i^^f^.v,;-*-. DATE DUE ■tUP GAYLORD PRINTED IN U.SA Cornell University Library The original of this 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/cu31924051328239 HISTORY OF THE PEOPLE OF ISRAEL HISTORY OF THE People of Israel FROM THE RULE OF THE PERSIANS TO THAT OF THE GREEKS BY ERNEST RENAN AUTHOR OF THE "LIFE OF JESUS," "THE FUTURE OF SCIENCE," ETC. BOSTON ROBERTS BROTHERS 189s '^^CA.^j^ Copyright, 1895, By Roberts Brothers. John Wilson and Son, Cambridge, U. S. A. CONTENTS. « BOOK VII. JUDEA UNDER PERSIAN RULE. CHAPTER I. Page The Arrival of the Carat ans at Jerusalem after the Retubk from Babylon 1 CHAPTER II. Re- ESTABLISHMENT OF DiVINB WORSHIP AT JERUSALEM. — New Laws of Ritual 8 CHAPTER III. Lbtites. — Nethinim 23 CHAPTER IV. The End of the House of David. — The Triumph op the High-Priest over the Nasi 30 CHAPTER V. Levitioal Additions to the Torah. — Elaboration of THE Rites of Worship 45 vi CONTENTS. CHAPTER VI. Page Nehemiah and the Walls of Jerusalem 66 CHAPTER VII. The Administration op Nehemiah 73 CHAPTER VIII. Legendary Story of Ezra 84 CHAPTER IX. The Final Consolidation of the Torah 93 CHAPTER X. Promulgation of the Law 103 CHAPTER XI. Bigotry 115 CHAPTER XII. The Last Gleams of Prophecy 123 CHAPTER XIII. The Samaritans 130 CHAPTER XIV. What the Jews borrowed from Persia. — Angelology 136 CHAPTER XV. The Decadence of Jewish Literature . . . . . 149 CHAPTER XVI. The Deep Sleep of Israel I6i CONTENTS. Tii BOOK VIII. TRB JEWS UNDER GREEK DOMINION. CHAPTER I. PA8B Alexandek. — Alexandria 171 CHAPTER II. The Rule of the Ptolemies . 182 CHAPTER III. Peoseuch^. — Synagogues 190 CHAPTER IV. The Geeek Translation of the Pentateuch . . . 198 CHAPTER V. Literature op the Alexandrine Jews 208 CHAPTER VI. Commencement of Proselttism. — Pious Frauds . . . 220 CHAPTER VIT. The Rule of the Seleucid.® in Palestine. — First Ap- pearance OF Rome in the East 229 CHAPTER VIII. Middle Class. — Sacerdotal Nobility 237 CHAPTER IX. Jesus, Son op Sirach 246 viii CONTENTS. CHAPTER X. Iellenism in Pj OCHDS Epiphanes 259 Pase The Struggle for Hellenism in Palestine. — Anti- CHAPTEK XI. The Persecution of Antiochus. — The Abomination OF Desolation 266 CHAPTER XII. The Evident Necessity op Rewards in a Future Life 277 CHAPTER XIII. The National Uprising 289 CHAPTER XIV. The Book of Daniel 297 CHAPTER XV. Victories or Judas Maccabeus. — The Jewish Worship Restored 314 CHAPTER XVI. Princely Rule of Judas Maccabeus ....,, 821 CHAPTER XVII. The Hellenist Reaction. — Liberty of Conscience . 327 CHAPTER XVIII. The Asmonean Family: Jonathan 343 HISTORY OF THE PEOPLE OF ISRAEL. BOOK VII. JVBEA UNDER PERSIAN RULE. CHAPTER I. THE ARRIVAL OF THE CARAVATSTS AT JERUSALEM AFTER THE RETURN FROM BABYLON. The numerous caravans which brought Israel back to its ruined acropolis must undoubtedly have reached Jerusalem by way of the north, over the Via dolorosa travelled sixty-five years before by the unhappy captives urged forward by the lash of Neb- uzaradan. The joy and the grief of these pious emigrants when they beheld the desolated city of their dreams made doubtless one of those impres- sions on the nation which a people never forgets, more especially when there is no rhetorical narrator to spoil them. Nothing remained of the ancient city but the foundations of its buildings, beside which lay great stones detached from the walls, the Temple, and the palaces.* * Isaiah Iviii. 12; Ix. 15. VOL, IV. — 1 2 HISTORY OF THE PEOPLE OF ISRAEL. Half a century is but a short time in which to complete the ruin of buildings formed of strong materials; and there can be little doubt that the chiefs who led the return from Babylon found Jerusalem in the state in which it had been left by the Assyrians. A ruined city never wholly dis- appears until it is rebuilt, or at least until another city has been built near it. Only the slight struc- tures that had once been private houses had been totally destroyed. The very ruins seem to have been left entirely deserted.* But the country around it was still inhabited. The little towns of Judah and of Benjamin still offered means of subsistence. The emigrants for the most part endeavoured to take up their quarters in the belt surrounding these ruined walls, where, since the murder of Gedaliah, some little order had been established. t * See Isaiah, before quoted. \ The documents relating to the Return from the Captivity are contained in the six first chapters of the book of Ezra. These six first chapters are composed from two documents. The first (A) is of great historical value, extending from chap. ii. 1 to iv. 5, then afterwards from vi. 14 to vi. 22. The other (B) is full of apocryphal passages. It comprises chap, i., then extends from chap. iv. 6 to vi. 13. The writer who compiled (B) had before him the prophecies of Haggai and Zechariah, and has borrowed their chronology. The author of the Memoirs of Nehemiah (chap, vii.) has copied from (A) his list of those who returned from Babylon, with some changes. Again, the passage in Nehemiah, from xii. 1 to xiii. 3, incorporated into that bonk, repeats the list with some further alterations. The change from Hebrew to Aramaic (iv. 8) and the return to Hebrew (vi. 19) is of no critical importance. Like the Aramaic verse in Jeremiah, and the Ara- maic portion of the book of Daniel, it was due to carelessness on the part of the copyist. After the books of Ezra and Nehemiah had been arranged, as we have them now, by the author of the Chronicles, some ARRIVAL OF THE CARAVANS AT JERUSALEM. 3 The new-comers, it appears, were received with little welcome. The day after their arrival they found themselves surrounded by enemies.