrant as before. 
 In the days of the Judges, and afterwards in 
 those of the Kings, they had ' cast the Law 
 behind their back,' and slain the prophets, and 
 provoked God greatly. ^ They had been given 
 into the hand of their enemies ; they had cried 
 to God in the time of their trouble, and He 
 had heard and delivered them; but again, 
 when deliverance had been wrought, when 
 they had 'had rest,' they repeated the evil, 
 turned the shoulder, stiffened the neck, and 
 refused to hear.^ At last the long suspended 
 and amply deserved judgment had fallen, and 
 first Ephraim, then Judah, had been given 
 into the hands of the Gentiles. But even 
 then, even in the worst of their calamities, 
 ' God in His manifold mercies had not made 
 a full end of them, nor forsaken them, for He 
 was a gracious and merciful God.' * And now, 
 after this rapid, but, from his point of view, 
 comprehensive survey of his people's history, 
 Ezra broke into a strain of true supplication : 
 ' O our God ! God, great, mighty, and to 
 
 1 Neh. ix. 22, 23. ^ 7jj-^_ 26. ^ jim^ 27-29. 
 * Ibid. 31. 
 
204 AFTER THE EXILE. 
 
 he feared ! thou that keepest covenant and 
 mercy .' Let it not seem a trifle unto Thee, all 
 these tribulations that are come upon us, upon 
 our kings, our princes, our priests and our 
 prophets, from the time of the Assyrian kings 
 even to this day ! ' ^ Israel, brought low as it 
 was, did not question the divine justice. They 
 had ever been an ingrate race. Air the dis- 
 asters that had overtaken them had been a 
 righteous retribution for their sin in not 
 ' keeping the Law.' ^ But now they were 
 resolved to break away from the old tradition 
 of faithlessness. Now they would bind them- 
 selves to be true henceforth to that sacred 
 code which was the life of Israel. In the 
 ' large and fat land ' which God had given 
 their fathers to possess, and in which they had 
 enjoyed riches and liberty, their fathers had 
 done wickedly, transgressing or ignoring the 
 Law.^ They, the sons of those fathers, in the 
 sadly shrunken and impoverished land that 
 was all they had now, a land in which they 
 were not even free,* declared themselves and 
 would henceforth show themselves humbly 
 
 ,1 Neh. ix. 32. 2 jn^ 34 3 /Ji^;. 35. 
 
 * lUd. 36. 
 
THE COVENANTERS. 205 
 
 submissive to the revealed will of the Eternal. 
 Earthly power and greatness had been lost ; 
 they were ' in great distress.' ^ All the more 
 would they cling to those divine institutions 
 in which the only strength and comfort of the 
 latter-day Israel could be found. And they 
 trusted in that divine mercy, which had been 
 so little deserved and so often manifested of 
 old, and which surely would not be withheld 
 now. 
 
 Ezra had expressed in this prayer the 
 feeling and purpose of the whole congregation. 
 Deeply affected by that retrospect of the past, 
 which traced all the misfortunes of Israel to 
 one and the same source — disregard or defi- 
 ance of the Torah, they were ready to 
 promise anything that would testify to 
 their new spirit of obedience. That moment 
 repaid Ezra for many years of bafiled effort 
 and unrewarded toil. The present mood of 
 the people made amends for previous luke- 
 warmness and ingratitude, and showed him 
 that he had not struggled and waited at 
 Jerusalem in vain. He was prepared to take 
 an immediate advantage of the impression he 
 
 1 Neh. ix. 37. 
 
2o6 AFTER THE EXILE. 
 
 had made. A formal document had been 
 drawn up, setting forth those points in the 
 programme of reform which seemed in Ezra's 
 view of highest importance ; and this docu- 
 ment was now brought forward and read to 
 the congregation. It was in the form of a 
 covenant or compact, into which Israel was to 
 enter with its God ; a solemn, irrevocable 
 engagement, to be ratified by oath, signature, 
 and seal, that from that day forward they 
 would ' walk in God's law, which He had 
 given by Moses His servant.' ^ The idea was 
 not new ; indeed, transactions of the kind had 
 been a feature of Jewish history from im- 
 memorial time. The peculiarity of this cove- 
 nant was that it was put in writing, and that 
 it did not merely state a general principle, 
 but went into the minutise of obedience. 
 Other covenants had been born of the spirit 
 of prophecy ; a scribe was the draughtsman of 
 this. 
 
 First among the articles of this covenant, 
 as might have been expected from its author- 
 ship, stood an engagement henceforth to 
 avoid all matrimonial alliance with the 
 
 1 Neh. X. 29. 
 
THE COVENANTERS. 207 
 
 ' peoples of the land ; ' and, next to this, a 
 pledge to observe the Sabbath, no longer as a 
 mere day of rest and pleasure, but with the 
 Puritanic strictness \Yhich the new interpreta- 
 tion of the Law required. These were the 
 features of social life in Judea which seemed 
 to the reformers the most dangerously 
 subversive of their principles, and which gave 
 them more trouble than all other abuses of the 
 time put together. In both cases, the tempta- 
 tion came from the 'peoples of the land.' 
 These had been admitted to a dangerous 
 familiarity of intercourse with ' the holy seed.' 
 They had been allowed to turn the Jewish 
 Sabbath into a market-day, the Jewish festi- 
 vals into fairs. Such scandals were to be no 
 longer tolerated. The congregation must 'swear 
 that they would not give their daughters to 
 foreigners, nor take the daughters of foreigners 
 as wives for their sons ' ; further, that they 
 would refuse to buy the wares and victuals 
 which foreigners brought into Jerusalem on 
 holy days.^ 
 
 The next article in the compact had refer- 
 ence to the Sabbatic year. Henceforth, this 
 
 1 Neh. X. 30, 31. 
 
2o8 AFTER THE EXILE. 
 
 was to be religiously observed, with its 
 ' release ' from all debts.^ The mere prospect 
 of such a measure, which was intended to 
 protect the interests of the poor, must have 
 been tempting to many in those days of wide- 
 spread poverty, however little to the taste of 
 the money-lenders. 
 
 The remainder of the covenant was taken 
 up entirely with provisions for the proper 
 maintenance of. the sanctuary, its priesthood 
 and ritual. Though many of the chief priests 
 had shown themselves determined enemies of 
 reform, and had been among the most bitter 
 personal opponents of Ezra and Nehemiah, 
 these reformers were far from being anti- 
 clerical in spirit. Ezra was himself a Zadokite 
 by descent, and did not forget the fact, 
 though he had no sympathy with the political 
 sacerdotalism of the Zadokites of Jerusalem. 
 Both he and Nehemiah fully recognised the 
 vast importance of the priesthood, as a factor 
 in the life of Israel ; and, looking on the 
 
 1 Deut. XV. 1-6. It is uncertain whether this ' release ' 
 meant novae tabulae, a complete cancelling of debts ; or only 
 a suspension of the right to enforce payment. See Oehler, 
 Theol. of the Old Test. ii. 95. 
 
THE COVENANTERS. 209 
 
 temple as the earthly dwelling of Jehovah, 
 and on the sacrificial system as an integral 
 part of Judaism, they laboured with unselfish 
 energy to reorganise the hierarchy, and to 
 make due provision for the supply of the altar 
 and the sustenance of its ministrants. 
 
 Before the Exije, it had been the part of 
 the king in Jerusalem to provide the sacrifices ; 
 and since the Return, at different times, 
 Persian monarchs had taken this duty upon 
 them.^ These subsidies were, however, too 
 uncertain to be depended on ; and it had 
 become necessary to devise a regular source 
 of revenue, in case the day lamented by Joel 
 should return, and the off'ering be once more 
 'cut off' from the house of Jehovah.'^ The 
 newly promulgated Law, the code which Ezra 
 had ' in his hand,' indicated clearly what steps 
 should be taken in this matter. It stood 
 written there that each Israelite should pay a 
 yearly tax to meet the costs of public worship, 
 as 'a ransom for his soul'; and the Cove- 
 nanters accordingly 'came under an obliga- 
 tion to charge themselves yearly with the 
 
 i %wd, vol. i. pp. 184, 297. ^ Joel i. 9. 
 
 II P 
 
2IO AFTER THE EXILE. 
 
 third part of a shekel for the service of the 
 touse of their God.' ^ 
 
 In addition to this money tax, provision 
 "was made for a regular supply of fuel for the 
 altar — no small matter, for the fire burned 
 night and day.^ Hitherto this want had been 
 met for the most part by voluntary gifts ; now 
 arrangements were made for a regular ' wood- 
 offering,' — the priests, Levites, and people, 
 divided into groups according to their ' fathers' 
 • iouses ' and in a rotation settled by lot, taking 
 .upon them to bring in a certain quantity of 
 fuel on a certain day of each year.^ 
 
 1 Neh. X. 32, 33; Exod. xxx. 11-15. This poll-tax, 
 known in after times as ' tlie tax of Moses ' (2 Chron. xxiv. 
 6), wHch in Ezra's day was fixed at the third of a shekel, 
 was raised subsec[uently to half a shekel (the didrach/ma 
 of the days of our Lord : Matt. xvii. 24) ; and as a half 
 shekel is the sum mentioned in Exodus, it would seem that 
 this passage of the priestly code must have been modified 
 after Ezra's time. Bertheau supposes that the half shekel 
 may have been reduced to a third in consequence of the 
 poverty of the community. ^ Lgy^ yi_ 9_ 
 
 8 Neh. X. 34. At a later time, the fifteenth day of the 
 fifth month, Ab, became the recognised day of the ' wood- 
 offering,' and in consequence a kind of minor festival. 
 ' Priests and people vied with each other in the zeal with 
 which they brought their offering ; and the young maidens 
 of Jerusalem, aU dressed in white, gave themselves on these 
 occasions to mirth and dancing.' — Derenbourg, Histoire, 109, 
 
THE COVENANTERS. 211 
 
 For the support of tlie hierarchy, as dis- 
 tinct from the maintenance of the sanctuary 
 and its worship, elaborate provision was made 
 in this document, which, itself based on the 
 newly published code, furnished the basis for 
 the future establishment of the priestly order 
 with all its rights and emoluments. From 
 this date, the priests were to receive the first- 
 fruits of all fields and orchards ; first-born 
 sons were to be ' redeemed ' by their parents, 
 at a tax not exceeding five shekels ; ^ firstlings 
 of unclean cattle were also to be 'redeemed.' 
 Firstlings of cattle, sheep, and goats ^ went to 
 the priests, as also the ' first ' — that is, the first 
 prepared for use — of coarse meal, wine, . oil, 
 and other kinds of produce.^ These, being 
 the dues of the priests, were to be paid to 
 them directly, in the chambers of the temple. 
 The tithes, on the other hand, were to be paid 
 to the Levites, in all towns where members of 
 that order had their abode ; but inasmuch 
 as a tithe of the tithes went to the priests, a ' son 
 
 1 Num. xviii. 16. 
 
 2 Of these the fat was burnt on the altar, while the 
 flesh went to the priests ; Num. xviii. 17. 
 
 3 Neh. X. 35-37. 
 
AFTER THE EXILE. 
 
 of Aaron ' was always to be present with the 
 Levites, as assessor, while tithe was being paid 
 and received. This priestly tenth the people were 
 to bring from all parts of the land to Jerusalem, 
 that it might be laid up, in vessels set apart 
 for that purpose, in the store-chambeis of the 
 temple, and served out in rations to the 
 priests, singers, and guard.^ With a general 
 engagement to perform faithfully all these 
 specified duties, the document closed : — ' And 
 we will not neglect the house of our God.' 
 
 Such was the Covenant to which the people 
 were now called upon by Ezra to set hand 
 and seal. The changes it foreshadowed were 
 nothing short of a social and rehgious revolu- 
 tion. To accept this document as the charter 
 of the national life meant to break completely 
 with the past — not merely with the remote 
 past of ancient Israel, but with the past siace 
 the Return from Babylon, -nith the past of 
 yesterday. It meant the dissolution of all 
 ' mixed marriages ' not already dissolved ; not 
 only men in high station, as formerly, but the 
 humblest members of the community, if they 
 were true to this compact, must part from 
 
 1 Xeli. X. 38, 39. 
 
THE COVENANTERS. 213 
 
 their foreign wives. It meant a complete 
 change of attitude towards the ' peoples of the 
 land,' with whom they had been living as 
 friendly neighbours. It meant for the rich 
 man a limitation of his power to amass wealth ; 
 and for the poor man, a heavy burden of 
 taxation, for now, in addition to the king's 
 taxes, which were sufficiently oppressive, tithe 
 and tribute had to be paid for the support of 
 a numerous priesthood and a costly ritual. 
 Yet the Covenant was entered into willingly, 
 with a full knowledge of its meaning, and a 
 full resolve to observe it faithfully. 
 
 It was mainly the power of a Book that 
 wrought this conversion of a people. The 
 Torah now did for the Judeans what already 
 it had done for the Golah. No doubt personal 
 influences counted for something in the almost 
 magical transformation brought about within 
 those few days. Behind the Book there were 
 men fitted to leave their mark on any age. 
 The intense fervour of Ezra, the nobly patriotic 
 spirit of Nehemiah, the zeal of the inehinim or 
 'teachers' who called Ezra 'master,' and 
 the co-operation of that considerable body of 
 citizens who had more recently come from the 
 
2 14 AFTER THE EXILE. 
 
 East, importing with them stricter principles 
 and a higher standard of duty — all these con- 
 tributed to bring about the change. But in 
 the end it was the Law itself, not its in- 
 terpreters and champions, that won this 
 victory over carelessness, ignorance, and self- 
 interest. That marvellous Book, presented to 
 the people as the oracles of the Eternal, 
 needed only to be known. At once it showed 
 its power. In this Jewish Eeformation of the 
 fifth century before Christ, the Torah played 
 the same part as Luther's Bible in the Ee- 
 formation in Germany. The people never 
 tired of hearing it read to them ; gathered day 
 after day round the scribes, and stood un- 
 weariedly for long hours, drinking ia new 
 lessons, new truths, new chapters of history, 
 new revelations of duty. And when they 
 were summoned to show their devotion to 
 the Torah by a formal pledge of obedience, 
 they eagerly responded. No dissent was 
 raised, no protesting voice marred the unani- 
 mity of Israel, as in the days of Ezra's first 
 attempts at reform. If there were object- 
 ors, they kept silent in the background, 
 while Israel bound itself by a solemn oath 
 
THE COVENANTERS. 215 
 
 to walk henceforth in the strait way of the 
 Law, 
 
 The first man to sign the Covenant was 
 Nehemiah, as Governor of Judea and the 
 representative layman of his day. Ezra's 
 name is not found in the list of signatories : 
 probably, as he had drawn up the document, 
 his formal assent to it was not deemed neces- 
 sary. ^ After Nehemiah's name stands that of 
 one Zedekiah, apparently a layman, and if so 
 a layman of eminence, though he is not 
 mentioned elsewhere, for in this list he comes 
 immediately after the Governor and before 
 the Priests. It is at least possible that this 
 Zedekiah may have been a scribe,^ and may 
 hold this prominent position as representative 
 
 1 This seems the simplest and most reasonable explanation 
 of the absence of Ezra's name. Gratz (Gesch. ii. b. 159) 
 suggests that the name Amriah in x. 2 may be a corruption of 
 Ezra; but if "Ezra signed at all, his name would probably 
 have stood before the names of unknown men. Herzfeld, in his 
 earlier history (p. 311), starts the extraordinary theory that 
 'the jealousy of the ambitious Nehemiah' may have forced 
 Ezra into the background. In his later history (i. 74) he 
 takes the more sensible view that Ezra did not sign because 
 he was not the head of a house, and because his signatuie 
 to such an act was unnecessary. 
 
 2 Herzfeld identifies him with that ' Zadok the Scribe,' 
 mentioned in Neh. xiii. 13. 
 
2i6 AFTER THE EXILE. 
 
 of the new order of the Sopherim, which was 
 now fast growing in importance. In all, 
 twenty-one names of priests were appended to 
 the document — not names of individual priests, 
 but of priestly classes ^ whose members form- 
 ally adhered to the new doctrines ; seventeen 
 names of Levites, in the same way represent- 
 ing divisions of their order; and forty-four 
 names of 'heads of houses,' representatives 
 of the laity. ^ The whole community, says 
 the historian — priests, Levites, temple-guard, 
 choristers, Nethinim, and laity — 'joined them- 
 selves to their brethren the notables,' who had 
 signed the Covenant in their name. And now 
 also, as at the time of that passover held after 
 the completion of the temple, many of those 
 Israelites who could not claim to be ' children 
 of the Exile,' and who for generations had 
 lived among the heathen, 'separated them- 
 
 1 Some of these names are found in the list of priests 
 who returned with Zerubbabel (Neh. xii. 1, ff.), which proves 
 that they are names of classes, not of individuals. 
 
 ^ In all, 84 names. Eabbinical tradition makes these 
 signatories of the Covenant the original meijibers of the 
 ' Great Synagogue.' That legendary assembly is said to have 
 consisted of 85 members ; one name was supposed to have 
 dropt from Neh. x. 10. See Derenbourg, Histoire, 35. 
 