* The villagers whose worship Josiah had destroyed had probably relapsed into being lahvists of the ancient kind, — that is to say, they offered sacrifices on high places, and they had no objection to practising the rites of Moloch, Astarte, and Adonis, whose efficacy everybody else in Syria firmly believed in. The faithful, therefore, whose ideas had been much advanced during the Captivity, found themselves confronted by their old co-religionists, who had made no progress, and must have felt as if they were hardly of the same religion. They succeeded, however, in establishing their ascendency ; and soon there rose around Jerusalem a number of Jewish villages. Later, the colony of Ezra experienced the advantage of these settlements. By degrees these successive strata of returning colonists formed strong Jewish centres at Jericho, at Gibeon, at Mizpah, at *Zanoah, at Beth-haccerem, at Beth-zur, and at Kei- lah.f At Tekoa the Jewish community was numer- ous, and seems to have always entertained some fears copj'ist after iv. 8 has followed the Targum instead of the original; misled by the word j^mX' he preferred to insert what he considered the original Aramaic to the Hebrew text (compare Daniel ii. 4). In other ■words, neither in Jeremiah nor in Ezra nor in Daniel are the changes into Aramaic, and back again to Hebrew, preceded by such marks as would prove a difference of documents. It was mere chance that gave us in these passages the Targum instead of the original. * Ezra iv. 1. Compare Psalms cxx., cxxi., cxxiv., &c. t Nehemiah iii. 4 HISTORY OF THE PEOPLE OF ISRAEL. touching the preponderance of Jerusalem. Southern Judea had been acquired by the Edomites.* The city of Hebron, however, never seems to have been entirely outside the circle of Israel, t The destitution among the people after their return must have been terrible. They had no houses, and no lands to raise crops upon. The supplies they had brought from Babylon grew less and less every day. Their political situation too, with a Persian jpekah for their governor, must have been extremely hum- ble. It does not appear that Zerubbabel had any well-defined local jurisdiction. He was simply the head of a religious family, a inillat-pasch, as such men are still called in the Ottoman Empire. The land was by no means restored to its former owners. The enemies of Israel had taken possession of nearly all of it. There was no trade, no purveying for lux- ury. Those who had not strong faith must often have envied their brethren who stayed behind in Mesopotamia. Besides all this, the means of attaining moral and intellectual culture were very deficient. The writ- ings of Haggai and Zechariah (of which we shall presently speak) give us the impression that those who first returned from Babylon brought few books with them. A man without much original talent, fairly well read in the ancient writings of his people, might have composed something less feeble than * Ezekiel xxxv. 10; 1 Esdras iv. 50. ■f 1 Maccabees v. 65. ARRIVAL OF THE CARAVANS AT JERUSALEM. 5 these two scrolls of Haggai and Zechariah, which we may regard as the last sighs of the expiring Hebrew genius. Writings addressed to the multi- tude, such as these two prophetic books, are rude, rough, and illiterate, while on the other hand the elegiac poems of the time show all the literary skill that distinguished Hebrew poets during the Cap- tivity. Some of the most beautiful of the Psalms seem to belong to this period.* When lahveh turned again the captivity of Zion f We were like unto them that dream. Then was our mouth filled with laughter And our tongue with singing. Then said they among the nations, lahveh hath done great things for them. lahveh hath done great things for us. Whereof we are glad. Turn again our captivity, lahveh ! As the streams from the South. They that sow in tears Shall reap in joy. Though he goeth on his way weeping, bearing forth the seed, He shall come again with joy, bringing his sheaves with him. And again : — They that trust in lahveh are as Mount Zion ; J They who dwell in Jerusalem stand fast forever. § * For instance, Psalms xxxiii., xcv., xcvi., xcviii., cxxiv,, cxxvi., and several others. t Psalm cxxvi. (The English is from tiie Revised Version of the Old Testament— Te.) X Psalm cxxv. § The author says this reading from the ancient versions is prefer- able; D'7tJ'1T' being twice repeated. 6 HISTORY OF THE PEOPLE OF ISRAEL. As the mountains are round about Jerusalem, So is lahveh round about his people From this time forth and f orevermore : Por the sceptre of wickedness shall not rest upon the lot of the righteous, That the righteous put not forth their hands unto iniquity. Do good, lahveh, unto those that be good. And to them that are upright in their hearts. But as for such as turn aside unto their crooked ways lahveh shall lead them forth with workers of iniquity. Peace be upon Israel.* Sometimes Jerusalem and the psalmist relate to each other their anguish, their anxieties, and their sorrows. JEKUSALKM. I will lift up my eyes unto the mountains ;t From whence shall my help come ? My help cometh from lahveh. Which made heaven and earth. THE CHOIK. He will not suffer thy foot to be moved ; He that keepeth thee will not slumber. THE PSALMIST. Behold, he that keepeth Israel Shall neither slumber nor sleep. THE CHOIK. lahveh is thy keeper, lahveh is thy shade upon thy right hand. \ The sun shall not smite thee by day, § Nor the moon by night. * Words perhaps added for liturgical purposes, t Psalm oxxi. % Read n^'X'. \ With his malign influences. ARRIVAL OF THE CARAVANS AT JERUSALEM. 7 lahveh shall keep thee from all evil ; He shall keep thy soul. lahveh shall keep thy going out and thy coming in From this time forth, and forevermore.