THE COVENANTERS. 217 
 
 selves from the peoples of the lands,' and 
 covenanted with their brethren.^ 
 
 Thus, after ages of neglect, the Torah of 
 Moses, fashioned anew and applied in a new 
 spirit, was formally adopted as Israel's rule of 
 life. It was a triumph for Ezra and the 
 Sopherim which they might be tempted to 
 look upon as final. Now, surely, the people 
 had definitely turned their back upon the past, 
 with all its failures and errors. This step 
 that they had taken would not be retraced ; 
 they were committed beyond recall ; by ' the 
 'written letter that stands,' they were sworn 
 to obedience. If Ezra drew any such con- 
 clusions from the events of that day, from 
 the readiness with which priests, rulers, and 
 commons had pressed forward to subscribe the 
 articles put before them, he was doomed to 
 the usual disappointment of reformers who 
 hope to see in their own day the full result, 
 and to reap the full fruit of their labours. 
 He had to learn that a vow put in writing is 
 
 1 Neh. X. 28. Stade {Gesch. ii. 179) supposes that tlie 
 persons here referred to were proselytes from heathenism, 
 which would make this statement inconsistent with what is 
 said in ix. 2. But these nibdalim were certainly not Gentiles 
 by birth, but 'undeported' Israelites : supra, vol. i. p. 201. 
 
2i8 AFTER THE EXILE. 
 
 not necessarily more binding than one taken 
 in words. He had to find out by bitter 
 experience, if he had not found out already, 
 that those hot fits of popular feeling were 
 followed by the inevitable chill ; and that the 
 task of remoulding the Jewish people was not 
 to be accomplished in the lifetime of the man 
 who took it on hand. 
 
CHAPTER XL 
 XTbe Bfttbbag of Jubatsm. 
 
 rr^HAT first of Tisri, when Ezra stood up on 
 -*- his tribune in the square before the 
 Water-gate, and read the Law of Moses to the 
 congregation, may be called the birthday of 
 Judaism. It is scarcely possible to exaggerate 
 the ' epoch-making importance ' ^ of that occa- 
 sion, which closed the long history of ancient 
 Israel, inaugurated the era of reform, and gave 
 a new impulse and direction to the develop- 
 ment of the national consciousness. The 
 Jewish people often halted in the path on 
 which they entered that day, sometimes seemed 
 to retrace their steps ; but they never really 
 diverged from that path into any other — never 
 transferred to any other authority the allegi- 
 ance they had sworn to the Law. 
 
 1 Schurer, Jeioish People, i. 306. 
 
AFTER THE EXILE. 
 
 On that day, under the shadow of the 
 temple, was held the first synagogue service 
 on Jewish soil. Tradition ascribes to Ezra 
 the institution of the synagogue or ' house of 
 meeting,' and in this, tradition is essentially 
 right. Without actually founding such places of 
 Avorship, and prescribing their order of service,^ 
 as he is said to have done, he introduced the 
 synagogue into Judea, transplanted it thither 
 from the land of exile, where, far away from 
 Jerusalem and the temple, the banished people 
 had gathered round priest or scribe to hear 
 the Scriptures and to pray. ' For Moses,' said 
 the Apostle, ' from generations of old hath in 
 every city them that preach him, being read 
 in the synagogues every Sabbath.' These 
 'generations of old' begin with the time of 
 Ezra.^ 
 
 1 First among the ' ten prescriptions ' attributed to Ezra 
 ill the Talmud is this, that on the afternoon of every Monday, 
 Thursday, and Sabbath, there should be a reading from the 
 Torah. Forms of prayer for synagogue use were also ascribed 
 to Ezra (Jost, Geich. des Judenthums, i. 39). 
 
 2 Acts XV. 21. ' There can be no doubt,' says Jost {Gesch. 
 i. 38), 'that those proceedings in Judea produced a powerful 
 impression on all, even distant, communities ; that copies of 
 the books now used in those solemn assemblies were pro- 
 cured in increasing numbers, and similar readings introduced 
 
THE BIRTH DA V OF JUDAISM. 
 
 The religious services of the first of Tisri, 
 and those on the days that followed, were an 
 entirely new thing in the history of Israel. 
 The pulpit displaces the altar. The Scribe, 
 not the High Priest, makes confession of sin 
 in name of the .people.^ The High Priest 
 passes out of sight altogether for the time; 
 members of the sacerdotal order have their 
 place beside Ezra, but they are there as 
 teachers, as mehinim, rather than as priests. 
 Prayer takes the place of sacrifice in the ritual 
 of those meetings for worship, and moves the 
 heart and conscience of the worshippers as 
 sacrifice had never done. In the temple, with 
 its stately ceremonial, its holocausts of victims, 
 its clouds of incense and throngs of priestly 
 
 everywhere. Very soon there grew up the custom of hold- 
 ing these assemblies on holidays, and especially on the two 
 market-days of every week, the second and the fifth, as the 
 country people in Judea came into the towns on those days, 
 to dispose of their produce, and to have their disputes settled 
 by the courts of justice. This custom was followed by other 
 communities, until a daily divine service came to be instituted, 
 in houses set apart for the purpose, afterwards called Syna- 
 gogues (Houses of Assembly ; in Hebrew, Beth hakneseth).' 
 
 1 It is remarkable that no mention is made in Neh. viii. 
 of the great Day of Atonement, which fell, according to the 
 Law, on the tenth day of Tisri. 
 
AFTER THE EXILE. 
 
 mediators between God and man, the people 
 had been apt to feel themselves mere spectators; 
 if any deep feeling ■ stirred in them, it was 
 mainly one of fear, for the sacrifices meant 
 that they were guilty, and that a jealous 
 God must be propitiated. The prophets 
 had seen clearly that temple and altar 
 were not enough to make of Israel a holy 
 people, and had striven to supply what was 
 wanting by a lofty spiritual and ethical teach- 
 ing. That teaching of the prophets, while 
 producing the highest type of individual excel- 
 lence, had failed to reach and sink down into 
 the mass of the people. Ezra succeeded where 
 priest and prophet had failed. He penetrated 
 to the very heart of Israel. He struck the 
 rock, and the waters gushed forth. In those 
 simple assemblies for worship, held outside 
 the temple, under its walls, there were no 
 spectators ; all felt themselves participants, 
 directly interested. By prayer and the read- 
 ing of the Torah, religion was made a vital, 
 personal matter to every man in the crowd. 
 The new; covenant was really entered into on 
 that first of Tisri, though the formal signing 
 and sealing came later. 
 
THE BIRTHDAY OF JUDAISM. 223 
 
 This reformation worked by the Book of 
 the Law has a curious parallel in the re- 
 formation that took place in the reign of 
 Josiah, more than a hundred and seventy 
 years before.^ In both cases, a sacred 
 code is brought to the light of day. 
 Hilkiah the High Priest 'finds the book of 
 the law in the house of Jehovah ' ; ^ Ezra the 
 Scribe brings 'the book of the law' from 
 Babylon. Josiah gathers together to the 
 temple 'all the men of Judah, and all the 
 inhabitants of Jerusalem, and the priests, and 
 the prophets, and all the people, both great 
 and small ' ; Ezra gathers together in the 
 square before the Water-gate ' all the people 
 as one man, both men and women, and all 
 that could hear with understanding.'^ The 
 king, when the book is read to him by 
 Shaphan, ' rends his clothes ' ; the people, 
 when the book is read to them by Ezra, break 
 out into tears and lamentations.^ On Josiah's 
 demand, as on Ezra's, the people enter into a 
 
 1 In 621 B.C. 2 2 Kings xxii. 8. 
 
 ^ 2 Kings ^Ttiii , 2 ; Neh. viii. 1, 2. 
 * 2 Kings xxii. 1 1 ; Neh. viii. 9. 
 
224 AFTER THE EXILE. 
 
 covenant of obedience.^ In Josiah's time a 
 Passover is celebrated, according to the writing 
 of the book, ' such as had not been since the 
 days of the Judges ' ; in Ezra's time a feast of 
 Tabernacles is celebrated, according to the 
 writing of the book, 'such as had not been 
 since the days of Joshua the son of Nun.'^ 
 If these accounts are independent of each 
 other, the coincidence is remarkable indeed. 
 And the parallel may be carried still further. 
 In both cases an immediate effect of a very 
 striking character was produced ; in both, that 
 effect seemed to pass completely away; in 
 both, a later day proved that the passing away 
 had been only apparent. The full results of 
 Josiah's reformation came to light during the 
 Captivity ; the full results of Ezra's, in the 
 time of the Syrian persecution. 
 
 The Book which wrought the reform of 
 Josiah's day was Deuteronomy, the Torah of 
 prophecy. What Book it was that Ezra had 
 ' in his hand ' when he left Babylon, that he 
 opened in sight of the people met in the square 
 before the Water-gate, cannot be determined 
 
 1 2 Kings xxiii. 3 ; Neh. ix. 38. 
 
 2 2 Kings xxiii. 21, 22; Nell. viii. 17. 
 
THE BIRTHDA V OF JUDAISM. 225 
 
 with equal certainty. But it may be taken 
 as probable in the highest degree that that 
 Book was the Pentateuch, in substantially its 
 present form/ 
 
 What method Ezra followed in his work of 
 editing the documents, ancient and compara- 
 tively modern, that were his materials, can 
 only be conjectured. Whether it is ' safe to 
 affirm that he added, making new precepts 
 and practices either in place of or beside older 
 ones, '^ may be doubted; and there seems on 
 the whole more to be said for the view that 
 ' if Ezra ever wrote anything on the subject of 
 religion, it can only have been some ritual of 
 minute observances, after the manner of the 
 prescriptions of the Great Synagogue or the 
 
 ■* The articles of the covenant relating to first-fruits and 
 tithes (Neh. x. 35-39) are drawn directly from the Priestly- 
 Code ; cp. Num. XV. 20, ff; xviii. 11-32 ; Lev. xxvii. 30. 
 But the article as to 'mixed marriages' (ver. 30) has no basis 
 at aU in the Priestly Code ; it rests on Exod. xxxiv. 12, 16 
 (Narrative of the Jehovist) and on the Deuteronomic code (vii. 
 2, 3). The article as to the Sabbatic year (ver. 31) presupposes 
 the 'Law of Holiness' (cp. Lev. xxv. 2-7). From this it 
 appears that Ezra's Book of the Law was the complete 
 Pentateuch, and not (as Kuenen and Stade maintain) merely 
 the Priestly Code. 
 
 2 Davidson, Canon of the Bible, 20. 
 
 n Q 
 
2 26 AFTER THE EXILE. 
 
 ancient Mislina.' ^ The scanty and colourless 
 notices of Ezra's career leave this impression 
 on the mind, that he was by no means a 
 highly original genius, and that he was essenti- 
 ally an honest man. As an ' expert Scribe,' 
 and nothing more, he approached his task of 
 codifying the laws and defining the practices 
 which had grown up under the shadow of the 
 name of Moses, the founder of Israel's national 
 and religious life. He made at least an out- 
 ward unity of the disjecta membra of the 
 Levitical legislation, of which part was as old 
 as the Exodus, and part as young as the Exile. 
 Without attempting to harmonise differences 
 or remove contradictions that still lie on the 
 surface, he threw together the materials that 
 came to his hand ; working into the code that 
 'priestly Torah' which had been developed 
 between the fall of Jerusalem and the Eeturn 
 under Zerubbabel. It was doubtless he that 
 separated the historical book of Joshua from 
 the Mosaic books, and so gave Israel that 
 Torah of Moses which was the beginning of 
 the Old Testament canon. 
 
 In all likelihood Ezra's work on the Torah 
 
 1 Halevy, Eevue des Etudes juives, No. i. 30. 
 
THE BIRTHDAY OF JUDAISM. 227 
 
 had been virtually completed before he left 
 Babylon. His object in coming to Judea 
 was to put in action what he had already put in 
 writing. Not only is there no evidence that 
 he ' modified the details of the Book of the 
 Law which he brought from Babylon, so as to 
 meet the requirements and circuinstances of 
 the priesthood in Jerusalem ' -^ — what evidence 
 there is points in the other direction. In view 
 of the part played by the High Priest in the 
 afi"airs of that day, his leadership of the party 
 which opposed reform, it may be assumed 
 that that dignitary would not have held the 
 place he does in the Priestly Code, if Ezra 
 had allowed himself to fabricate or manipulate 
 laws in order to serve his own ends. That he 
 did nothing so dishonest appears from another 
 instance. A clear, authoritative declaration 
 in the Torah on the vexed question of ' mixed 
 marriages' would have greatly strengthened 
 his hands in dealing with his adversaries.^ 
 
 1 Kueneu, who is ' inclined to regard the years whicli 
 elapsed between 458 and 444 B.C. as the period of the finish- 
 ing oflf and . . . final redaction of the Thorah ' {Religion of 
 Israel, ii. 233). 
 
 2 The prohibition of all buying and selling on Sabbaths 
 and feast days is not found in the Pentateuch. So also with 
 
2 28 AFTER THE EXILE. 
 
 On the supposition that he ' did not scruple, if 
 it seemed best, to revise the text in substance, 
 as well as in form ' ^ — nothing would have 
 been easier for him than to make good this 
 defect, and palm off views of his own as toroth 
 of Moses. As he refrained from doing any 
 such thing, it may be inferred that his work 
 upon the documents at his disposal was 
 scribe's work, pure and simple; that he 
 knew his limits, and respected them; that 
 he reproduced without inventing ; formulated 
 without colouring; codified without inter- 
 polating. 
 
 ' The Law having been forgotten in Israel,' 
 says the Talmud,V ' Ezra came and re-estab- 
 lished it.' Adding 'unknown' to 'forgotten,' 
 for the Torah he brought with him from Baby- 
 lon was in great measure new to the Judeans, 
 
 a smaller matter— the undertaking in the covenant as to the 
 wood-offering for the altar (Neh. x. 34). 
 
 1 Davidson, Canon of the Bible, 44. 
 
 2 SuMxt, 20, a. According to rabbinical tradition, a seroU 
 of the Law, written by Ezra's own hand, and caUed 'The 
 Torah of Ezra,' was preserved in the temple as a standard 
 version, by which other copies of the Law were corrected 
 (Furst, Kmon des Alt. Test. 117). In this there may be an 
 element of truth, for Ezra must have done much to settle 
 the text of the Pentateuch. 
 
THE BIRTHDAY OF JUDAISM. 229 
 
 the saying describes not inaccurately what he 
 did as a legislator. This 're-establishment' 
 of the Law constitutes Ezra's true claim to the 
 high place he holds in the history of his people. 
 His was the first of those efforts, which after- 
 wards succeeded so perfectly, to concentrate 
 the spiritual life of the nation in obedience to 
 the statutes of Moses. He was the first man 
 to give Israel a possession which more than 
 made up for its want of political independence 
 and national unity. He gave his people a 
 heritage that could never be taken from them. 
 It was possible to burn the temple; it was 
 impossible to burn the Law. A later age saw 
 the attempt made to destroy every copy of 
 the sacred book of the Jews. That attempt 
 at least showed that the persecutor knew 
 wherein lay the secret of Israel's strength; 
 inevitably, it failed. The Torah was in- 
 destructible ; and if the men of Ezra's day 
 seemed to hold their possession cheap, those 
 who came after them learned to look upon it 
 as their chief treasure and their glory. Ezra's 
 teaching prevailed. He taught Israel that the 
 Law was its life^ — that observance of the Law 
 
 1 Lev. xviii. 5. 
 
2 30 AFTER THE EXILE. 
 
 was ' life and good,' and neglect of it, ' death 
 
 and evil.'^ The lesson sank slowly into the 
 
 mind of Israel, but it sank deep ; and the 
 
 importance of the lesson fairly entitled its 
 
 teacher to be called ' the second Moses.' For 
 
 if Moses, by the first promulgation of the 
 
 Torah, made a nation out of a tribe, Ezra, by 
 
 its second promulgation, made a religious 
 
 community, bound together by a tie that 
 
 withstood every attempt to loosen or break it, 
 
 out of that scattered people whose home was 
 
 everywhere and nowhere in the world. 
 
 1 Deut. XXX. 15. 
 
CHAPTER XII. 
 ^e Strife of parties. 
 
 "TVURIXG twelve years (445-433 B.C.) Ezra 
 ■^^ and Xehemiah laboured side by side at 
 Jerusalem- The two men were necessary to 
 each other; impelled by the same motives, 
 pursuiBg the same end, each had his own 
 sphere of action in which to exercise his own 
 peculiar gLfts. There is every reason to 
 suppose that these two, the foremost Jews of 
 their time, lived and worked together in 
 perfect harmony. Ezra was the head, Xehe- 
 TTiiah the hand, in the reform movement of 
 that day. In heart, they were at one. . Ezra 
 had the special knowledge, the ideas, the 
 theories; Xehemiah had the power and 
 popularity but for which the other's schemes 
 might never have reached beyond the limits 
 of a coterie. Xehemiah's office as Governor 
 
232 AFTER THE EXILE. 
 
 of Judea under the Great King gave him 
 practically uncontrolled authority in direct- 
 ing the internal affairs of the colony. This 
 authority he placed unreservedly at Ezra's 
 service ; in favour of reform, the whole weight 
 of his official position and personal influence 
 was thrown into the scale. How complete 
 was the ascendency which his great con- 
 temporary had gained over him, the last 
 chapter of his memoirs significantly shows. 
 He had sat at the feet of the great Scribe, 
 and called him Master. He had become as 
 much a man of one idea as Ezra himself. 
 Ezra's religious zeal, his deep reverence for the 
 Law, appear in even exaggerated form in his 
 pupil ; the zeal becomes almost furious, the 
 reverence almost superstitious. The open, 
 ingenuous nature of the younger man, the 
 very depth of his piety and ardour of his 
 patriotism, drew him under the sway of Ezra's 
 narrower but stronger mind; and his rare 
 energy and intrepidity made him a powerful 
 instrument in hands that knew well how to 
 use it. Nehemiah was to Ezra what Joshua 
 was -to Moses, what the Eegent Murray was 
 to Knox. 
 