* A mighty deed had been accomplished. This wonderful return from captivity, carried out through frightful difficulties, is compared to the exodus and the passage through the Red Sea. The psalmist saw in it a miracle, a fresh manifes- tation of the favour of the Almighty towards his people Israel.! The heathen are supposed to be, struck with amazement at such a prodigy.:^ A God who exercises such care over his little ones demands in return piety and submission. To renew the re- bellions of their fathers in the Wilderness would have been madness. There is no sign now of former daring. Absolute docility and a fervent ritualism § have replaced the bolder, ruder faith of ancient times. The era of piety was about to begin. Jewish piety was to be the origin of piety throughout the world. By piety Israel was to accomplish its marvellous des- tiny, and without dogma or theology or abstract speculations create the religion of mankind. * Compare Psalms cxxiii., cxxiv. t Psalms xcv. to c, cxxvi. Compare Isaiah Hi. 14 and what fol- lows; Ivii. 2 ; Ixvi. 19 and what follows. X Psalm xxiv. 2, 3. § The analogy with the ritualism of the Church of England is striking. CHAPTER II. EE-ESTABLISHMENT OF DIVINE WORSHIP AT JERU- SALEM. — NEW LAWS OF RITUAL. This first restoration of tlie captives to their own land was nevertheless but a feeble enterprise, and we may well doubt, if, nothing had followed up the action of Zerubbabel and Joshua, whether Judaism would have had a future. It was like a palm-tree planted in a flower-pot. The seed sown for the future was vigourous, but the soil provided for its development was insufficient. Judaism, such as the Prophets had pictured it, needed the freer air it found in the dispersion. Its national existence was now ended. But what of that ? What is under the protection of lahveh is not a petty kingdom subject to the vicissitudes of human things ; it is a mighty work, a principle of life for all mankind. The mis- sion appointed to Israel is that of a religious society. The end of its political life, the destruction of its national framework, far from entailing spiritual ruin upon Israel, will be the means of developing its des- tiny. While Persia, Greece, and Rome occupy the foreground of the world's history, little Israel, like RE-ESTABLISHMENT OF DIVINE WORSHIP. g the white ant of Africa, works its way silently through the structure of ancient society, and will bring the subsoil to the surface. The Prophets and the Law ( Torah) fulfil their slow task of working as the leaven of coming ages. Above the ruins of the Oriental, Greek, and Roman civilisations spring two mighty trees, Christianity and Islam, each an off- shoot of Judaism. For a thousand years at least it is all over with the principle of nationality. The host that returned to Jerusalem from Babylon under the leadership of Zerubbabel was mainly com- posed of priests and levites. These men, consecrated to God's service, proposed as their first object the restoration of divine worship. The levites, who " lived by the altar," had an especial interest in the speedy re-establishment of the rites of sacrifice. The rebuilding of the Temple was therefore decided upon from the first. Immediately after the arrival at Jerusalem certain heads of families began to accumu- late treasure for this purpose, by making free-will offerings.* They caused, besides, a hundred priestly garments to be made at their own expense ; and from that moment the things that most engaged the atten- tion of all Israel were the due performance of public worship and the regulation of its liturgy. The place where the altar had stood was still vis- ible ; perhaps the stones of its base had been scarcely overthrown. Joshua (son of Josedeck) and Zerub- babel caused it again to be set up. Thus this altar * Ezra iii. 1 and what follows. 10 HISTORY OF THE PEOPLE OF ISRAEL. bore some analogy to the little altars built in haste out of the remains of heathen temples by the inhabi- tants of Lebanon at the close of the fourth century, as circumstances favoured them.* At Jerusalem it soon became possible to restore the system of sacrifices, appointed, as was believed, by Moses, while in addition great changes were made to the ancient ritual. The moment had come to carry out all the liturgical dreams in which priests had indulged themselves since the days of EzekieLt A morning and an evening service was established, and sacrifices were offered at each of them. At the new moons and other feasts, especially at the Feast of Tabernacles, the worship ' was more complicated, and the number of the victims was increased. Besides these public sacrifices, there were those of individ- uals.^ The levites and the singers were thus pro- vided for. The money brought by Zerubbabel from Babylonia was freely employed to purchase victims for the daily sacrifices. The people had no bread, but the altar of lahveh smoked upon the spot that he himself had chosen. The future at least was secure. A few months after the restoration of the altar the rebuilding of the Temple was begun under the super- intendence of Zerubbabel and Joshua, while the task of overseeing the workmen was committed to the levites and their sons. The new Temple no doubt * Mission de Phe'nicie, p. 219 and what follows, t See vol. lii. p. 365. t Ezra iii. 2 and what follows; Numbers xxix. 13 and what fol- lows; Exodus xxix. 12. RE-ESTABLISHMENT OF DIVINE WORSHIP. ii was of the proportions of the old, but it was far in- ferior in grandeur and magnificence.* The porches, or UsTcoth, were an essential part of the structure, and were rebuilt like the naos itself, t The Saitic style must have been the rule in all the" details of ornamentation. Workmen, as in the days of Solomon, had been brought from Tyre and Sidon ; their materials came from Tyre by way of Joppa. No doubt the funds needed for these purchases were at first contributed by rich men who had stayed in Babylonia. The laying the foundation of the sacred edifice was the occasion of pious ceremonies, at which the priests assisted in costume with trumpets, the levites sound- ing cymbals, and all singing to Jehovah the hymns of praise in which the words " Hallelu-jah," " Praise to lahveh," were continually repeated. The refrain was, " Praise lahveh, for he is good ; " the people replying in their turn, " For his mercy endureth for- ever." \ In this they believed themselves to be following the example of David, § to whom they no doubt by this time attributed the many Psalms of the hallel which form the last portion of the Psalter, and which have been the model for Christian litur- gies throughout the world. The younger genera- tions danced round the walls of the Temple, which * Josephus, Antiquities, xv. xi. 1. t Ezra viii. 29. In Nehemiah viii. 1, the Water Gate is evidently within the limits of the Temple. % Ezra iii. 11; 2 Chronicles v. 13 ; vii. 3 ; xx. 1. § Ezra iii. 10 ; 1 Chron. v. 16; 2 Chron. xxiii. 