THE STRIFE OF PARTIES. 233 
 
 The loss of Nehemiah's services proved, 
 almost in a day, how indispensable these had 
 been to the reforming party. In the thirty- 
 second year of Artaxerxes' reign (433 B.C.) 
 he laid, down his governorship, and left Jeru- 
 salem for Susa. As his original leave of 
 absence can scarcely have been granted for so 
 long a period as twelve years, it may be 
 inferred that in the interval he had applied 
 for an extension of furlough, which had now 
 expired. During this long tenure of office 
 and absence from court, Nehemiah seems not 
 to have fallen out of memory or out of favour 
 with his royal master. Followed by the 
 regrets of all good citizens, he now left the 
 scene of his labours and anxieties to take up 
 the ornamental functions of his youthful days 
 — a different man in many ways from the 
 Nehemiah who had stolen into Jerusalem 
 twelve years ago ; an older man in more than 
 years. 
 
 As the death of Josiah at Megiddo tested 
 the reality of the Jewish reformation of the 
 seventh century, so Nehemiah's departure 
 from Jerusalem tested the reality of that of 
 the fifth. In both cases, the test seemed to 
 
234 AFTER THE EXILE. 
 
 show failure. Ezra was now left alone to 
 
 watch over the practical working of the new 
 
 legislation, and to hold its opponents in check. 
 
 The result furnished a fresh commentary on 
 
 Koheleth's saying, that ' two are better than 
 
 one.' Having no longer the secular arm to 
 
 lean on, no longer the prestige and popularity 
 
 of Nehemiah at his back, Ezra soon found 
 
 difficulties growing on his hands. Once again 
 
 he had to live through the bitter experience 
 
 of the past; to. witness the undoing of what 
 
 he had done, the loss of what he had gained ; 
 
 to feel the people slipping from his grasp, and 
 
 to see them drifting back into their old habits 
 
 of indifference and disobedience. 
 
 With the morrow of Nehemiah's departure 
 Ezra's trials began. Long before this time, 
 in all probability, the reflux of popular feehng 
 from the high-water mark it had touched in 
 the covenanting days had set in and gone far. 
 A people does not shed the slough of its past 
 in a day. Habits of social life, sanctioned by 
 the usage of centuries, are not to be changed 
 in a moment at the word of command. 
 Pledges taken by excited crowds are apt to 
 lose their binding force with time. So long 
 
THE STRIFE OF PARTIES. 235 
 
 as Nehemiah held office at Jerusalem, he 
 was able to put down abuses and prevent 
 open violations of the Law and the covenant ; 
 but as soon as he had turned his back, and 
 the weight of his heavy hand was felt no 
 longer, the old scandals broke out again 
 and the old enemies raised their heads. 
 He had effectually humbled the Zadokite 
 faction and its allies outside of Judea, and 
 forced them to keep within the bounds of 
 a passive resistance. But as soon as he 
 was gone, and the field was left clear, this 
 faction began to recover its spirit and to 
 renew its activity. All through those twelve 
 years of Puritan rule, the priestly patricians 
 had stood aside from the work of the re- 
 formers, unable to hinder it, but looking 
 on with sullen displeasure at the curtailment 
 of their privileges and the usurpation of their 
 power. Half-heartedly, they had joined in 
 the building of the walls ; but the High Priest, 
 their representative, had been absent from the 
 festival of the day of dedication, absent from 
 the assembly on the first of Tisri when Ezra 
 read the Law in public, conspicuously absent 
 at the signing of the covenant, in which docu- 
 
236 AFTER THE EXILE. 
 
 ment his name does not appear/ Between 
 Ezra and the Zadokites there had been open 
 war from the first day of his mission to Judea. 
 As conservatives, they hated the innovations 
 of which he was the author. As politicians, 
 they clung to that alliance with the Gentiles 
 which he had done his best to break off. As 
 a wealthy and worldly-minded aristocracy, 
 they disliked the austere gravity of the Puri- 
 tan regime ; and as a hereditary caste, they 
 looked with a jealous eye on that order of the 
 Scribes which threatened a dangerous rivalry 
 to their claims. 
 
 The Governor who followed Nehemiah in 
 office was probably a foreigner ; in any case, 
 he was a man of a quite different stamp from 
 his predecessor. The Jews were no longer 
 ruled by a Jewish patriot, but by an official of 
 the ordinary Persian type, who cared nothing 
 
 1 Rawlinson's suggestion that either Eliashib the High 
 Priest or Ezra may have signed the covenant under the name 
 of Seraiah (Neh. x. 2), the ancestral head of their house, has no 
 good grounds. The absence from the list of signatories of 
 many names which are found in other lists of the period, 
 seems to show that there was a body of nonjurors, if not 
 relatively numerous, at aU events of high rank and influence 
 in the community. 
 
THE STRIFE OF PARTIES. 237 
 
 for their interests, and was content to let things 
 take their course, so long as the province kept 
 quiet, and he himself lived on the fat of the 
 land.^ With a pekhah of this kind installed 
 at Jerusalem, the Zadokites were able to re- 
 assert themselves, and the High Priest once 
 more came to the front as the highest, and 
 indeed the only, native authority in Judea. 
 Everything that Ezra and Nehemiah had 
 settled was now called in question. The 
 principles they had laid down were openly 
 disregarded. The laws they had passed, based 
 professedly on the Torah, were publicly 
 defied. Not an article of the covenant but 
 was trampled under foot by those priestly 
 aristocrats. The man who had been their 
 master was far away ; it was not expected 
 that his face would ever be seen again at 
 Jerusalem ; and now they enjoyed their 
 freedom. They renewed their former alliances 
 with the head men of the neighbouring 
 nations. They received foreign proselytes, 
 Nehemiah's most determined enemies, at 
 Jerusalem, and treated them with every mark 
 of distinction and regard. They wedded 
 
 1 Mal.i. 8. 
 
238 AFTER THE EXILE. 
 
 daugliters of the chiefs of Ammon and 
 Samaria. They oppressed and plundered the 
 poor/ They undid by their neglect almost 
 all that Ezra and Nehemiah had done for the 
 proper establishment of the temple ritual, and 
 the support of the temple staff. 
 
 The Jewish people now found itself between 
 two conflicting parties— the Sopherim or Puri- 
 tan party, headed by Ezra, and the Zadokites 
 or aristocratic party, headed by the High 
 Priest Eliashib. The tendencies represented by 
 these two factions were as old as civilised society. 
 In Jewish history, their conflict may be traced 
 from an early time. But it is in this period 
 that the parties themselves begin to take shape 
 and to come into notice; that the rallying- 
 cry of each makes itself heard, and the object 
 each has in view may be discerned. Then- 
 struggle fills many pages down to and beyond 
 the days of Christ; it began with the very 
 beginning of Judaism; it becomes visible, 
 appreciable, after the year 433 b.c. The 
 parties do not yet bear the familiar names, 
 have not yet adopted the familiar shibboleths, 
 nor settled down into the f amiliar forms; 
 
 1 Mfll. iii.-5. 
 
THE STRIFE OF PARTIES. 239 
 
 nevertheless, this controversy of the fifth 
 century before Christ may be looked on as a 
 first skirmish in the long war between Phari- 
 sees and Sadducees. 
 
 Ezra's ' men ' — the Sopherim, and those 
 who held with them — called themselves by 
 a name which has a certain ring of pious 
 arrogance, and was in itself a taunt thrown 
 at their opponents. They spoke of them- 
 selves as ' those that trembled at the command- 
 ment of God,' ' those that feared Jehovah. ' ^ 
 From these were descended the Khasidim or 
 ' pious ones ' of the Maccabean days ; ^ and 
 from these again were developed the Pharisees 
 or se29arate— those who ' erected into a system ' 
 that 'unsociability,' that refusal to mix with 
 the Gentiles, ' which Ezra had laid down 
 as a principle ; and who carried to such a fan- 
 tastic extreme the traditionalism, the defer- 
 ence to the letter, the invocation of the 
 
 1 Ezra X. 3 ; Mai. iii. 16. 
 - 2 1 Mace. ii. 42, vii. 13 ; 2 Mace. xiv. 6. 
 
 s Derenbonrg, Hiitoire, 76, 77. 'The Khasidim,' says 
 Derenbourg, ' are in no wise distinguished from the Soplierim ' 
 {ibid. 56). ' The Pharisees were a development from the 
 circle of the scribes, for the ends rather of public life ' (Well- 
 hansen, Phariscier u. Sadducaer, 20). 
 
240 AFTER THE EXILE. 
 
 unwritten law, of which Ezra had set the first 
 example. 
 
 The name of the opposing party recalls its 
 origin. Sadducee is 'Zadokite.' This name 
 of a group of priestly families, the Bene 
 Zadok, became in process of time the name of 
 an ecclesiastical-political party, ^ composed of 
 these families, and of a section of the Jewish 
 nobility which was connected with them by 
 marriage. The Zadokites of Ezra's time, and 
 the Sadducees of a later age, had this feature in 
 common — that they were inclined to look upon 
 the temple and its worship as an appanage 
 of their caste or clique ; that they made their 
 priestly office a stepping-stone for worldly 
 ambitions; that they ridiculed the idea of 
 exclusiveness, and opened their arms wide to 
 the Gentiles. Eliashib, in the special circum- 
 stances of his day, played essentially the same 
 part as, in a later century, such supreme 
 
 1 Geiger, Urschrifi, 27, 37 ; and his SadducUer md 
 Phansaer. It is not necessary to agree with all the argu- 
 ments by which Geiger supports his derivation of the 
 Sadducees from' the family of Zadok, or with all the 
 conclusions he draws from it. But the derivation itself 
 may be considered proved, so far as such a thesis is 
 capable of proof. 
 
THE STRIFE OF PARTIES. 241 
 
 pontiffs as Jason and Menelans played. The 
 Scribes who opposed him took the same line as 
 those partisans who, long after, under the still 
 honourable name of Pharisee, carried on their 
 traditions, and asserted the claims of religion 
 and patriotism against the shameless selfish- 
 ness of the priestly oligarchs. 
 
 At a day not much later than this, the 
 Scribe is found planted firmly in 'Moses' 
 seat,' unboundedly popular, and exercising 
 an influence which casts that of the priests 
 into the shade. But at the present stage 
 of the conflict opinions and sentiments were 
 not yet fixed, and neither party commanded 
 the full allegiance of the masses. Sopherism 
 was still a comparatively new phenomenon 
 in Jewish society. Ezra's doctrines and 
 principles might still be considered as in- 
 novations. His Book of the Law and his 
 theory of unqualified obedience were to the 
 people things of yesterday, whereas the altar 
 and the hierarchy were as old as the nation 
 itself. The Zadokites had still considerable 
 influence ; they were hereditary keepers of the 
 temple, intermediaries at the altar ; they con- 
 nected the Israel of the present with a historic 
 
 II 
 
 R 
 
242 AFTER THE EXILE. 
 
 past; they represented its most venerable 
 institutions. These priestly rulers of Israel 
 were now showing, in their public and private 
 lives, how little importance they attached to 
 the new doctrines, how far they were from 
 thinking that all those things which Ezra had 
 condemned were evil. Hence confusion in the 
 popular mind, uncertainty as to which guide 
 should be followed ; and, consequent on this, 
 carelessness, sluggishness, indifference of feel- 
 ing, which appeared in neglect equally of the 
 temple and the law. A variety of causes 
 contributed to this falling back of the colony 
 from the point to which it had risen under 
 Nehemiah. The mood of disappointment and 
 depression had been shaken off for the time, 
 but only to return. This was still ' the day of 
 small things.' They had walled Jerusalem, 
 but that did not seem to have greatly bettered 
 their position. Once more a foreign pekhah 
 lorded it over them and laid burdens upon 
 them. They were still a feeble colony, strug- 
 gling for existence in an impoverished land. 
 Drought, blight, and locust spoiled the harvest 
 of field an d vineyard;^ in despair of jhat 
 
 1 Mai. iii. 10, 11. 
 
THE STRIFE OB PARTIES. 243 
 
 divine blessing which had been so often 
 promised and so long withheld, they began to 
 cease from the effort to deserve it. But above 
 all, it was the example of their rulers that 
 demoralised the people. The Zadokites, having 
 themselves 'turned aside out of the way,' 
 had ' caused many to stumble in the Law.' ^ 
 Imitating the laxity of priests and nobles, 
 the people fell back into the courses from 
 which they had vowed to depart for ever : 
 married Gentile women, profaned the Sabbath 
 by buying and selling, and gave up paying 
 tithes and tribute for the support of public 
 worship. 
 
 In the midst of these melancholy changes, 
 which clouded the hopes of the reformers, and 
 tempted good men to ask almost in despair if 
 they had not 'served God in vain'^ — Ezra 
 passed away from the scene of his labours. 
 The year of his death is unknown ; the day is 
 said to have been the ninth of the tenth 
 month, Tebet (December), which the usage of 
 the synagogue consecrated to his memory. 
 As to the place of his death, traditions 
 vary, but almost certainly it took place at 
 
 1 Mai. ii. 8. ^ Mai. iii. 14. 
 
244 AFTER THE EXILE. 
 
 Jerusalem ,1 for Ezra was one of those who 
 fight and labour to the last, and die at their 
 post of duty. According to a legend of later 
 days, he had reached the patriarchal age of a 
 hundred and twenty years, the same age as 
 that recorded of Moses. No doubt he died at 
 an advanced age, for he had probably passed 
 middle life ere he came from Babylon to Judea, 
 and quarter of a century had gone by since 
 then. 
 
 Looking back upon his life-work from the 
 
 1 Josephus {Ani. xi. 5, 5) says that ' Ezra died an old 
 man, and was buried witli great honour at Jerusalem.' This 
 is much more credible than the legend that he left Jerusalem, 
 returned to Persia, and died at a place on the western border 
 of Khuzistan. There- the ' sepulchre of Ezra ' was shown to 
 Benjamin of Tudela, the Jewish traveller of the Middle 
 Ages : — ' From thence (Bassora on the Tigris) it is two days 
 to ... on the river Sanaarra (Shat-el-Arab). This is the 
 frontier of Persia, and contains 1500 Jews. The sepulchre 
 of Ezra the priest and scribe is in this place, where he died 
 on his journey from Jerusalem to King Artaxerxes. In 
 front of the sepulchre a large synagogue and a Mohammedan 
 mosque have been erected, the latter as a mark of the venera- 
 tion in which Ezra is held by the Mohammedans, who are 
 very friendly towards the Jews, and resort thither to pray ' 
 (Itinerary of Eabbi Benjamin, 104). This so-called sepulchre 
 of Ezra, situated on the Tigris, immediately above its junc- 
 tion with the Euphrates, is still a place of pilgrimage to the 
 Jews in the East. 
 
THE STRIFE OF PARTIES. 245 
 
 verge of the grave, Ezra can scarcely have 
 escaped the feeling that all his labours for his 
 people had been scantily rewarded, and that 
 all his efforts to teach and guide them in the 
 truth had met with doubtful success. If the 
 prophet's gaze into the future had been given 
 him, he would have been comforted : he would 
 have seen how enduring a fabric was to be 
 raised on the foundations he had laid, how 
 wonderful a harvest was to be reaped from the 
 field which he had sown. This he could not 
 see ; he was called out of action at a moment 
 when the battle seemed going against him, 
 and the cause to which he had devoted his life 
 stood in apparent jeopardy. One thing only 
 cheered and sustained him — his conviction 
 that the Law was divine, and therefore un- 
 conquerable and imperishable. But for this, 
 his days must have closed in darkness and 
 sorrow. 
 
 No historian has chronicled the death of 
 the founder of Judaism. But his epitaph has 
 been written by one faithful follower, who 
 saw in him the ideal of Priest and Scribe ; 
 and this judgment of a contemporary has been 
 ratified by posterity : — ' He feared God, and 
 
246 AFTER THE EXILE. 
 
 stood in awe of His name : the law of truth 
 was in his mouth, and unrighteousness was 
 not found in his lips : he walked with God in 
 peace and uprightness, and turned many 
 away from iniquity : his lips kept knowledge, 
 and they sought the law at his mouth.' ^ 
 
 1 Mai. ii. 5-7. 
 
CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 Ubc Xast propbet. 
 