18 ; xxix. 27. 12 HISTORY OF THE PEOPLE OF ISRAEL. were beginning to be built, with cries of joy; but those who remembered the old Temple wept, so infe- rior did this new edifice seem to that which it was intended to replace. The work of reconstruction, made easier by what remained of the foundations and the great stones of the old Temple, might have been completed in three or four years, but it took twenty. One is tempted to suspect that the ultra-idealists, who held that God has no other temple but the universe, may have op- posed the work, alleging that lahveh had respect only to the piety and contrition of the poor.* Orders and counter-orders from an Oriental central government are like daily bread to ofiicers in charge of its provin- cial affairs. The worshipper of lahveh who had not adopted the reforms of Josiah, and above all the in- habitants of Ephraim and of the former kingdom of Israel, raised difficulties, which impeded the work of Zerubbabel and Joshua. If things passed as is re- lated in the document that has come down to us,t we must own that at first the new builders of the Temple seem to have met good treatment from the old lahvists. They came to Zerubbabel and Joshua and the heads of Jewish families, to explain that they too were worshippers of lahveh ; they asked leave to take part in the construction of the Temple, * Isaiah Ixvi. 1-4, — a passage which cannot be by the unknown hand of the author of the second portion of Isaiah. It sometimes happens that a book of the Bible will contain passages for and against the same opinion. Compare Jonah, the 2d Zechariah, &c. \ Document A. See page 2, note. RE-ESTABLISHMENT OF DIVINE WORSHIP. 13 that there they also might have a right to ofEer sac- rifice.* But Zerubbabel answered them, " Ye have nothing to do with us to build a house for our God." t lahveh is now the God only of Judah and of Ben- jamin. The appeal for unity which resounds through the Prophets will be heard no longer. The schism between the two parties in Israel was made perpetual, and Samaritanism in consequence became a separate religion. This was directly contrary to the ideas, or at least the hopes, of Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and their disciples. But we must remember that those who conducted the return from Babylon were for the most part animated by the sacerdotal spirit. It was priests who first hindered the realisation of the unity dreamed of by the Prophets ; and their opposition was but natural. The successive purgings Judah had imposed upon itself excluded other Israelites. The ancient lahveh of the Israelites, and lahveh as developed by the Prophets, were hardly the same God. Every reform in the Church throughout its history has produced a schism. The straiter the way the closer are the ranks ; and the closer the ranks the more are excluded. Whatever may have been the causes of the an- tipathy between the ancient worshippers of lahveh and the new arrivals, this hostility was thenceforward an important factor in the history of Judaism. The * For examples of temples raised by joint assistance, Corpus inscr. Semit. vol. i. p. 100 and what follows, t A similar reply may be found in Nehemiah ii. 20. 14 HISTORY OF THE PEOPLE OF ISRAEL. opposing party attempted to arrest the reconstruction of the Temple by all sorts of intrigues with the Per- sian governor and his officials. Zerubbabel, though he had received his authority from the King of Persia, was only a subordinate officer in the army of administration. Events that took place at the centre of the Empire were felt, though feebly, in its remotest provinces. Cyrus, who appears to have been personally favourable to the Jews, died in 529 B. c. The end of the reign of Cambyses saw the beginning of revolutions, which did not end until Darius, son of Hystaspes, was established on the throne. In the second year of the reign of Darius,* 520 b. c, work on the Temple was resumed, still under the authority of Zerubbabel and Joshua. The hostility of the Samaritans for a time was powerless. These bitter quarrels left their deep trace upon the Psalter. The faithful servant of lahveh is sur- rounded by enemies eager to devour him. All stratagems, all falsehoods, are employed to ruin him. He is in the midst of hostile savages who seek his hurt. He is himself a man of peace, but others all around him are for battle.f The con- tempt of the profane — designated as the mighty, the proud, the hinderers of the work (in contrast to the meekness and humility of true believers) — burns to the hearty those who have had much to * Ezra iv. 24 ; date taken from Haggai i. 1 , and from Zechariah i. 1. t Psalm cxx. j Psalm cxxiii. RE-ESTABLISHMENT OF DIVINE WORSHIP. 15 endure. Patience was not the virtue of the ancient Israelites. Many a time have they afflicted me from my youth up * Now may I.srael say. Many a time have they afflicted me from my youth up : But they have not prevailed against me. The ploughers ploughed upon my back; They made long their furrows. lahveh is righteous; He hath cut asunder the cords of the wicked. Let them be ashamed and turned backward, All they that hate Zion. Let them be as the grass upon the housetops, Which withereth afore it groweth up : Wherewith the reaper filleth not his hand, Nor he that bindeth sheaves his bosom. Neither do they that go by say,' The blessing of lahveh be upon you; We bless you in the name of lahveh. Or again : — If it had not been lahveh who was on our side Let Israel now say; If it had not been lahveh who was on our side When men rose up against us : Then they had swallowed us up alive, When their wrath was kindled against us ; Then the waters had overwhelmed us. The stream had gone over our soul ; Then the proud waters had gone over our soul.f * Psalm cxxix. t Aquila, ms ra vSara 01 in-fp^0arat. Compare Dm, and later on, page 120, note. i6 HISTORY OF THE PEOPLE OF ISRAEL. Blessed be lahveh Who hath uot given us over a prey to their teeth. Our soul is escaped as a bird out of the snare of the fovirlers ; The snare is broken, and we are escaped. Our help is in the name of lahveh Who made heaven and earth.* The thing that even more than difficulties of administration seems to have retarded the building of the second Temple t was the extreme poverty of the colonists. Bad harvests and disastrous droughts impoverished the community. Work on the Temple was resumed feebly and- slowly. Zerubbabel and Joshua thought they must have recourse to the prophetic spirit, and stirred up one Haggai to influ- ence the people.:]: Prophets were beginning to be dimly discerned as men of the past, — a pheno- menon that hereafter might never be seen. Since the death of Jeremiah and Ezekiel — that is, for more than forty years — no man had arisen to assume that post of danger. The great Anonymous Prophet of Babylon desired to remain in obscurity: probably he was as little known to his contem- poraries as he is to us. The restoration of the Temple led to a revival of prophecy. The nehiim (the. prophets) appear to have been held superior to the cohanim § (the priests). There were several con- temporary prophets whom we might call prophets of the reconstruction of the Temple. || * Psalm cxxiv. t Neither Haggai nor Zeohariah mentions these difficulties. t Haggai i, 11. § Zeohariah vii. 5-7. || Zeohariah viii. 9. RE-ESTABLISHMENT OF DIVINE WORSHIP. 17 Tour times in the year 520 Haggai lifted up his voice to reprove the colonists for their slackness. Their poverty and all the ills that they endured proceeded, he told them, from their lack of zeal. The people he addressed showed great indulgence in receiving him as one from whose lips they heard the voice of lahveh. If we read his brief prophecy written sixteen years after the Surge illuminare of the great Unknown Prophet, and even perhaps while he was still living, we shall be surprised to observe how literary art had become debased in Jerusalem by the rabbinical subtleties and casuistic distinctions that were then in vogue. The breadth, the resonance, of the ancient poets have been lost by their successors. Theirs is the prose of a second- class journalist, pleading for his party. And yet Haggai stirs our hearts, when, speaking to the few among them who could have seen the former Temple, he owns that the new building must appear to them very poor, but predicts its future splendour. He tells theni that the gold which it now lacks shall be brought to it by converted heathen. He says that the glory of this latter house shall be greater than the glory of the former. Does not all gold belong to lahveh. Lord of Sabaoth ? Peace is worth more than gold. Peace is lahveh' s special gift, and in this place he will give peace. Another prophet who in those days arose in Jeru- salem was hardly superior in talent to Haggai, but he had higher political aims in view. He was Zechariah, VOL. IV. — 2 1 8 HISTORY OF THE PEOPLE OF ISRAEL. son of Berechiah, of whose prophecy we possess a short megilla ; * in which we can perceive the deca- dence of Jewish taste and of the Jewish language, though his ideas frequently remind us of those of the great Anonymous Prophet.! Zechariah is infe- rior to Ezekiel, who was himself so inferior to Isaiah and to Isaiah's imitators. He sets his ideas in a fi'amework of symbolic visions. Apocalyptic visions of things that are to come to pass, beginning in Ezekiel, are completed by Zechariah. Unfortimately, his visions often degenerate into enigmas, and several passages are unintelligible,^ as it was apparently the intention of the writer that they should be. Zechariah rose to greater heights than Haggai, but we feel that the days of the nobis, the ancient seers, are passed. For though in Zechariah's eyes the greatest crime of the people of old was that they had not obeyed the voice of their prophets, and the chief duty of the men wliom he addressed was to hearken to the new ones,§ it is clear that the ofl&ce of an inspired teacher is not of the importance it was once, and will before long give place to a system of permanent prophecy called the Torah. Prophecies * Chapters i.-viii. We have several times explained (vol. ii. pp. 391, 392, and vol. iii p. 274, note 1) how very ancient writings came to be added to the close of the prophecy o£ Zechariah, by those who collected and put together the prophetical books. f Zechariah evidently must have known his prophecies, but attributes them to Isaiah (vii. 7 and what follows). % Zechariah vi. 1-8, shows a strong resemblance to the sibylline oracles. § Zechariah i. 1-6. RE-ESTABLISHMENT OF DIVINE WORSHIP. 19 delivered verbally — and such delivery was the very soul of ancient prophecy — were no longer in fashion. After Ezekiel, the prophet became a writer. Apoc- alyptic visions were an easy form of fiction in which to convey revelations intended to be read, in which completeness of each composition was a necessity. The visions of Zechariah all relate to the events passing in his time, — to efforts made to stimulate religious revival ; to the rebuilding of the Temple ; to aspirations towards a better future ; and to the certainty of final triumph. Horsemen clad like Persian light-horsemen {angares) have overrun the world ; all is tranquil ; yet the day of lahveh's ven- geance has not yet arrived. An angel asks when he will have pity upon Judah? The answer is that the angel must have patience.