 T^HIS conflict which raged between Puritans 
 -*- and Zadokites, during the years of 
 Nehemiah's absence in Persia, brought into 
 the field the last prophet of Israel. Of 
 Malachi's personal history nothing is known. 
 By this time the prophet has ceased to be a 
 man of action, a figure in politics ; he has 
 become a pamphleteer. It is even doubtful 
 whether Malachi gives his name, or veUs his 
 identity under a mere appellative or nom de 
 plumed But there is no doubt as to the 
 
 1 Malachi means ' my messenger.' If not an appellative, 
 it may be a contracted form of the name meaning ' Messenger 
 of Jehovah' (Malachiah). The Septnagint translates i. 1, 
 ' by the hand of his messenger ' (or ' angel.') The Kabbis 
 identified the unknown Malachi now with Ezra, now with 
 Mordecai. As to the time when he prophesied, that was 
 almost certainly the interval between Nehemiah's first and 
 second governorship at Jerusalem. Jewish tradition repre- 
 
248 AFTER THE EXILE. 
 
 position he took up in the controversy of his 
 day, the views he held on the questions at 
 issue, the side that enlisted his sympathy. 
 
 Half a century had passed since the de- 
 livery of Joel's message to Israel. Betweeu 
 Joel and Malachi there had been prophets, or 
 at all events, men who claimed that name and 
 office ; but their words have all passed into 
 oblivion, and probably deserved no better fate. 
 Nehemiah had counted the ' prophets ' among 
 his bitterest enemies; they had done their 
 utmost to thwart his patriotic enterprise ; they 
 had been distinctly anti- Puritan. Malachi 
 represents at once the transition and the ex- 
 tinction of prophecy. In his person, prophecy 
 passes over to the ranks of the sopherim, or 
 the sopherim produce a prophet. His stand- 
 point is clearly defined. He is Puritan and 
 anti-Zadokite. 
 
 sents Malaclii as tlie last prophet. But tlie Talnnidists 
 attribute the gift of prophecy to Ezra ; consequently, they 
 must have considered Malachi to be later than Ezra. From 
 Mai. i. 8 it appears that Nehemiah was not the pekhah at 
 Jerusalem when the prophecy was written. But a compari- 
 son of Malachi's book with the 13th chap, of Nehemiah's 
 shows that identically the same abuses were attacked by the 
 two men ; hence the prophecy may be assigned to the period 
 before Nehemiah's return to Judea. 
 
THE LAST PROPHET. 249 
 
 Among the many strange developments of 
 propliBtism there is nothing to equal this, that 
 its last representative should come forward as 
 the champion of the new order which had 
 already all but extinguished the old. ' A sage 
 outvalues a seer,' says the rabbinical maxim; 
 and this was certainly the opinion of Ezra and 
 his school. The new teachers of Israel made 
 the old teachers superfluous, and indeed im- 
 possible. Prophecy drew breath with increas- 
 ing difficulty in an atmosphere charged with 
 legalism. Finally it was stifled. In Malachi, 
 it appears at the last gasp. 
 
 Both in form and matter, Malachi shows 
 himself a product of the schools. Like Haggai, 
 he has his catchword ; but while Haggai's is 
 Consider, Malachi's is Yet ye say. He is a 
 controversialist, and hits hard. Socrates, who 
 about this same time was making war on the 
 Sophists of Athens, displays no greater mastery 
 of dialectic than Malachi, in his attack on the 
 Zadokites of Jerusalem. He starts his ques- 
 tion, puts an answer in the mouth of an 
 imaginary opponent, then overwhelms him 
 with persiflage, cutting irony, crushing rebuke. 
 His method is unique in its way. Nothing 
 
250 AFTER THE EXILE. 
 
 could be more spirited than his onset; it 
 is the rapid sword-play of a skilled fencer; 
 bout follows bout, with swift thrust and parry 
 of question and answer ; and, at last, the final 
 stroke dealt with deadly effect. 
 
 In matter, no less than in manner, Malachi's 
 disputation suggests the influence of sopherism. 
 The prophets before him had preached catho- 
 licity, had vindicated the rights of the Gentiles 
 to a share in Jewish privileges : Malachi con- 
 demns ' marriage with the daughter of a strange 
 god,' that is, with a Gentile woman, as a 
 treachery and a profanation.^ The prophets 
 before him had been magnificently independ- 
 ent of authority ; they had acknowledged no 
 toToh save their own : Malachi sums up his 
 message in words that are absolutely without 
 precedent in the prophetic writings: — '.Be- 
 memher ye the Torah of Moses My servant, 
 ivhich I commanded unto him in Horeh for 
 all Israel.'^ 
 
 Malachi, reversing the usual order, opens 
 his book with a word of comfort, and closes it 
 with a threat. He would gain the ears of 
 
 1 Mai. ii. 11. 2 Mai. iv. 4. 
 
THK 1.AST PROPHET. 251 
 
 those whom he addresses, and events that had 
 lately taken place on the southern frontier of 
 Judea provided him with' a suitable theme for 
 his exordium. That judgment on Edom fore- 
 told by Obadiah/ and more recently by Joel/ 
 had fallen at last. The Nabatheans, a warlike 
 people of unknown origin, which now made 
 its first appearance on the scene, had invaded 
 the Idumean territories, captured and plundered 
 the ' eagle's nest ' on Seir,^ and driven the sons 
 of Esau from their rocky fastnesses. To 
 Malachi, this was a plain proof that Jehovah 
 ' hated Esau ' ; and, in order to reassure his 
 .countrymen, whom their present fallen state 
 filled with doubts as to whether Jehovah in 
 very truth still 'loved Jacob,' he pointed to 
 what had happened 'beyond the border of 
 Israel.' The 'eternal anger' of Jehovah had 
 been shown against Edom; His eternal love 
 for Jacob would be shown also — was shown 
 already, in this retribution that had overtaken 
 an ancient enemy.* 
 
 After this brief, consolatory preface, Malachi 
 takes up with vigour his parable against a 
 
 1 Obad. ver. 19. 2 joel iii. 19. 
 
 3 Obad. ver. 4. * Mai. i. 2-5. 
 
252 AFTER THE EXILE. 
 
 Sadducean priesthood, rakes them with volley 
 after volley of indignant question and answer, 
 and exposes with merciless plainness of speech 
 their insincerity, their mercenary spirit, their 
 neglect or at best perfunctory discharge of a 
 sacred duty. Here Malachi is at once prophet 
 and scribe. As a prophet, he was the sworn 
 enemy of formalism; and seeing how the 
 hierarchy went about their work— sacrificing 
 without the spirit of sacrifice, performing their 
 ceremonial functions as mere opera operata, 
 dedicating the second best to the altar and 
 keeping the best for themselves — he denounces 
 their irreverence and unreality in the true pro- 
 phetic vein. As a scribe, he held that the 
 priest should be a guide and teacher of the 
 people ; that the hierarchy had a duty higher 
 oven than that of ministering at the altar — 
 the duty of instructing Israel in the Law, and 
 of showing an example of obedience. Hence 
 his picture of the true Priest : a picture taken 
 from the life, and reproducing in trait after 
 trait the lineaments of Ezra.^ This was the 
 man who had truly kept 'the covenant of 
 Levi ' ; and this man the Zadokites of Jeru- 
 
 1 Mai. ii. 5-7. 
 
THE LAST PROPHET 253 
 
 salem, instead of honouring and imitating, 
 had pursued with rancorous enmity to his 
 grave. 
 
 With strokes of pungent satire, in language 
 of telling force, Malachi calls these unworthy 
 sons of Aaron to account. So an Erasmus, a 
 Von Htitten, a Luther, scourged the vices of 
 the papal hierarchy in their time. As with 
 these reformers, it was Malachi's purpose to 
 make the priesthood 'contemptible and base 
 before all the people ' ; ^ nothing short of that 
 could work a reformation. They had brought 
 blemished victims to the altar, counting the 
 lame and the blind — animals that were fit for 
 no other use : that they would not dare to 
 offer to the Persian governor for his table — 
 good enough for the 'table of Jehovah.'^ 
 They had said of their ministry, between a 
 yawn and a sneer, ' What a weariness it is ! ' 
 — they had not even been at the pains to hide 
 from the people their contempt for that service 
 of the temple which they looked upon as a 
 meaningless routine. When such a spirit 
 was manifested by the priests, the custodians 
 of the national worship, it was little wonder 
 
 1 Mai. ii. 9. ^ Mai. i. 8, 13, 14. 
 
2 54 AFTER THE EXILE. 
 
 that the people should fall into neglect of 
 ordinances, that the tithes should be unpaid 
 and the offerings withheld. For this ' robbery 
 of God,' ^ though its guilt was shared by the 
 whole nation, the priesthood must be held 
 mainly accountable, for it was they who had 
 taught the multitude to look on the worship 
 of God as a mere external form. Better, it 
 seemed to Malachi, that the temple gates 
 should be shut, and the fire allowed to die out 
 on the altar, than that this travesty of worship 
 should go on.^ These false priests were them- 
 selves accursed, and were bringing a curse on 
 Israel. They deserved, he told them in the 
 unmeasured violence of his scorn, to have their 
 faces smeared with -the dung of the blemished 
 animals they brought to the altar, and them- 
 selves to be cast out like offal from the 
 sanctuary.^ 
 
 Malachi saw many and grave faults in the 
 laity, as well as in the priesthood. Against 
 the social vices of the time, against perjury, 
 avarice and injustice,* his warning voice is 
 raised ; but with even greater emphasis, with 
 
 1 Mai. iii. 8. ^ Mai. i. 10. 
 
 s Mai. ii. 3. * Mai. iii. 5. 
 
THE LAST PROPHET. 255 
 
 an even keener sense of Israel's impiety and 
 infidelity, he inveighs against the fresh growth 
 of an old scandal — the practice of marrying 
 Gentile women, 'daughters of strange gods.'^ 
 ' This ye do again ! ' — he cries reproachfully. 2 
 After all the lessons of the past, after all the 
 efforts of Ezra and the reformers to eradicate 
 this evil, after the engagement solemnly 
 entered into by the people, such a relapse, to 
 a man holding the views that Malachi held, 
 seemed a portentous sign of the times. It 
 was a ' profanation of the covenant,' for which 
 the guilty man, whoever he might be — were 
 he the highest in the land — deserved to be 
 ' cut off out of the tents of Jacob.' ^ In an 
 obscure and ambiguous passage,* which lends 
 itself to several interpretations, Malachi seems 
 to point to some notorious scandal in Jewish 
 society at that time, some glaring case of 
 immorality and wrong. A Hebrew wife had 
 been divorced in favour of a more youthful 
 rival ; possibly some prince of the church 
 may have been the sinner, and a Gentile 
 woman the partner in his guilt. That 
 
 T- Mai. ii. 11. 2 jjjy 13 
 
 3 Ibid. 12. ^ Ibid. 11-16. 
 
256 AFTER THE EXILE. 
 
 either priest or layman should take a foreign 
 woman into his home was, in this prophet's 
 eyes, an offence of the most heinous kind ; it 
 was aggravated, if that were possible, by the 
 fact that a daughter of Jacob had been cast 
 out to make way for such an interloper. The 
 inhumanity, no less than the impiety, of such 
 conduct drew from Malachi a nobly indignant 
 protest. Jehovah, he assured the culprit, 
 would stand as witness between him and the 
 wife of his youth whom he had betrayed, dis- 
 carded. So long as the tears of a wronged 
 woman fell upon the altar, no sacrifice offered 
 there would be acceptable to the God of Israel. 
 For the men of his own party, also— the 
 men who had lost their leader in Ezra— 
 Malachi has a word of warning. They were 
 in deep despondency. All their reforming 
 energy seemed to have been thrown away, all 
 their teaching seemed never to have reached 
 below the surface. Heart and hope failed 
 them, and in this mood they were tempted to 
 challenge the divine justice— in too 'bold 
 words, '^ to complain that their fidelity and 
 zeal had bee n poorly rewarded. ' Ev ery^ 
 
 1 Mai. iii. 13. 
 
THE LAST PROPHET. 257 
 
 that doeth evil is good in the sight of 
 Jehovah'^ — they had said, as they saw their 
 enemies exultant in prosperity and power. 
 ' Where is the God of judgment ? '—they had 
 asked, as still no sign of Heaven's wrath was 
 manifested against those who had despised the 
 covenant. ' Now we call the proud happy ; 
 yea, they that work wickedness are built up ; 
 yea, they tempt God, and are delivered ' : Mt 
 was the ' trouble of Asaph,' that may lead to 
 scepticism and despair. 
 
 Malachi had shown himself a fearless as- 
 sailant of the Sadducean tendencies of the 
 priesthood ; he was more gentle, but not in 
 reality more tolerant, towards the Pharisaism 
 in germ which appeared in those muttered 
 complaints of the Puritans. He heard them 
 saying that to serve God was vain ; that their 
 scrupulous obedience had been unrequited; that 
 all their fasting and wearing of sackcloth had 
 profited them , nothing. ^ Already, it would 
 seem, Pharisaism had begun to make broad its 
 phylacteries and to enlarge the borders of its 
 garments ; and such manifestations of the 
 hireling spirit, such boasts of scrupulosity, 
 
 1 Mai. ii. 17. ^ Ma1. iii. 15. s m^^ 14^ 
 
 II S 
 
258 AFTER THE EXILE. 
 
 pained the propliet scarcely less than the iu- 
 differentism and materialism of the Zadokites. 
 He sternly condemned this ' speaking against 
 Jehovah ' ; at the same time, he sought to 
 revive the confidence of those who, with all 
 their faults, were truly the hope of Israel. 
 God's judgment, he assured them, was a 
 certainty of the future, near or far; a distinc- 
 tion would at last be made between the 
 righteous and the wicked ; the wicked would 
 be burned up like faggots in the furnace, and 
 the righteous would trample their ashes under 
 foot. ^ They that ' feared the name of Jehovah ' 
 naight be in darkness for the time. But the 
 darkness would pass ; the day would break ; 
 and for them the sun of righteousness would 
 rise with healing in its wings. ^ 
 
 Malachi shows himself deeply impressed by 
 the apparent rottenness of the social state of 
 Judea in his day. The reform movement, 
 from which so much had been expected, 
 seemed to have come to nothing ; the people, 
 after welcoming the Torah and vowing obedi- 
 ence, were now living in open violation of its 
 .commands ; against a careless priesthood, a 
 1 Mul. iv. 3. 2 /j/c(_ 2. 
 
THE LAST PROPHET 259 
 
 selfish aristocracy, and a populace that allowed 
 itself to be led like sheep by these false 
 shepherds, was ranged a handful of devout 
 and earnest men, who might protest and 
 appeal, but were powerless to take any kind of 
 action. Ezra was gone, and there was no man 
 on whom his mantle had fallen — none to fill the 
 commanding place he had held in the eyes of 
 his countrymen. It seemed to Malachi that 
 nothing short of a divine judgment, more 
 awful than any that had been before, could 
 regenerate that foolish and sinful people. He 
 also, like Joel, looked forward to a ' day of 
 Jehovah ' ; but while Joel's ' day ' was to be 
 one of blessing on Israel and vengeance on the 
 heathen, ^ Malachi's was to be a 'great and 
 terrible day,' ^ a day that ' burned as a 
 furnace,' ^ and it was Israel, not the heathen, 
 that was to be scorched with the avenging 
 flame. What the age needed was a great 
 Prophet : greater by far than himself, the 
 belated prophet of that day : greater than any 
 that had risen up since the Exile. That great 
 Prophet . must take on hand the work of 
 
 1 Hufra, vol. i. p. 246. ^ j^jg,!. iy_ 5. 
 
 3 im. 1. 
 
26o AFTER THE EXILE. 
 
 reforming Israel, which, no other man could 
 accomplish. He must be one who showed 
 his power in deeds, and not merely in words, 
 like the seers of the ' day of small things.' He 
 must come as a messenger, no longer of jnercy, 
 but of judgment, Malachi's sense of the evils 
 of his time is shown by the choice he makes, 
 from amongst all the mighty figures of the 
 past, of the man best fitted to act as 
 saviour of society. It was the savage solitary 
 of Carmel— the ' prophet of fire,' as the Son 
 of Sirach calls him, ' whose word burned like 
 a torch '^ — that was to come again; a new 
 Elijah ^ to rise up in the midst of an apostate 
 people. This startling announcement closes 
 Malachi's book, and the cycle of Hebrew 
 prophecy. 
 
 1 Ecclus. xlviii. 1. ^ Mai. iv. 5; 
 
CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 IRebemfab anb tbe Xa^oMtcs. 
 
 ^HE death of Ezra had deprived the Puritan 
 -L party of its head, and left the field clear 
 for the High Priest and his faction. One man 
 still remained who, to a certain extent, might 
 fill the place of the lost leader of reform ; but 
 he was far away, he was not master of his 
 own movements, and a return of Nehemiah to 
 Jerusalem was probably neither hoped for by 
 the Puritans nor dreaded by the Zadokites. 
 