* Another vision is an earnest appeal to the Jews who are still in Baby- lonia or elsewhere, to come and join the colony at Jerusalem. lahveh is about to strike the world with terrible blows. The safest place must be Jerusalem.! lahveh will establish his throne in Zion. Many na- tions will flock to worship him there, and will become his people. An event had happened that had aroused these feelings, and had given Zechariah occasion to write one passage as beautiful as anything to be found in tlie pages of the Anonymous Prophet of Babylon. | * 1st vision, chap. i. 7-17. f 3d vision, chap. ii. X Zechariah vii. 1 and what follows. In verse 2, '7X-D''3, there is an evident error. I propose: 1XX1B'-'7213, or 7330. Be this as it may, the names of the two Jewish envoys are of heathen origin. 20 HISTORY OF THE PEOPLE OF ISRAEL. In the year 518 the Jews in Babylonia, having heard that the Temple was nearly completed, sent a depu- tation to do homage to lahveh. The envoys were greatly comforted by what they saw, and asked the cohanim of the Temple and the nehiim if it was necessary, now that the restoration was complete, to observe the fasts that had been instituted in memory of the misfortunes of 588, the year of the Captivity. The Temple had been rebuilt after seventy years of desolation : why need they still mourn for its destruction ? Zechariah replied by referring to the authority of the Prophets of old. As he considers the second part of Isaiah the work of Isaiah, he quotes its pages as such ; * but not having the text before his eyes he gives the pas- sage with some shaping of his own. There is no more occasion to fast. All that has made way for spiritual religion. Execute true judgment, and show mercy and peace every man to his brother, and oppress not the widow nor the fatherless, the stranger nor the poor. And let none of you imagine evil against his brother in your hearts. Like the great Anonymous Prophet, Zechariah has boundless hope in the future of the restored Jerusalem.! I am jealous for Zion with great jealousy, and I am jealous for her with great fury, saith lahveh-Sabaoth. I am returned unto Zion, and will dwell in the midst of * Compare Zechariah vii. and Tsaiah Iviii. t Zechariah viii. 1 and what follows. RE-ESTABLISHMENT OF DIVINE WORSHIP. 2i Jerusalem ; and Jerusalem shall be called the City of Truth and the Mountain of lahveh-Sabaoth the Holy Mountain. There shall yet old men and old women dwell in the streets of Jerusalem ; every man with his staff in his hand for very age. And the streets of the city shall be full of boys and girls playing in the streets thereof.* This era of happiness seems about to begin. lah- veh will bring back his people from all corners of the earth. Before the Temple was rebuilt "men received not the reward of their labours, neither did the beasts." There was no safety from their enemies, for lahveh set men one against another. Henceforth all shall be changed. As lahveh had set himself to bring evil on his people who of old had angered him, so since his Temple is rebuilt will he turn and do them good.f Judah has now only to observe one law. Speak ye every man the truth with his neighbour ; exe- cute the judgment of peace and truth in your gates, and let none of you imagine evil in his heart against his neighbour, and love no false oath, for these tilings do I hate, saith Taliveh. There shall come peoples and the inhabitants of many cities, and the inhabitants of one city shall go to another, saying : Let us go speedily to entreat tlie favour of lahveh, and to seek lahveh-Sabaoth; saying, I will go also. Yea, many peoples and strong nations shall come to seek lahveh-Sabaoth in Jerusalem, and to entreat the favour of lahveh. Thus saith lahveh : In those days it shall come to pass that two men shall take hold out of * That is, every one shall live to be old. See vol. iii. p. 397. The plays of the children shall not be interrupted, f Zechariah viii. 14, 15. 23 HISTORY OF THE PEOPLE OF ISRAEL. all the languages of the nations of the skirt of him that is a Jew, saying: We will go with you, for we have heard that God is with you. In this passage occurs for the first time the em- ployment of the word " lehoudi " as a name desig- nating a religion. . The word " Jew " from that day forth made its entrance into the world. Zechariah was right. The religion of the Jew was to become the religion of mankind. Yet a little while, and all the people of the earth should be Judaised. CHAPTER III. LEVITES. — NETHINIM. The completion and final dedication of the second Temple took place 516 b. c. Several passages in the Psalms probably refer to this solemn occasion. Though the general poverty of the people was ex- treme, great pomp was displayed ; for the levites were numerous. The hasidim, as they were called, appear occasionally to have been counted as priests ; * what we read of them reminds us of the crowd of inferior clergy who clustered round cathedrals in the Middle Ages. The priestly vestments had been in use ever since the first days of the restored worship.! Music, in the unoccupied hours of a leisure life, had made great progress.^ The musicians were organised into bands, under banners bearing mythical names taken from the writings of old, as Asaph, Heman, Ethan. § The different choirs seem to have performed their music in parts in a very scientific way. The musical * Psalm cxxxii. 9, 16. t See p. 91. i 1 Chronicles ix., xv., xxv. It is hard to be exact on this difficult subject ; for the imagination is apt to refer much that belonged only to the service of the second Temple to the first. § Jeduthan is an error for Ethan, the aleph sometimes being softened in 'V; 24 HISTORY OF THE PEOPLE OF ISRAEL. terms invented at this period have come down to us,* but they are little more than enigmas, in which one can only conjecture the parts assigned to tenor, barytone, and soprano. The orchestra consisted of stringed instruments {cinnor, nehel), and wind instru- ments, as the hautboy, flute, and sundry kinds of trumpets, which were accompanied by tambourines, cymbals, shawms, triangles, and castanets. Anti- phone and response were one of the most favourite forms of melody. The people took part in the ser- vice by joining in refrains, and by words of assent, like Amen. This was the origin of that splendid worship which grew up around the Temple at Jerusalem to a mar- vellous degree of solemnity, and w^hich all Christian liturgies took for their model from the fourth century through the Middle Ages. This form of worship was not, as is generally supposed, that of the first Temple, but the worship of the second. The Psalms of praise used in the liturgy which the Christian Church has so nobly incorporated into its services, almost all date from this period. They were the poetry of the levites. Those poor hasidim, frequently half starved, were great artists ; they created the lit- urgy, — that fruitful mother of many arts in the re- ligious ages. The habit of composing hymns trained these poor people to a certain facility in verse ; so that a large part of the book of Psalms was the work of men little better than beggars, who lived • Titles of the Psalms; Habakkuk iii. ; 1 Chronicles xv., xvi. LE VITES. — NETHINIM. 25 upon what charity might give them from the offer- ings in the Temple, and were frequently in the depths of destitution.* The Catholic clergy later took delight in this melancholy literature, in which they found their own secret feelings of sadness and resignation expressed. The singers (mesorerim) had in this family of the servitors of the public worship a somewhat superior position. After them came the porters {soarim), hadjibs, who kept the gates of the Temple ; last of all were the netinim (devoted from their birth to the service of the sanctuary), the " serfs of Solomon.'' They were, in fact, serfs of the Church, slaves of the levites,t hewers of wood and drawers of water, mostly of foreign origin, |: first given to God for the harder labours of his services, when his cause was victorious, but grown happy in a servitude which * See Psalms vii., ix., xiii., xxi., xxvi., xxvii., xxviii., xxxv., xL, xliii., lii., Ivii., lix., Ixiii., Ixix., Ixxi., Ixxiii., Ixxv., xcv.-c, eix., cxxxviii. Note the expressions, — iron, r\m- np, D'nSx 'ST. 'aw '3ns, jnSs 'tynn, ynSs '{?pD, D'p'ny, D'lt?', D'TOn. It is impossible to make a strict distinction between Psalms written during the first century after the building of the second Temple, and those composed in the days of Josiah. t Ezra viii. 20. J See vol, iii. p. 422. . 26 HISTORY OF THE PEOPLE OF ISRAEL. gave them ample leisure. All these made up a world curiously mixed, active and powerful by reason of its numbers and its poverty, which further increased the band of ancient anavim* These men — God's poor — believed that the reign of lahveh would be their day of triumph. The poverty of Israel was fruitful ; a whole world of poetry has grown out of it.f Love for God's house, delight in his worship, the happi- ness of dwelling in his courts, of being fed from his hand, of looking upon themselves, poor as they were,- as superior to the rest of mankind, — all these things began to show themselves faintly in the days of Hezekiah,! and were developed in the poor levites after the return from Babylon. The clerical spirit strikes always deep. He who has once said Dominus pars hcereditatis mece is no longer like other men. Let laymen beware ! The inferior clergy, having no employment outside the Temple service, found often reasons of com- plaint against the priests of the house of Zadok, who frequently oppressed their servitors, and withheld what was due to them.§ The martyr wail that so frequently arises in the Psalms, the indignation of the hasid, who is compelled to remain poor while the proud Sadducean priest enjoys prosperity and riches, may have been the expression of bitter cleri- * See vol. iii. p. 31 and what follows. t Psalms xxiii., xxv., xxvii., xlii., xlvii , Ixxi., Ixxiv., cxii., cxlvii. t See vol. iii. p. 29. § 2 Chronicles xxxi. (retrospective) ; K'ehemiah x. 2d part, xii., xiii. LE VITES. — NE THINIM. 27 cal hatreds. Let us imagine the singers and the ser- vitors forming a party against the priests. With us such an alliance would end in scenes like those in the Lutrin of Boileau. In Israel it concerned great social questions. Of all democracies the most dan- gerous is a democracy of saints more pious than their priests, despised by the official clergy and by the middle classes, but avenging themselves upon the former by their superior sanctity. The assertion that God is the defender of the poor ; that he loves the poor best of all his creatures ; that poverty is a title of honour in his sight ; that v?hen God helps the poor he glorifies his name,* — involves a mute attack upon the established order of things. The cause of the poor being thus identified with that of God, the door is opened for recriminations of the boldest kind among a people who do not hold that the compensations of divine justice are carried over to another life. What made the situation particularly serious was that the levites were united in close brotherhood,! and formed a powerful community, a sort of church among themselves. | The anavim were brothers § living together, bound by ties of affection and famil- iarity, lahveh nourished them in the courts of his house, out of the superfluities of his feasts. || It was among such in after years that Jesus would dwell. * Psalms xi,, cix. t Psalm xxii. % D'pnx mx, onty, pns in, nin' 'lyin in See Psalm xiv. (liii.), xxiv. § Psalm xxii. 27 and what follows. {| Psalm cxxxiii. 