 As Nehemiah's enforced absence from Jeru- 
 salem by no means diminished his interest in 
 the fortunes of his people, or in the results of 
 his labours for their good, it may be supposed 
 that he kept himself informed of what took 
 place in Judea, and so was made aware of the 
 changes that had come about since his depart- 
 ure. Any hope still cherished by the reformers 
 
262 AFTER THE EXILE. 
 
 centred in the person of Nehemiah. He was 
 not an Elijah ; but he was a man of proved 
 courage and zeal, adored by the people, and 
 able, if any one was able, to strip the dominant 
 faction of its power. To him the thoughts of 
 Ezra's followers naturally turned, and their 
 longing for his presence may possibly have 
 been conveyed to him in a message. Malachi 
 tells how 'the righteous' of that day, those 
 that ' feared Jehovah/ ' spake often together ' ^ 
 — met for mutual comfort and encouragement ; 
 and from these conciliabules of the Puritans 
 may have proceeded the tidings and the appeal 
 that brought Nehemiah back to the land of 
 his fathers. 
 
 When or how he obtained permission from 
 King Artaxerxes to return, his memoirs, so 
 far as these are extant, leave untold.^ Appar- 
 
 1 Mai. iii. 16. 
 
 ^ In their original form, the memoirs no doubt explained 
 this and other matters, which their editor did not consider 
 worth preserving. Something has evidently been cut out 
 before xiii. 4 ; the words, ' Now before this,' do not refer to 
 what is stated in xiii. 1-3, but to the contents of a lost 
 passage which came from Nehemiah's pen. As to the length 
 of the interval between his first and second governorship, 
 the only statement is that he obtained the king's leave to 
 return 'after certain days' (xiii. 6). This may mean after 
 
NEHEMIAH AND THE ZADOKITES. 263 
 
 ently the court was resident at Babylon^ when 
 he again craved the boon that liad been granted 
 before, and on this occasion with the same 
 success. From the Persian capital on the 
 Euphrates he travelled swiftly to Judea ; and 
 almost before the citizens had word of his 
 coming, had taken up his quarters once more 
 in the ' house of the pekhah ' at Jerusalem. 
 
 The presence of this one man in the midst 
 of Jewish society changed the balance of 
 parties in a day. Not only his official posi- 
 tion as .Governor, but also his energy and 
 determination of character, made Nehemiah a 
 powerful friend or a formidable opponent. 
 The rejoicing of the Puritans, the consterna- 
 tion of the Zadokites, at his unlooked-for 
 reappearance on the scene, may be imagined, 
 
 either a year or several years had passed ; probably the 
 latter, as the changes at Jerusalem must have taken some 
 time to develop. If the 'mixed marriages' referred to in 
 xiii. 23, 24 were contracted since Nehemiah's departure, 
 evidently some years must have passed between then and his 
 return. He left Judea in 433 ; Artaxerxes Longhand died 
 in 424. Probably the fourth or fifth year before the close 
 of the reign was that of Nehemiah's second coming to Jeru- 
 , salem. 
 
 1 So Eeuss infers from the circumstance that in xiii. 6 
 Artaxerxes is styled ' King of Babylon.' 
 
264 AFTER THE EXILE. 
 
 It would scarcely be strange if men saw in his 
 return a speedy fulfilment of Malaclii's predic- 
 tion — if they identified Nehemiah with that 
 'messenger of the covenant' whose sudden 
 coming the prophet had foretold. This was 
 the man in whom the people 'delighted';' 
 the man who was to ' purify the sons of Levi ' 
 — to correct the Zadokites with an unsparing 
 hand ; who was to ' sit as a refiner and purifier 
 of silver ' ; to do his office thoroughly, ' like a 
 refiner's fire and like fuller's soap.'^ The 
 temper in which Nehemiah approached his 
 task corresponded perfectly with those predic- 
 tions. He was in no mood to deal gently with 
 opponents, or to show any respect for an author- 
 ity that had been abused, He was prepared 
 to ' burn ' and to ' scour ' wherever the need of 
 these operations appeared. All round him he 
 saw the wreck of the reforms on which he 
 had; spent twelve long and laborious years. 
 The walls were still standing, but almost 
 everything else had been overthrown. His 
 old enemies, Sanballat and Tobijah, were still 
 alive and active ; they had renewed their alli- 
 ance with noble and chief-priestl y families at 
 
 1 Mai. iii. 1. ^ IbxL 2, 3. 
 
NEHEMIAH AND THE ZADOKITES. 265 
 
 Jerusalem ; the evils whicli he had thought up- 
 rooted had sprung up as rankly as ever. His 
 anger was no doubt mainly that of the zealot 
 and patriot, who sees religion dishonoured and 
 the fatherland betrayed ; but mingled with it 
 there was not a little of the indignation 
 of the natural man, a keen sense of per- 
 sonal wrong, for he had given the best years 
 of his life, had spent strength and fortune 
 without stint, in building up what those false 
 priests and selfish nobles had been engaged in 
 pulling down. The task of ruling and mould- 
 iug the Jewish people had worn out the patience 
 of Moses ; and Nehemiah was far from being 
 the meekest of men. The Zadokites had reason 
 to quake with fear, as they saw his frowning 
 face and met his questioning eye. 
 
 A scandal of the most flagrant kind, in 
 which the High Priest Eliashib was directly 
 concerned, called for his immediate interfer- 
 ence. The High Priest was connected by 
 marriage with Tobijah the Ammonite,^ and in 
 
 1 How, is not stated, but possibly througb the marriage 
 of the daughter of the Zadokite Meshnllam ben Berechiah 
 with Jehohanan, the son of Tobijah (Neh..vi. 18). Those 
 chief- priestly families of Jerusalem were all closely allied 
 with each other by intermarriage. 
 
266 AFTER THE EXILE. 
 
 order to oblige this distinguished relative, had 
 thrown a number of the small store-rooms 
 built round the temple courts into one large 
 apartment, where Tobijah took up his residence 
 on the occasions of his visits to Jerusalem. 
 These rooms had formerly been used for the 
 storage of flour and frankincense for the offer- 
 ings, and of the tithes of grain, wine, and oil. 
 All these things, which their use rendered 
 sacred, had been cleared out to make room for 
 Tobijah's furniture.^ Nehemiah, making dis- 
 covery of this scandal, was thrown into a tower- 
 ing passion. That a Gentile should be lodged 
 in the very courts of the sanctuary was bad 
 enough ; but that such honour should be done 
 to an arch-enemy of his own, one of the men 
 who had constantly thwarted his eflforts and 
 even conspired against his life, was simply 
 intolerable. The High Priest, in virtue of his 
 office, was 'keeper of the courts';^ but the 
 Governor had an authority which superseded 
 that of any native dignitary, even the highest : 
 the supreme pontiff of Israel must bow before 
 this layman who represented the Great King. 
 Nehemiah did not stand upon ceremony, or 
 
 1 Neh. xiii. 5. 2 i}^_ 4 . Zech. iii. 7. 
 
NEHEMTAH AND THE ZADOKITES. 267 
 
 waste time in words. The furniture of the 
 Ammonite chief was pitched out of window 
 like so much rubbish ; the chamber which his 
 presence had defiled was purified ; the parti- 
 tions were set up again, and the temple stores 
 brought back to their place. ^ It was a public 
 humiliation of the Zadokites. They had 
 removed the sacred offerings to give house- 
 room to an Ammonite. Only after a lustra- 
 tion, which marked a layman's sense of the 
 impiety of the priesthood, would Nehemiah 
 allow those desecrated chambers to be restored 
 to their original use. 
 
 Immediately after this, Nehemiah had to 
 take on hand once more the task of reorganising 
 the hierarchy and the temple service. A care- 
 less priesthood had naturally made a careless 
 people, and the systematic payment of tithes 
 and offerings, established by Ezra and himself, 
 had been allowed to lapse during his absence. 
 The Levites and choristers, no longer supported 
 at the public expense, had been obliged to 
 leave Jerusalem and betake them to their 
 fields to earn a livelihood ; ^ and the temple 
 ritual, in the absence of those necessary 
 
 ^ Nell. xiii. 8, 9. ^ Vn^- 10. 
 
268 AFTER THE EXILE. 
 
 ministrants, had fallen into neglect and decay. 
 Nehemiah called together an assembly of chief 
 priests and Notables to consider this state of 
 affairs. They durst not disregard his summons, 
 however they might shrink from the charges 
 and reproaches to which they had laid them- 
 selves open. ' Why is the house of Godfor- 
 saken?' — was his stern question. They had 
 no answer, no defence to make. ' We will not 
 forsake the hotise of our God,' had been the 
 closing pledge of the covenant; that pledge 
 they had shamefully broken, and they stood 
 tongue-tied before their judge. A word from 
 Nehemiah did at once what all Malachi's 
 tirades had been unable to do : the pekhah 
 had more power in those days than the 
 prophet. The Levites and choristers who had 
 been forced to turn husbandmen were brought 
 back from their fields, and set to their proper 
 work as servants of the sanctuary.' A rota- 
 tion of priests and Levites was arranged, so 
 that henceforth there might be no break in the 
 continuity of the national worship.^ The law 
 of tithes was once more strictly enforced ; and 
 to guard against carelessness in the future, 
 
 1 Neh. xiii. 11. 2 Ibid. 30. 
 
NEHEMIAH AND THE ZADOKITES. 269 
 
 the duty of collecting and distributing the 
 tithes was entrusted to a commission of four — 
 one priest, one scribe, and two Levites — all 
 'faithful men,'^ that is, adherents of the 
 Grovernor's party. 
 
 The matter of Sabbath observance next 
 claimed Nehemiah's attention. This gave him 
 more trouble than the re-establishment of the 
 cultus. Old custom had proved itself stronger 
 here than the new law : in spite of Ezra's 
 reforms, in violation of the covenant, the 
 sacred day was still kept in Judea with what, 
 to a man of the Golah like Nehemiah, seemed 
 criminal laxity, enough in itself to bring down 
 Heaven's wrath upon Israel. Everywhere the 
 signs of Sabbath desecration met his offended 
 eye. Passing through the country districts 
 in the season of vintage, he saw the people 
 busy trampling their grapes on this as on 
 other days. On the road to Jerusalem, on the 
 Sabbath day, he saw strings of asses laden 
 with sacks of grain,^ wine-skins, bunches of 
 
 1 Neh. xiii. 1 3. 
 
 2 IUSl. 15. Not 'sheaves,' as in R.V., for the grain 
 was threshed before the vintage season ; but, as in margin, 
 ' heaps of corn ' — presumably in sacks, for transport. 
 
2 70 AFTER THE EXILE. 
 
 ._ 1 
 
 grapes and figs, and other produce for the 
 market. In Jerusalem itself, Tyrian mer- 
 chants set up their booths and spread out 
 their glittering wares ; Tyriau hawkers of 
 dried fish plied their trade ; the people 
 crowded to buy, and all the hubbub of an 
 Oriental mart, the chaffering and crying up 
 of goods and beating down of prices, destroyed 
 utterly the solemn quiet that should have 
 brooded over the holy city on the holy day.^ 
 
 Nehemiah tells how he first went down 
 into the market-place, where both townsfolk 
 and countryfolk were congregated, and sharply 
 rebuked them for their sin of Sabbath-breaking. 
 The people stood in awe of their Governor, 
 who they knew was not a man to be trifled 
 with ; but they did not understand or sym- 
 pathise with his rigorous legalism ; the foreign 
 traders still made their way into Jerusalem, 
 and the citizens still yielded to temptation, 
 and bought of them. Then Nehemiah called 
 the Notables together, and bitterly upbraided 
 them for their fault in allowing this abuse to 
 go on unchecked. Evidently he had in his 
 mind that passage in Jeremiah, where the 
 
 ^ Neh. xiii. 16. 
 
NEHEMIAH AND THE ZADOKITES. 271 
 
 prophet pronounces woe upon his generation 
 if they neglect to 'hallow the Sabbath day,' 
 and continue to ' bring in burdens by the gates 
 of Jerusalem.'-' ' What an evil is this that ye 
 do,' he exclaimed, ' in profaning the Sabbath 
 day ! ' It was this very thing that had 
 brought down God's wrath upon their fathers 
 and destruction upon Jerusalem. Did they 
 mean to provoke another chastisement ? 
 "Would they never take to heart the lesson of 
 the past ? ^ 
 
 Whether or not this reprimand and warning 
 had the desired effect, Nehemiah does not say. 
 But apparently he came to the conclusion 
 that if this reform was to be carried out, 
 he must himself take action ; that if the 
 people would not ' hallow the Sabbath ' out of 
 reverence, they must be made to do it by 
 force. So long as the Phoenician traders werfe 
 admitted into the city, the citizens would be 
 tempted to buy from them ; and accordingly 
 he issued an order that the gates should be 
 closed from the Friday at sundown, when the 
 deepening shadows in the gateways told that 
 the Sabbath had begun, to the Saturday at sun- 
 
 1 Jer. xvii. 21, 27. ^ Heh. xiii. 17, 18. 
 
272 AFTER THE EXILE. 
 
 down, wlien the Sabbath was over. To make 
 sure that this was done, and that no person 
 bearing any burden was allowed to pass 
 through, he posted at each gate men of his 
 retinue — presumably Persian soldiers, who 
 thus found a singular employment in con- 
 straining the Jews to observe their own law. 
 These measures proved effective, at any rate 
 for the time. The Tyrian merchants, loth to 
 lose their trade, gathered outside the walls, 
 set up their booths, and sought to attract 
 customers from the city, Nehemiah warned 
 these Gentiles that if they persisted in the 
 attempt to evade his orders, he would lay 
 violent hands oh them and their goods ; and, 
 knowing the Governor of Judea to be a man of 
 his word, they departed, and came no more.-' 
 . Nehemiah was satisfied that in putting 
 down this Sabbath trading he had effected a 
 really great reform, and done a thing well- 
 pleasing to God.^ In reality, he had merely 
 checked a particular abuse by the exercise of his 
 
 1 Neh. xiii. 19-22. The sense of 22a is obscure. 
 Possibly it. may mean that the Levites, ceremonially puri- 
 fied for the purpose, had the duty of proceeding to each gate, 
 and solemnly announcing that the Sabbath had begun. 
 
 2 Ihid. 22b. 
 
NEHEMIAH AND THE ZADOKITES. 273 
 
 authority as civil governor. He could make 
 the people obey him, but he could not make 
 them love and reverence the Law which ho 
 enforced ; and it was certain that, until and 
 unless they came to reverence the Law in 
 their hearts, the Tyrian traders would be 
 invited back to Jerusalem, as soon as his 
 police was removed from the gates. Ezra's 
 was the truer method of reform, though its 
 results might appear more tardily. To work 
 on the feelings of the people, to touch their 
 conscience, was not within the range of 
 Nehemiah's powers. During his first term of 
 office, with Ezra for a colleague, he had done 
 yeoman's service to the reform cause. After- 
 wards, he had to stand alone. He had to play 
 Ezra's part without Ezra's gifts ; and the 
 attempt, though made with admirable energy 
 and honesty of purpose, was almost certain to 
 end in failure and disappointment. 
 
 11 
 
CHAPTER XV. 
 
 Zbc IRenegabe priest. 
 
 T?ZRA had begun his career as a reformer 
 ■'-^ by an attempt to abolish that practice 
 of intermarriage with Gentiles, which he 
 looked upon as contrary to the intention of 
 the Law, and fatal to the development of 
 Judaism. More than thirty years after, 
 Nehemiah is found battling against the same 
 evil ; the same struggle that opens Ezra's 
 career closes his, so far at least as it stands on 
 record. Nothing could show more plainly 
 with what reluctance the Jewish people gave 
 up old habits of life at the bidding of new 
 teachers, what a force of inertia the reformers 
 had to overcome, and how little encouraging 
 were the results that their day of labour 
 showed. 
 
 Nehemiah, coming back to Judea, found to 
 
THE RENEGADE PRIEST. 275 
 
 his grief and horror that the question of 
 'mixed marriages,' so far from being settled 
 as he had supposed, stood as much in need of 
 settlement as ever. The taint had spread 
 through all classes of society ; high and low, 
 noble and peasant, had broken this first article 
 of the covenant, and again brought foreign 
 women into Jewish homes. On this point 
 Nehemiah was a fanatic. The spirit of his 
 dead master survived in him ; his zeal was the 
 zeal of Ezra. But the two men, though alike 
 in their views, were in temperament very 
 different, and the difference appeared in their 
 ways of handling this thorny question. Ezra 
 weeps, supplicates, fasts, lies prone and silent 
 on the earth. Nehemiah storms, curses, 
 smites, drives the offenders from his presence, 
 hurls them out of the community. 
 
 Making some tour of inspection through 
 his province, Nehemiah found out that a 
 number of Jews had married women of 
 Ashdod, of Ammon, and of Moab ; and that 
 their children had been brought up to speak, 
 not Hebrew, but the foreign tongues of their 
 foreign mothers.^ He had the culprits brought 
 
 1 Neh. xiii. 23, 24. The Philistine (Ashdodite), 
 
276 AFTER THE EXILE. 
 
 before him. They were probably simple 
 countrymen, dwelling in some outlying part 
 of Judea, too remote from Jerusalem to have 
 been much affected by the reform movement 
 at any of its stages. They stood before the 
 Governor, no doubt wondering what he had to 
 say to them. Nehemiah began, with his 
 usual vigour of language, to read ' them a 
 lecture, pointing out the heinousness of their 
 offence : then, all at once — possibly, provoked 
 by the stolidity of his audience — blazed out in 
 uncontrollable anger, struck the men who 
 stood within reach of his hand, tore their 
 hair and beards, and overwhelmed them with 
 
 Moabite, and Ammonite tongues were Semitic, and not 
 radically distinct from the Hebrew : no mention is ever 
 made in tlie Old Testament of the need of an interpreter 
 between Jews and any of those peoples. Hence when Nehe- 
 miah says that these children ' could not speak in the Jews' 
 language,' he probably means that they vised a patoisi in- 
 stead of the pure Hebrew dialect (Bertheau-Ryssel, 354). 
 Ifttermarriage with the Philistines was particularly dangerous ' 
 to Jewish nationality, as that people had spread from its 
 native coasts all over Judea ; the name Palestine is itself a 
 sufficient proof of their numbers and influence. The 
 Talmudists declared the marriage of a Jew with a Philistine 
 woman to be no marriage at all ; and the offspring of such 
 unions were branded with the name of mamzer or ' bastard ' : 
 cp. Zech. ix. 6: — 'And a bastard (rnam?ier) shall dwell in 
 Ashdod.' 
 
THE RENEGADE PRIEST. 277 
 
 fierce reproaches.'' Had not Solomon, he asked 
 them, been led into sin by ' strange women ' ? 
 Were they wiser or stronger than Solomon, 
 that they could do with impunity what had 
 been fatal to that great king ? ^ Let them 
 swear by the sacred Name to give up this 
 guilty custom, this great evil, this oflfence 
 against God ! — The terrified rustics were only 
 too glad to take the oath, and to escape with 
 all speed from the presence of the furious 
 Governor. 
 
 Scenes scarcely less violent took place at 
 Jerusalem between Nehemiah and members of 
 the priestly aristocracy, over this question 
 which once more convulsed Jewish society. 
 A number of the Zadokites were married to 
 foreign wives. The prevailing sentiment in 
 chief-priestly circles at Jerusalem was by no 
 means adverse to such unions, and men who 
 had entered into them continued to exercise 
 their sacred functions, unchallenged by any 
 ecclesiastical authority. Possibly the Zadok- 
 ites, in their obstinate resistance to this 
 particular reform, may have defended them- 
 selves out of the Law. Ezra's demand for 
 
 1 Nell. xiii. 25. 2 /jj^. ag. 
 
2 78 AFTER THE EXILE. 
 
 the dissolution of all alien marriages, without 
 discrimination of cases, had been based on 
 tradition, rather than on law ; it was an 
 innovation, and as such might be rejected by 
 a Sadducean priesthood. But Nehemiah would 
 hear of no defence, and enter into no argument. 
 It was enough for him that Ezra had con- 
 demned those marriages, that they imperilled 
 the sacred principle of nationality, that Israel 
 had covenanted to abolish them; and the 
 princes of the church, no less than the humble 
 peasantry, must be taught their duty and 
 forced to obey. 
 
 The arch-offender among the Zadokites was 
 Manasseh ben Joiada, a grandson of Eliashib 
 the High Priest, who had married the daughter 
 of Nehemiah's ancient enemy, Sanballat the 
 Horonite. This alliance was naturally odious 
 to Nehemiah, on personal grounds ; but what 
 moved his anger most was the thought that 
 a member of the High Priest's family, a man 
 who might himself fall heir to the pontificate, 
 should have been so lost to a sense of the 
 sacredness of his office as to wed a foreign 
 woman, princess and proselyte though she 
 might be. He had ' defiled the priesthood ' ; 
 
THE RENEGADE PRIEST. 279 
 
 he had broken the ' covenant of Levi ' ; ho 
 deserved no mercy. Very briefly, almost, it 
 would seem, unwillingly, Nehemiah sets down 
 this, the most painful episode in his career. 
 There was a stormy interview ; the fiery 
 Governor insisted on an immediate divorce ; 
 the erring priest refused. Nehemiah drove 
 the rebel from his presence; and, making an 
 unsparing use of that secular power with 
 which he had been armed by a Gentile king, 
 stripped him of his priestly rank, and banished 
 him from the community.^ 
 
 1 Nell. xiii. 28. The account given by Josephus {AnU 
 xi. 8, 2) of the origin of the Samaritan schism is in sub- 
 stantial agreement with Nehemiah's brief allusion. Manasseh, 
 a brother of the Jewish High Priest, has married Nicaso, 
 Sanballat's daughter ; is forbidden to ' come near the altar ' 
 unless he consents to divorce his foreign wife ; refuses, is 
 banished, and takes refuge in Samaria. Sanballat promises 
 to ' procure for him the power and dignity of a high priest,' 
 and to ' build him a temple like to that at Jerusalem, upon 
 Mount Gerizim, the highest of all the mountains in Samaria.' 
 This, according to Josephus, took place about a century later 
 than Nehemiah's time, in the days of Alexander the Great. If 
 this were .so, it would be necessary to suppose that after an 
 interval of a hundred years, there was another Samaritan 
 prince, also named Sanballat, who also had a daughter married 
 to a member of the Jewish high-priestly house, and whose 
 son-in-law also was ostracised in consequence. This is barely 
 credible ; and it may be supposed that Josephus is right in 
 
28o AFTER THE EXILE. 
 
 This was the most important act of 
 Nehemiah's life. It had far-reaching conse- 
 quences. The proscribed Manasseh fled at 
 once to Samaria, and found an asylum with 
 his powerful father-in-law. Sanballat, after 
 years of waiting and scheming, had at last his 
 reward. By marrying his daughter to a mem- 
 ber of the Jewish high-priestly house, he had 
 hoped to carry out his plan of a religious 
 coalition between Jews and Samaritans— to 
 obtain that ' portion and right ' in Jerusalem 
 and its temple for which he had fought, and 
 plotted, and sued, hitherto in vain. The son- 
 in-law to whom he had looked for help in 
 carrying out his policy had come to him as a 
 fugitive and an outlaw. But in the very 
 event that seemed the ruin of his hopes and 
 schemes, the Samaritan prince saw his oppor- 
 tunity. The Jews might keep their temple, 
 since they would not share it. He would 
 
 his facts, but wrong in his dates, as he generally is through- 
 out this period. Stade notes that by the time of Alexander 
 the Great, in which Josephus sets the origin of the Samaritan 
 schism, there is no further sign of controversy as to 'mixed 
 marriages ' in Judea ; also, that the Samaritan community 
 seems to have been firmly organised long before Alexander's 
 day {Gesch. des Volkes Israel, ii. 190). 
 
THE RENEGADE PRIEST. 
 
 build a rival sanctuary. He would found a 
 rival worship. He would endow a rival prie'st- 
 hood, and Manasseh, a descendant of Aaron 
 and of Zadok, should be the first High Priest 
 of Samaria. Thiis he would talie his revenge 
 on those who had scornfully rejected his 
 proffers of friendship ; and at tlie same time 
 secure for his countrymen what they needed 
 to make them a nation, to give tJiem unity 
 and vitality — a religion : the religion of Israel. 
 A singular combination of circumstances 
 favoured this ambitious project. Manasseh 
 ben Joiada did not come alone to Samaria ; 
 he brought with him, or was followed b}'", a 
 number of the Bene Zadok, who had fallen 
 under the same condemnation as himself, and 
 who chose to leave* their country rather than 
 submit to the yoke which Nehemiah sought 
 to fasten upon them.^ These schismatics 
 
 ^ Josephus states tliat many of the priests and Levites of 
 Jerusalem, who had married Gtentile women, joined in 
 Manasseh's revolt, and sought refuge with him in Samaria, 
 where they were welcomed by Sanhallat, and liberally pro- 
 vided with money, houses, and lands. This is confirmed by 
 Neh. xiii. 29 — 'Remember them, ... for thdr defiling of 
 the priesthood.' Apparently not one, but many, were guilty. 
 By ' defilement ' Nehemiah probably means the sin of schism, 
 rather than that of ' mixed marriaqe.' 
 
AFTER THE EXILE. 
 
 furnished the new cult with a hierarchy, ready- 
 made. They brought with them from Jeru- 
 salem the Book of the Law — the Pentateuch, iii 
 the form which Ezra had given it ; and this, 
 with some slight modification, became the 
 sacred literature of the Samaritans, the basis 
 of their religious and social life. But it was 
 in his possession of a site for the new temple 
 of Jehovah that Sanballat was most fortunate. 
 In the very centre of the land of Palestine, jn 
 Samaritan territory, there was a mountain 
 hallowed by old tradition, a place where 
 worship had been ofiered in the most ancient 
 times. Close by Shechem — the domain of the 
 patriarch Jacob, where the bones of Joseph 
 lay — rose Mount Gerizim, on which the bless- 
 ing had been put,^ and from which the blessing 
 had been, spoken.^ This became the holy hill 
 of the Samaritans. They claimed for it a 
 sanctity superior to that of Mount Moriah, and 
 where the Mosaic books failed to substantiate 
 the claim, they did not scruple to put a gloss 
 on the text, or even to alter it. Gerizim was 
 the ' Mountain of Blessing,' in the sense that 
 the blessing of Jehovah was to go forth from 
 
 1 Deut. xi. 29. ^ Yi!!.^x\.. xxvii. 12 ; Josh. viii. 33. 
 
THE RENEGADE PRIEST. 283 
 
 it for all time. Passages which pointed to a 
 future choice of a sanctuary were made, by a 
 change of tense, to prove that from the first 
 Jehovah had chosen Gerizim as His earthly 
 dwelling-place.^ It was on this mountain, 
 and not, as the Jewish Torah alleged, on the 
 neighbouring Ebal, that Joshua had erected 
 his altar of mortared stones.^ Tradition lent 
 its aid in exalting the claims of Gerizim. 
 This was the mountain which the Deluge had 
 left uncovered. This was the mountain on 
 which Abraham had set up his altar, and pre- 
 pared to sacrifice his son. 
 
 On the rounded top of Gerizim Sanballat 
 built his temple, of which the broken pillars 
 stand to this day. The date of its erection is 
 unknown ; probably it was not until after the 
 death of Artaxerxes, in 424 B.C., that the 
 worship on Gerizim was actually organised. 
 Sanballat's was a unique achievement; he 
 stands alone in history as the purloiner of a 
 religion. The result justified the prevision of 
 this remarkable man, who had clung with such 
 dogged resolution to his purpose, and had at 
 last succeeded. Settled in the territories of 
 
 ^ 'E.g. Deut. xii. 5 ; xiv. 24. ^ Dent, xxvii. 4, 5. 
 
284 AFTER THE EXILE. 
 
 ancient Ephraim, leavened with, such remnants 
 of the Ten Tribes as the Assyrian had left 
 behind, the motley population of Samaria 
 needed only the worship of Jehovah in order 
 to feel themselves and call themselves ' children 
 of Joseph.' Something of the wonderful 
 tenacity and vitality of the Jewish race passed 
 over to the Samaritans, along with the Jewish 
 religion. The temple on Gerizim, as Sanballat 
 had intended, became the centre of a true 
 national life. The worship of Jehovah, the 
 rites and institutions of Mosaism, its festivals 
 and symbols, welded together that Strange 
 medley of tribes and peoples, the sweepings of 
 all the East. Their temple, after standing for 
 tbree hundred years, was destroyed ;^ but their 
 religion, like that of the Jews, outlived their 
 temple. The Holy Mountain could not be taken 
 from them: they still prayed with their faces 
 turned towards it ; an altar still stood on its 
 summit, and sacrifice was stilL offered there. 
 Passing away as a nation, they survived as a 
 sect. Wave after wave of conquest and persecu- 
 tion went over them; Greek, Jew, Eoman, Arab, 
 Crusader, Turk — maltreated them in turn. 
 
 1 By the Jews under Hyrcanus, in 120 b.c. 
 
THE RENEGADE PRIEST. 285 
 
 But the worship established by Sanballat, and 
 the line of High Priests founded by Manasseh, 
 in the fifth century before Christ, lived on 
 through all vicissitudes, and have come down- 
 to the present day. -^ 
 
 The. Samaritan schism had a most potent 
 influence on the development of Judaism— an 
 influence which, if it did not appear in Nehe- 
 miah's day, at all events appeared not much 
 later. The immediate consequence of the 
 schism - was, of course,, to excite a spirit of 
 mutual intolerance between the two communi- 
 ties. The political feud that had divided the 
 northern and southern kingdoms of old was as 
 nothing to the religious feud that now and 
 henceforth raged between Jews and Samaritans. 
 The latter, not content with appropriating the 
 religion of their neighbours, actually laid claim 
 to superior orthodoxy. Tliey were the true 
 representatives of ancient Israel, the legitimate 
 heirs of the past. They kept faithful to the 
 institutions of Moses, and allowed no tradition, 
 no so-called ' law of custom,' to supplement or 
 
 1 The present number of the Samaritan community at 
 NaUus is stated at 165 in Palestine Exploration Fv,nd 
 Qvarterly Statement, January 1888, p. 50. 
 
286 AFTER THE EXILE. 
 
 supersede the ordinances of the Law.^ Tlieir 
 version of the Pentateuch was the authentic 
 version, and Ezra was a ' Bible-forger ' and 
 'crafty deceiver.'^ Their mountain was the 
 holy mountain ; Moriah was not even men- 
 tioned in the Torah ; the worship of Jehovah 
 at Jerusalem was without divine authority. 
 Such arrogant pretensions naturally provoked 
 the Jews to bitter hatred. To this people, 
 which claimed Ephraim and Manasseh for its 
 ancestors,^ they would give no other name 
 than the contemptuous name ofKnthim.* The 
 Samaritans were Gentiles,^ a mongrel race 
 without an ancestry. Their religion was a 
 fraud ; they were ' proselytes of the lions ' ; 
 they worshipped an idol, the metal image of 
 a dove, on their Gerizim. Nothing was too 
 bad to be believed of the Kuthim. For a Jew 
 to eat their bread was ' as though he ate 
 
 1 In their rejection of all the Hebrew sacred books but the 
 Pentateuch (with a version of the book of Joshua), and tlieir 
 repudiation of the unwritten law, the Sadducean origin of 
 Saraaritanism appears. 
 
 2 For this Samaritan view of Ezra, see Sepp, Jerusalem 
 u. das Imlige Land, ii. 41. 
 
 ^ Josephus, Ant. xi. 8, 6. * Siipra, vol. i. p. 107. 
 
 ' Even Christ, in one passage (Luke xvii, 18), calls the 
 Samaritan an 'alien.' 
 
THE RENEGADE PRIEST. 287 
 
 swine's flesh.' ' There be two manner of 
 nations which my heart abhorreth/ says the 
 Son of Sirach, 'and the third is no nation: 
 they that sit upon the mountain of Seir, and 
 they that dwell among the Philistines, and 
 that foolish people that dwell in Sichem.' ^ 
 ' Thou art a Samaritan, and hast a devil ' ^ — 
 was among the worst of the insults that the 
 malignity of the enemies of Jesus could devise. 
 The establishment of this rival religious 
 community under the priesthood of sons of 
 Aaron, which to Nehemiah and the men of 
 his day must have seemed an unspeakable 
 calamity, proved eventually a stimulus to the 
 cause of reform. Henceforth the sharply- 
 drawn line of a religious hatred — a hatred all 
 the more virulent because the religions in 
 question were so much alike and akin — divided 
 Jews and Samaritans ; and members of the 
 Jewish community who resisted the new doc- 
 trines, who were dissatisfied with the Judaism 
 of Ezra, had now the option of passing over 
 to another camp. It was a sifting-time, such 
 as Malachi had predicted. Samaria became 
 the Adullam, the Alsatia, of all the discon- 
 
 1 Ecclus, 1, 25, 26. 2 John viii. 48. 
 
AFTER THE EXILE. 
 
 tented spirits, the rebels against law and 
 authority in Judea. ' If any man,' says the 
 Jewish historian, ' was accused by those of 
 Jerusalem of having eaten, things common, or 
 of having broken the Sabbath, or of any. other; 
 such crime, he fled away to the Shechemites.' ^ 
 As the promulgation of theTorah by Ezra was 
 the first great moment in the development of 
 Judaism, so the Samaritan schism was the 
 second. Henceforth Judaism had to constitute 
 itself, not merely in opposition to the Gentile 
 ^vorld, but in opposition to that mimicry of 
 itself which had been set up at its doors ; and 
 it was by following the path that Ezra had 
 pointed out, by yielding to the impulse he 
 had given, that Judaism difierentiated itself 
 from the hated sect which treasured the same 
 Law-Book and worshipped, the same God. 
 And henceforth, also, Judaism could afford to 
 proselytise. Those who. were not against 
 Jerusalem were for it, and might be taken 
 into the community without danger to the 
 purity of religion. Hence the free reception 
 of all those remnants of the ancient Israelitisli 
 population that did not go over to the Sama- 
 
 1 Josephus, Ant, xi. 8, 7, 
 
THE RENEGADE PRIEST. 289 
 
 ritans : the propaganda which at last made 
 'Galilee of the Gentiles' the home of true 
 Judaism, and the birthplace of Christianity.^ 
 
 With a hurried reference to his own part 
 ill bringing about the Samaritan schism, and a 
 brief summary of all that he had done for the 
 temple and its worship, Nehemiah closes his 
 memoirs. Possibly he may have held office 
 at Jerusalem during the remainder of the 
 reign of Artaxerxes, and no doubt he lived 
 to see the rival sanctuary established upon 
 Gerizim. But as to when and where his life 
 ended, history and tradition are alike silent. 
 There is ■ every reason to suppose that he 
 shared the common lot of the great reformers 
 of his people ; that his closing days were 
 clouded with the sense of failure and frustra- 
 tion. He had helped to win a victory which 
 he did not live to enjoy. He had given an 
 impetus to the development of the Jewish 
 people which gathered force and became 
 apparent only after he was gone. The un- 
 expected results which had followed from his 
 banishment of Manasseh, the defection of a 
 considerable body of the priesthood of Jeru- 
 
 1 See Stado, Gesch. des Volkes Israel, ii. 189. 
 11 U 
 
ago AFTER THE EXILE. 
 
 salem, the triumpli of his enemy Sanballat, 
 must of necessity have caused him bitter grief. 
 The real good that was to come out of this 
 seeming evil was still hidden from men's 
 eyes. It may be that Nehemiah had to bear 
 the blame of his contemporaries, who held him 
 responsible for this split in the Jewish church. 
 It may be that his memoirs were written with 
 a view to justify his action, and to put himself 
 right with posterity. He did not come un- 
 scarred out of his battle. The Nehemiah who 
 hurries back from Persia, bursts again into the 
 midst of Jewish society, and plays his stormy 
 part on the stage of his time, is a diflferent 
 man in many ways from Nehemiah the builder 
 of the walls. The tension of a long struggle 
 has told. Drawn out of his true orbit by the 
 attraction of Ezra's great personality, obliged 
 to take up a r6le for which he was unsuited, 
 entangled in a vain attempt to dragoon the 
 people into obeying the Law, it was inevitable 
 that he should make mistakes, of which the 
 consequences might be serious. But to the 
 last he showed himself what he had been from 
 the first — a stainless character ; a magnani- 
 mous and valorous man. He has been charged 
 
THE RENEGADE PRIEST. 291 
 
 with an excessive self-complacency, with a 
 disposition to make too much of his services, 
 with ambition and pride. ^ No accusation was 
 ever less deserved, or did less credit to the 
 accuser. His often -repeated prayer — 'Re- 
 member me, my God, for good' — is an 
 utterance of the simplest, most unaffected 
 piety. His ambition to leave behind him a 
 ' memorial at Jerusalem,' to make for himself 
 a name which should not be forgotten in his 
 country's annals, was a not unworthy ambition. 
 It was all the immortality that a good Israelite 
 of that time durst hope for — the immortal- 
 ity of Westminster Abbey. The hope of 
 such immortality inspired and sustained this 
 great Hebrew through many years of scantily- 
 rewarded labour and sacrifice ; and assuredly 
 did not fail him at the last. 
 
 1 So in the Babylonian Talmud (Sanhedrin) : — ' The 
 details of the Book of Ezra ' (in the original text, Nehemiah's 
 book and Ezra's form one, under the latter's name) 'were 
 written by Nehemiah. And why is the book not called 
 after his name? Because he laid too much stress on his 
 own merits ; as it is said, " Remember unto me, my 
 God, for good, all that I have done for this people." ' 
 
CHAPTER XVI. 
 
 Uhc (Sreat Synagogue. 
 
 rriRADlTION ascribes to Ezra the institution 
 -*- of a governing and teaching body, which, 
 under the name of ' The Great Synagogue,' 
 existed down to the third century before 
 Christ. Talmudic accounts of this institution 
 are precise and detailed. Ezra was its first 
 president. It held its first sittings in his 
 house ; afterwards, in one of the great 
 chambers of the temple. It was composed of 
 priests, Levites, and ' heads of houses,' in 
 number 120,^ never less and never more, the 
 blanks made by death being filled up as they 
 occurred. The three last prophets, Haggai, 
 Zechariah, and Malachi, had seats in the 
 
 1 To the 85 men who signed the covenant {supra, p. 216) 
 tradition added certain prophets and scribes, bringing up the 
 number to 120. 
 
THE GREAT SYNAGOGUE. 293 
 
 assembly. It included all the great and wise 
 of Israel, from Ezra down to Simon the Just. 
 The Mishna thus describes its origin and 
 activity : ' Moses received the oral law on 
 Mount Sinai, and delivered it to Joshua, and 
 Joshua to the elders, and the elders to the 
 prophets, and the prophets to the men of the 
 Great Synagogue. These spake three words : 
 " Be careful in pronouncing judgment ; make 
 many disciples ; set a hedge about the Law." ' ^ 
 That the results which Ezra had won were 
 secured and developed by men trained in his 
 school, and imbued with his spirit, is certain. 
 During his day and after it, the Sopherim or 
 ' Scribes ' — drawn chiefly, but not exclusively, 
 from the ranks of the clergy — ^formed a distinct 
 and recognised class in the community, and 
 exercised an ever-growing influence over the 
 people. They were at once students and 
 teachers of the Law ; referees in aU cases of 
 conscience; arbiters on all questions of legal 
 observance ; authorities on the canonicity and 
 interpretation of sacred writings. While the 
 High Priest ruled the sanctuary and repre- 
 sented the people in its relations with its 
 
 ^ Aboth, i. 1 ; see Taylor, Sayings of the Jewish Fathers. 
 
294 AFTER THE EXILE. 
 
 foreign rulers, the Scribes were the real power 
 in the State, shaped and guided the national 
 consciousness, and controlled the national life. 
 They stood beside the High Priests as the 
 prophets had stood beside the Kings, but with 
 an infinitely greater capacity to check abuses ; 
 and if, in the centuries between the unworthy 
 Eliashib and Joiada, and the still more un- 
 worthy Alcimus and Menelaus, there were 
 pontiffs who proved faithless to their trust, it 
 was not from them that Israel took its tone. 
 The three maxims attributed to the ' men of 
 the Great Synagogue' depict with admirable 
 clearness and fidelity the activity of Ezra and 
 his school. But the Great Synagogue itself, 
 if not exactly mythical, is at all events no 
 more than legendary. There is no evidence 
 that a sacred senate or academy of this sort ever 
 sat at Jerusalem. Neither in the canonical 
 Scriptures, the Apocrypha, nor the history of 
 Josephus, is there the faintest trace of such an 
 institution.-' It may be true that, failing all 
 proof of the existence of the Great Synagogue, 
 
 1 The nearest approach to an allusion is the mention 
 made in 1 Mace. vii. 12 of a 'company of scrihes.' But 
 this was certainly not the Great Synagogue. 
 
THE GREAT SYNAGOGUE. 295 
 
 it would still be necessary to suppose it.^ But, 
 after all, it remains only a supposition, which 
 fills up very conveniently an apparent gap in 
 the historical development of Judaism. 
 
 For two hundred years after Nehemiah 
 quits the scene, the Jewish people has almost 
 no annals. Here and there a figure or an 
 episode comes to view, but for the most part 
 the current of Jewish history runs in darkness. 
 In later times of trouble and persecution, men 
 looked back upon those as the halcyon days of 
 the nation, when, under the sway of the later 
 Persian and earlier Greek kings, Judea was 
 the home of peace and prosperity. In reality, 
 those days were by no means so tranquil as 
 they appeared to the fond imagination of an 
 after time. The empire which Cyrus had 
 founded fell to pieces at last, after long decay ; 
 the West invaded and conquered the East ; 
 the sceptre of the world changed hands ; and 
 while these events were in progress, the Jews 
 had their troubles, like the other petty 
 vassal-nations around them. After the death 
 of Alexander the Great (323 B.C.) Palestine 
 was dragged into the wars that followed the 
 
 1 Derenbourg, Kist. de la Palestine, p. 32. 
 
296 AFTER THE EXILE. 
 
 partition of his empire ; it became the bone of 
 contention between the Ptolemies and the 
 Seleucidse, the field on which they fought 
 their battles. But neither foreign arms nor 
 foreign culture could hinder the development 
 of the work which Ezra and Nehcmiah 
 had begun. During the suspension of all 
 political activity, the religious activity of the 
 Jewish people continued, and continued on 
 the lines which Ezra had laid down. It was a 
 period without any great name. No one 
 man stood out conspicuous, as a leader and 
 teacher of Israel ; the work was done quietly, 
 unobtrusively, but most effectively, by the 
 combined labours of a class. The men who 
 did the work — the scribes, whether formally 
 organised, as the legend of the Great Syna- 
 gogue represents them to have been, or merely 
 linked together by common views and aims, 
 and wielding a merely personal authority — 
 were followers of Ezra ; he was their master 
 and their type. The future showed con- 
 clusively how the century between the Eeturn 
 under Zerubbabel and Nehemiah's second 
 administration^ had been the seminal century 
 
 1 The Eeturn was in 537 B.C. ; Nehemiah left Jerusalem 
 for Persia in 433 B.C. 
 
THE GREAT SYNAGOGUE. 297 
 
 of Judaism. When the Jewish people, under 
 Judas the Maccabee, emerges from long 
 obscurity, it bears the character indelibly 
 stamped upon it by the two men whose lives 
 fill the last pages of Old Testament story. 
 
 Of the two men, Nehemiah had filled the 
 larger space in the eyes of his contemporaries, 
 and his fame, in the generations immediately 
 following, overtopped and overshadowed that 
 of his greater colleague. Tradition busied 
 itself in exalting his merits and his deeds, 
 and even exaggerated his claim on the grati- 
 tude of posterity. He was the model patriot 
 of an age which had learned the value of 
 patriotism. 
 
 Sirach, in his bead-roll of national heroes, 
 leaves Ezra unmentioned, while he tells how 
 ' among the elect was Neemias, whose renown 
 is great; who raised up for us the wall 
 that was fallen, and set up the gates and 
 bars, and raised up our ruins again.' ^ His 
 
 1 Ecclus. xlix. 13. That Sirach should pass over Ezra in 
 silence, mentioning only Zerubbabel, Joshua, and Nehemiah 
 among the worthies of post-exilian times, is singular, and can 
 scarcely he accidental. Kuenen accounts for it by the 
 supposed ' anti-sopherism ' of Sirach — his conservative spirit, 
 which made him feel out of sympathy with the great Scribe 
 
298 AFTER THE EXILE. 
 
 munificence was long remembered ; it was 
 told of him how he had built bouses at his 
 own expense for the citizens whom he brought 
 into Jerusalem.^ The credit of building the 
 second temple was taken from Zerubbabel, 
 and given to him ; ^ and in the second Book 
 of Maccabees — whose author seems to suggest 
 a parallel between Judas Maccabseus and the 
 earlier patriot ^ — he is said to have ' founded 
 a library, bringing together the things con- 
 cerning the kings and the prophets, and 
 David's things, and letters of the kings con- 
 cerning holy gifts.'* The same writer has a 
 still more wonderful story to tell of the popular 
 
 who liad set the example of innovation {Religion of Israel, iii. 
 88 ; see also Cheyne, Job and Solomon, 193). 
 
 1 Josephus, Ant. xi. 5, 8. 
 
 ^ 2 Mace. i. 18. So also in the Talmud (Succah) : — 
 ' Whoever hath not seen the Tempk in all its perfection of 
 structure, hath seen never a fair building in all the world. 
 But which Temple ? That of Solomon, or of Nehemiah, or 
 of Herod ? ' 3 Qratz, KoMlet, 154. 
 
 * 2 Mace. ii. 13. This passage has given rise to the idea 
 of a so-called ' Canon of Nehemiah ' — a collection of sacred 
 historical and prophetical books made by his orders and under 
 his directions. The author of 2 Maeeabees is too much given 
 to romancing for his testimony on such a point to be of great 
 value. It would seem almost as if Nehemiah here gets the 
 credit really due to Ezra, who certainly laid the basis of a 
 canon. 
 
THE GREAT SYNAGOGUE 299 
 
 hero. When the nation, he says, was carried 
 into the Babylonian captivity, the priests took 
 the sacred fire of the altar, and hid it ' in a 
 pit without water,' in a place whereof no man 
 knew. Long after, Nehemiah, coming back 
 from Persia, bade the descendants of those 
 priests who had concealed the fire, and who 
 had handed down the secret of its hiding-place, 
 to bring it forth ; but they, going in search of 
 it, ' found no fire, but thick water.' Nehemiah 
 nevertheless commanded them to draw up the 
 'thick water,' and sprinkle it on the wood and 
 the sacrifices ; and straightway, the sun coming 
 forth from behind a thick cloud, and shining 
 brilliantly, a great fire was kindled and the 
 ofi'ering consumed. ' And Neemias called this 
 thing Naphtar, which is as much as to say, a 
 cleansing.' ' 
 
 Such legends are at least a proof that the 
 desire of Nehemiah's heart was not ungratified 
 — that he did obtain a ' memorial at Jerusalem,' 
 
 1 2 Mace. i. 19-36. 'A tradition which can be traced 
 back to the tenth century gives to the well at the conjunction 
 of the Kedron with the Hinnom valley — the En-rogel of Holy 
 Scripture — the name of " the well of Nehemiah," with allu- 
 sion to this story.' — Eawlinson, in Speaker's Commentary 
 {Apocrypha). 
 
300 AFTER THE EXILE. 
 
 an honourable place in the recollection of his 
 countrymen. If he had reason to complain of 
 the ingratitude of his contemporaries, posterity- 
 made amends, did justice to his merits, and 
 ranked him high among the great patriots of 
 Israel. But the near-sighted estimate which 
 placed him either on a level with Ezra or 
 above him, was corrected with time. Men 
 reached a truer sense of proportion. They 
 came to see wherein the labours of these two 
 reformers differed, and which had played the 
 really greater part. Nehemiah had surrounded 
 Jerusalem with a rampart of masonry which 
 served its purpose and lasted its day. He had 
 kindled a fire in the nation's heart which long 
 smouldered under the surface, and flamed out 
 at last in the war of independence against the 
 Syrian tyrant. But Ezra had done more than 
 this. He had built a wall which defied the 
 shock of force or the wear of time ; a bulwark 
 which could not be breached or battered down, 
 and which stands to this day unshaken. He 
 had girt his people with the adamantine circle 
 of the Law. 
 
 Later ages realised the magnitude of this 
 work, and lavished honour on the man whom 
 
THE GREAT SYNAGOGUE. 301 
 
 liis own generation had failed to understand 
 or appreciate. He was esteemed as second 
 only to Moses, He would have been worthy 
 to receive the Law from God and convey it to 
 Israel, if Moses had not done so already.^ If 
 Aaron had lived in Ezra's time, he would have 
 had to take his place behind this greater Priest 
 who rose up after the Exile. Ezra, leading 
 home his pilgrims from Babylon, deserved all 
 those miraculous signs of divine favour which 
 had been vouchsafed to Joshua, as he led the 
 tribes into Canaan ; and would have received 
 them, but for the national sins.^ He was 
 called ' shield of heroes,' because he had been 
 as a buckler to his people. Until he came, it 
 had been the winter of Israel : he brought its 
 spring, with blossoms and songs. ^ The admirers 
 of Eabbi Hillel honoured their master by call- 
 ing him 'a second Ezra.' 
 
 In course of centuries, a luxuriant crop of 
 legends had sprung up from the scanty histori- 
 cal notices of Ezra's career. He was not only 
 a great Scribe, but a great Prophet. He had 
 been, according to one tradition, the disciple 
 
 ^ Sanhedrin, 21 b. ^ Berachoth, 4 a. 
 
 8 Jalkut Canticles, ii. 10, 11. 
 
302 AFTER THE EXILE. 
 
 of Barucli, tlie disciple of Jeremiali ; according 
 to another, the pupil of Daniel at Babylon." 
 He was the prophet who wrote the book of 
 Malachi. He wrote also several psalms, and 
 the books of Chronicles. Visions not less 
 wonderful than those of Daniel were sent to 
 him ; he was the one and only seer of his day ; 
 ' of all the prophets thou only art left us,' the 
 people cried to him, 'like a cluster of the 
 vintage, like a lamp in the darkness, like a 
 ship saved from the stormy sea.' ^ One legend, 
 noticed by several of the Church Fathers,^ ex- 
 hibits Ezra as prophet and scribe combined. 
 It was supposed that the Book of the Law had 
 been burned when the Chaldeans sacked Jeru- 
 salem, and through Ezra, as the instrument 
 of the Spirit, miraculously restored. This 
 legend the author of the apocalyptic book of 
 ' Esdras ' has worked up into a truly marvel- 
 lous tale, in which the parallel between Ezra 
 and Moses is more than suggested. A voice 
 speaks to Esdras ' out of a bush,' and warns 
 
 1 See Arabic Version of the ' Revelation of Ezra,' in Hehaica, 
 October 1887, p. 14. 
 
 2 2 Apoc. Ezra xii. 42. 
 
 ^ E.g. TertuUian, De Habitu Muliebri, iii. ; Eusebius, 
 Hist. Eccles. v. 8. 
 
THE GREAT SYNAGOGUE. 303 
 
 him that the end of days is drawing near; 
 ' the world hath lost its youth, and the times 
 begin to wax old'; he himself must prepare 
 for his departure from the earth. ^ Esdras 
 pleads for the generations yet unborn : who is 
 to teach them after he is gone ? how can 
 future ages do other than walk in darkness, 
 ' seeing the Law is burned ' ? ^ He obtains 
 permission to reproduce the lost Law. Taking 
 five men with him to act as amanuenses, he 
 goes into retirement for forty days ; and 
 during that time, without resting by night or 
 day, without eating or drinking, dictates the 
 whole word of God. An angel gives him a 
 cup to drink, ' full as it were with water, but 
 the colour of it like fire,' by which his strength 
 is miraculously sustained, his mind cleared and 
 his memory strengthened for his task. Within 
 the forty days, ninety-four books are written. 
 Of these, seventy are kept back for the use of 
 ' the wise ' only, and twenty-four — the number 
 of the books of the Old Testament, according 
 to Jewish reckoning — are communicated to 
 the people.^ Legends of this kind, circulating 
 
 1 2 Apoc. Ezra xiv. 10. ^ lUd,. 21. 
 
 3 lUA. 37-48. 
 
304 AFTER THE EXILE. 
 
 among the Jews of Arabia, passed over to the 
 Mussulmans, whose Koran celebrates the name 
 of ' Ozair ' or Ezra as that of a great Prophet.^ 
 Among the more sober traditions connected 
 with the name of Ezra, are those which trace 
 back to him many of the most important in- 
 stitutions and customs of later Judaism. He 
 is said to have been the originator of the syna- 
 gogues, to have prescribed the ritual for those 
 places of worship, and to have introduced the 
 Targums or Chaldee paraphrases of Scripture, 
 which were rendered necessary by the growing 
 disuse of Hebrew as the language of common 
 life. He is said to have fixed the Jewish 
 
 1 According to Mohammedan tradition, so skilful a scribe 
 was Ozair, that he could write with five pens in his hand at 
 one time (D'Herbelot, BiblioMque orimtale, art. Omir), A 
 curious variant of a familiar legend is connected with the 
 name of Ozair in the Koran. Riding on an ass by the ruins 
 of Jerusalem, after it had been destroyed by the Chaldeans, 
 the prophet doubted in his mind by what means God could raise 
 the city again ; whereon God caused him to die for a hundred 
 years ; and being restored to life at the end of that time, he 
 found a basket of figs and a cruse of wine which he had with 
 him not in the least spoiled or corrupted. His ass was dead, 
 its bones only remaining ; but these, while the prophet looked 
 on, were raised and clothed with flesh ; and the creature, 
 being inspired with life, began immediately to bray (Sale's 
 Koran, 28). 
 
THE GREAT SYNAGOGUE. 305 
 
 calendar, and to have brought in the use of 
 the Aramaic character in the transcription of 
 the sacred books. Besides the ' Ten Eules,' ^ 
 he is credited with the saying that no 
 teacher, in any town, should be forbidden to 
 open his school on the ground that other 
 schools already existed, for 'the rivalry of 
 teachers increases wisdom.' "- 
 
 To sift out the grains of fact from the 
 immense heap of fable under which Ezra's 
 history lies buried, is an all but imj)ossible 
 task. Many things that were done by his 
 successors have been attributed to him. Any 
 stray ordinance that had no known authority 
 to recommend it was referred back, as a matter 
 of course, to the great Scribe. But fortunately 
 the records of Scripture, inadequate as they 
 are, leave a distinct impression of the real, as 
 apart from the mythical, Ezra. The opinion 
 which fixed upon him as the man who laid out 
 the main lines and created the chief institu- 
 tions of Judaism was essentially correct. If 
 Ezra did not actually build the first synagogue 
 or introduce the first Targum, he at all events 
 did the thing from which these inevitably 
 
 1 See suprA, p. 220. ^ Baba batra, 21 b. 
 
 II X 
 
3o6 AFTER THE EXILE. 
 
 followed. He first codified, then promulgated' 
 the Law ; giving it to the people as the one 
 rule of life which each individual must learn 
 and obey. He did his work in his own way. 
 He was no prophet. No visions of the night 
 instructed him, no mysterious voices whispered 
 in his ear, no heavenly messenger brought him 
 counsel or comfort. He was simply a strong 
 man with a strong sense of duty ; a great 
 scholar and great teacher, who had before his 
 eyes continually the fear of God and the welfare 
 of Israel ; who had made up his mind, rightly 
 or wrongly, that Israel must take a certain 
 shape and live a certain life, and who devoted 
 himself with unflagging zeal and unwearied 
 patience to the working out of his idea. 
 
 There had been scribes before Ezra, but it 
 was he who established the order of the 
 Sopherim, which lasted under that name for 
 a hundred years, and handed on its traditions 
 and methods to other teachers. He had him- 
 self set a precedent of the most momentous 
 character, in his treatment of those social and 
 religious questions round which the battle of 
 reform raged in his day. Where the Law 
 failed to give a clear decision, in conformity 
 
THE GREAT SYNAGOGUE. 307 
 
 with his own strict Puritanic spirit, Ezra had 
 not hesitated to invoke an authority that was 
 really independent of the Law. He showed 
 his successors what a power there was in tradi- 
 tion. He taught them to ' set a hedge about 
 the Law,' and himself gave the example. That 
 example the Sopherim faithfully followed. 
 New cases required new decisions ; new times 
 brought new wants to view ; at one point the 
 Torah laid down what was impracticable, and 
 at another, failed to lay down what seemed 
 necessary. The Scribes had to keep the Torah 
 up to date, and they did so by ' setting a hedge ' 
 about it — safeguarding the written law by an 
 unwritten law of custom, multiplying enact- 
 ments and prohibitions, deducing the strangest 
 conclusions, and making the most novel appli- 
 cations of ancient rules. It was Ezra's hand 
 that set the first slips of that ' hedge ' which 
 grew with such astonishing rapidity — tbe 
 ' hedge ' of the Halachah or Oral Law. He 
 was the pattern of the scribes who cast the net 
 ever wider and spun the meshes ever finer, 
 till the most trivial action of the humblest 
 life was caught in and constrained. The 
 authority which he had called in to supple- 
 
3o8 AFTER THE EXILE. 
 
 ment the Torah, at first subordinate, then co- 
 ordinate, became at last, by general acknow- 
 ledgment, superior. The unwritten, as well 
 as the written Law, had been given on Sinai. 
 ' The appointments of the Sopherim,' says the 
 Talmud, 'are weightier than those of the 
 Torah.' ^ 
 
 The strength of Ezra's work appeared in 
 the devoted attachment of the Jews of after 
 days to the Law he had given them, and their 
 unquestioning submission to the teachers he 
 had set over them. He had spent his life in the 
 effort to force the Law on an unwilling people. 
 They had received it, only to neglect it ; they 
 had sworn to observe it one day, and had 
 broken their oath the next. Death had taken 
 him away at a time when Israel was still 
 disobedient. But after he was gone, his 
 principles triumphed. The people that had 
 given him so much trouble gave none to his 
 successors ; with eager alacrity, with pains- 
 
 1 Jost, Qesch. i. 93. Cp. tlie rabbinical exegesis of Can- 
 ticles i. 2 : ' For thy beloved is better than wine ' — ' Thy 
 beloved scribes are sweeter to ine than the wine of the 
 written Law ' J also the Talmudic saying : — ' The Bible is 
 like water ; the Mishna is like wine ; the Gemara is like 
 spiced wine.' 
 
THE GREAT SYNAGOGUE. 309 
 
 taking fidelity, Israel followed the command- 
 ments, not only of the Torah, but of the 
 scribes. The heavier the burden was made, 
 the more cheerfully they seemed to bear it. 
 The ordinances which in Ezra's day had been 
 lightly esteemed, they now ' bound for a sign 
 upon their hands, wore as frontlets between 
 their eyes, and wrote upon the door-posts of 
 their houses.' ' ' The Law of Jehovah/ ex- 
 claims one psalmist, who interprets the senti- 
 ment of that day, 'is perfect, reviving the 
 soul; His testimony is true, making the 
 simple wise ; His precepts are right, rejoicing 
 the heart; His commandments are pure, 
 enlightening the eyes.'^ Another psalmist, 
 who is certainly more scribe than poet, in a 
 long and laboured flight, devotes himself to 
 nothing else than a glorification of the Law.^ 
 And Sirach himself, priest in sympathy and 
 half-Sadducee in opinion as he is, shows the 
 utmost enthusiasm for the Law. ' A man of 
 understanding,' he says, ' trusteth in the Law ; 
 and the Law is faithful unto him as the utter- 
 ance of Urim and of Thummim.'* He per- 
 
 1 Deut. vi. 8, 9. ^ pg ^ix. 7, 8. 
 
 3 Ps. cxix. * Ecolus. xxxiii. 3. 
 
31 o AFTER THE EXILE. 
 
 sonifies the Torah, and gives its invitation 
 thus : ' Come unto me, all ye that be desirous 
 of me, and fill yourselves with my fruits. For 
 my remembrance is more sweet than honey, 
 and mine inheritance above the honeycomb. 
 They that eat me shall yet be hungry, and 
 they that drink me shall yet be athirst. He 
 that obeyeth me shall never be ashamed, and 
 they that work by me shall do no sin. All 
 these are in the book of the covenant of 
 Jehovah, the Law which Moses commanded 
 as an inheritance to the congregation of 
 Jacob.' ^ 
 
 How highly the mass of the people, no 
 less than its spiritual guides and teachers, had 
 come to prize this inheritance, was proved on 
 the outbreak of the Syrian persecution. The 
 Law, which had been an exotic in Ezra's day, 
 was now rooted deep in the heart of Israel, 
 and was looked upon as a possession dearer 
 than life. From the careless generation which 
 had vexed the spirit of Ezra had descended a 
 nation of zealots for the Law, who faced death, 
 rather than give up their copies of the Torah 
 to be burned^ — rather than do the things 
 
 1 Ecclus. xxiv. 19-23. « j jyjacc. i. 57, 58. 
 
THE GREAT SYNAGOGUE. 311 
 
 wliicli the Law forbade, or leave undone the 
 things which it commanded.^ From the 
 Sabbath-breakers with whom Nehemiah had 
 striven, had descended a people which stood 
 still and let itself be massacred, preferring to 
 ' die in its innocence ' rather than profane the 
 holy day by taking up arms even in self- 
 defence.^ The struggle against Antiochus was 
 a magnificent tribute to the permanence of 
 the work which Ezra had begun. Primarily, 
 the Jews did not fight for political independ- 
 ence, though independence came with victory. 
 They fought for their religion; and their 
 religion was the Law, 
 
 Out of the reform which is identified with 
 Ezra's name, evil no doubt sprang as well as 
 good. In old days, the prophets had seen 
 cause to denounce the formalism of the temple 
 worship, and to warn the people that the 
 sanctuary had no power in itself to sanctify. 
 In later days, if a prophet had arisen, he 
 might have taken up the same parable, substi- 
 tuting for the temple, the Law. Teachers 
 came after Ezra who had all his reverence for 
 the letter, but little of his spirituality; his 
 
 1 1 Mace. i. 60, 63. ^ 1 Mace. ii. 34-38. 
 
312 AFTER THE EXILE. 
 
 scrupulosity, without his moral earnestness ; 
 his care for details, without his grasp on prin- 
 ciples. Such teachers gradually introduced 
 that slavery to forms, that pharisaic insistence 
 on externals, which are fatal to a true religious 
 life. No doubt Ezra showed the way to the 
 ' Scribes and Pharisees ' ; no doubt he was, in 
 a sense, the master of the later rabbis, with all 
 their web -spinning and hair-splitting, their 
 wooden pedantry and puerile casuistry. The 
 sentiments of religious pride and bigotry which 
 brought so many woes on Israel were learned 
 in his school, and so far he must bear the 
 responsibility which the leader of every great 
 movement of thought has to bear. But if 
 later Judaism owes miich to the influence of 
 this great man, whether for good or evil, 
 Christianity owes something too. If he made 
 religion a bondage, at least he made it a per- 
 sonal concern to the individual, a matter of 
 everyday life. Ever after him, the Book in- 
 creased and the altar decreased, the scribe 
 gained and the priest lost in power ; and so 
 far he paved the way for a spiritual religion. 
 If from Ezra's school came the enemies of 
 Jesus, Pharisees and doctors of the Law, from 
 
THE GREAT SYNAGOGUE. 313 
 
 tne same school came also His friends and 
 disciples. He was, in a sense, the ' pedagogue ' 
 who trained Israel in the primary school of 
 the Law, and fitted it to pass into the second- 
 ary school of the Gospel. When Jesus came, 
 He spoke to a people which at least knew its 
 sacred writings ; and from the humblest classes 
 of the population drew disciples who were able 
 to understand the applications He made of 
 ancient types and prophecies. Judaism, in 
 the days of Christ, had produced its casuists 
 and hypocrites ; but also its men of devout 
 and reverent spirit, who were ready for the 
 transition from the synagogue to the church. 
 These, too, had passed through the school of 
 Ezra. His teaching and methods, which had 
 been the life of one age, became the death of 
 another; but not until they had done their 
 part in laying the foundation on which Chris- 
 tianity was raised. 
 
 THE END. 
 
 Printed ^j/ R. & R. Clark, EdMurgh. 
 
BY THE SAME AUTHOR. 
 
 AFTEE THE EXILE : 
 
 A HUNDRED YEARS OF JEWISH HISTORY AND LITERATURE. 
 
 OPINIONS OF THE PRESS. 
 
 Scotsman. 
 
 * He has done well iu ouce more taking the subject in hand, and 
 bringing to bear upon it all the fresh knowledge that the industry of 
 investigators has been able to accumulate. . . . But, after all, 
 the merit of this work does not consist mainly in the new light which 
 is thrown on particular questions, but also in the vividness, grace, and 
 picturesqueness of the narrative. ... He has evidently consulted 
 every available source, has used his authorities with judgment, aud 
 has shown that he knows how to weave his material skilfully together.' 
 
 Scottish Leader. 
 
 ' It is not often that one has the pleasure of taking up j piece of 
 historical writing so readable and at the same time so accurice iu even 
 the smallest detail as is this work. It displays throughout, on the 
 part of the author, a true scholarship, a wide reading, and a thorough 
 familiarity with all the best works bearing on his subject. It is, how- 
 ever, no mere compilation from the works of the great masters in 
 Jewish history. The writer has gone himself to the original sources 
 of information, and only those theories have been accepted which have 
 commended themselves to his own independent judgment. . . . 
 The tone of the book, too, is all that could be desired. The spirit 
 pervading it is liberal and candid. . . . The most striking feature 
 of the work, however, and that which constitutes its chief excellence, 
 is the graphic and picturesque manner in which the author marshals 
 his facts. It is no dry catalogue of events we have here, but a thrilling 
 narrative, that takes captive the imagination of the reader as if it 
 were a romance, instead of a chapter of ancient history. . . .It 
 ought to be read by all those who are interested m the life of that 
 strange people, and in God's way of preparing them for the advent of 
 the Messiah.' 
 
 GliEgow Herald. 
 
 ' An uncommonly readable account of the hundred years of Jewish 
 historv included between the middle of the sixth and the middle of 
 the fifth century before Christ. The historical facts and the special 
 work of the prophets are remarkably well blended together. The 
 
OPINIONS OF THE PRESS. 
 
 whole is given as a connected story, with the result that the not very 
 intelligihle utterances of the post-exilian Prophets, when taken alone, are 
 shown to he replete with meaning. . . . The work is the outcome 
 of the fullest and most recent information. . . . We do not know 
 any book which deals so well with this interesting and important 
 period of history.' 
 
 Dundee Advertiser. 
 
 'Written with the vivid, picture-making power of a Maoaulay. 
 . . . An acquisition to real literature.' 
 
 Aberdeen Free Press. 
 
 ' Able and scholarly. The results of recent research woven into a 
 most pleasant narrative.' 
 
 Perthshire Advertiser. 
 
 ' Most readable, without being slight : the work of one who knows 
 how to work up his materials into a pleasant form.' 
 
 Belfast Northern Whig. 
 
 ' Most interesting and instructive. . . . His judicious selection 
 of facts and his skilful management thereof, combined with the clear 
 and scholarly language in which they are set forth, make the reading 
 of his book a positive delight.' 
 
 North British Daily Mail. 
 
 'Presents to us the historic scenes and persons dealt with very 
 vividly. He has a marvellous power of putting life into the dry bones 
 of history, and giving its facts a present interest. . . . Has 
 obviously spared no pains to give an accurate and graphic picture. We 
 have read the whole volume with intense interest, though not with 
 approval all through.' 
 
 Kilmarnock Standard. 
 
 ' A picturesque and graphic style of narrative, penetrating insight, 
 erudition, and a skilful management of facts, bring those far-off times 
 so vividly before the mind of the reader, and so clothe the characters 
 with flesh and blood, that the story has all the charm of a romance.' 
 
 Fife Herald. 
 
 'Eminently readable — the interest never allowed to flag from the 
 first page to the last. . . . The striking features of the story have 
 been seized on and held up in such a way as cannot fail to convey a 
 deep and vivid impression of the facts. . . , We can thoroughly 
 recommend the book to all interested in Bible study as one fitted to 
 give fresh interest and added clearness to our views of an important 
 period of Israel's history.' 
 
 Fifeshire Journal. 
 
 ' The author is thorough master of his subject, and . . . imparts 
 a freshness and vitality to his narrative, which make it interesting and 
 highly attractive reading. We see history made before our eyes.'