28 HISTORY OF THE PEOPLE OF ISRAEL. The poor love each other. Among them through all centuries are those who have sung cheerfully the verse of the canticle, — Ecce quam bonum et quam jucundum Habitare fratres in unum. Thus in Jerusalem was formed in the latter years of the sixth century b. c. a whole people of priests, very different from the religious orders of the Middle Ages ; since a rigorous rule, and a hierarchy upheld by the secular arm, did not coerce them. The sing- ers in particular grew more numerous than were needed for the Temple service ; and as residence in Jerusalem * was not thought particularly desirable, they frequently found quarters for themselves out- side the city, — at Netophah near Bethlehem, at Beth-Gilgal, and in the country round Geba and Az- mabeth. There they built hacerim or villce, humble hamlets where they lived apart, no doubt cultivating the land around them. Hymns could not but be born in so singular a situation. The necessity of making pilgrimages to Jerusalem gave occasion to pleasant periodical journeys. The Sire ham-maaloih^ were probably composed at this period. These " songs of degrees " are little poems perfect in form, delightful as poetry, having a religious charm which has made them the delight of all ages. They were sung either in chorus or in alternate verses, which * Nehemiah xii. 28, 29. f Cantica graduum. The origin of this name is unknown. LE VITES. — NE THINIM. 29 accounts for their repetitions, * the employment of the same words, the crossing and recrossing of cer- tain passages, the apparent transpositions of parts of phrases which have been observed in them. The poverty-stricken artists who created such gems of language and of feeling were assuredly the equals of those world-famous poets who, at about the same period, were composing the lyric treasures of Dorian verse, — the masterpieces of Greek genius in poetry.f * Foi' instance, Psalm cxxiv. 1, 2. Besides which, copyists have omitted much, t See especially Psalms cxx. to cxxx , all exquisite little poems. CHAPTER IV. THE END OF THE HOUSE OF DAVID. — THE TRIUMPH OF THE HIGH-PRIEST OVER THE NASI. For fifteen or twenty years Zerubbabel appears to have exercised the authority of a nasi * over Israel, and at the same time the power of a pekah, or Per- sian governor, in Jerusalem, vpithoiit much difficulty or opposition. Haggai, in 520, puts him always on a par with Joshua the high-priest, the son of Josedeck, and indeed always names him first. In his last utter- ances he announces that in the midst of the overthrow of empires which is at hand Zerubbabel will pass in safety through the flood, t God has taken him under his protection. He has put his signet-ring upon his finger, — that is to say, the thing most personal and precious to himself. Zerubbabel is the elect servant of God, chosen by him to rule his people. Another poem has preserved for us a true expres- sion of the feelings of the legitimists of that da.j, the Hierosolymites, whose hopes were fixed upon the restoration of the House of David : \ — * For the conception of the nasi of Israel at this period see Ezekiel xii., xlv., xlvi. t Haggai ii. 20-23. Cf. Ecclesiastieiis xlix. 11 and what follows. X Psalm cxxxii. Cf. 1 Kings xi. 34 and what follows. It is very singular that Psalm cxxxi., which immediately precedes cxxxii., is THE END OF THE HOUSE OF DA VI D. 31 lahveh, remember for Darid All his affliction,* How he sware unto lahveh And vowed unto the Mighty One of Jacob: Surely, I will not come into the tabernacle of my house Nor go up into my bed; I will not give sleep to my eyes, Or slumber to mine eyelids, Until I find out a place for lahveh, A tabernacle for the mighty God of Jacob. Lo, we heard of the same in Ephraini, t We found it in the field of the wood. % We will go into his tabernacles, We will worship at his footstool. Arise, lahveh, into thy resting-place, Thou and the ark of thy strength. Let thy priests be clothed with righteousness. And let thy saints shout for joy. For thy servant Darid's sake Turn not away the face of thine Anointed. § And the answer is : — lahveh hath sworn unto David in truth, He will not turn from it : Of the fruit of thy body will I set upon thy throne. If thy children will keep my covenant, And my testimony that I shall teach them, Their children also shall sit upon thy throne forevermore. attributed in the Syriac version to Joshua the son of Josedeck. The Syriac version was made from a Hebrew manuscript, whioli contained valuable passages that are omitted in the received text(Ecclesiastions), Cf. 2 Chronicles vi. 41, 42. In general, all that relates to the second 'I'einple is told as if relating to the first. Parallelism of pix and j.'ty (V. 9, 16) is characteristic of the Deutero-lsaiah. * iniJj^. Read "piety." t At Shiloh. Read D'liSX. X At Kirjath-Jearim (or Jaar : see 1 Chronicles xiii. 5). § Zerubbabel, — the last representative of the kingly power of David. 32 HISTORY OF THE PEOPLE OF ISRAEL. For lahveh hath chosen Zion, He hath desired it for his habitation. This is my resting-place forever, Here will I dwell : for I have desired it. I will abundantly bless her provision, I will satisfy her poor with bread. Her priests also will I clothe with salvation And her hasidim shall shout aloud for joy. There will I make the horn of Da,vid to bud,* I have ordained a lamp for my Anointed, f His enemies will I clothe with shame. But upon himself shall his crown flourish. Old prophecies-, misinterpreted, increased the illu- sion, and augmented the agitation of the people. As always happens in a time of great calamity, chimeras took shape. The nation dreamed of au ideal Saviour, a perfected David, who would restore to it the glory of its former years. At the moment of the overthrow of Jehoiakim (598) Jeremiah found comfort in the thought that a Branch ^ should grow out of the root of David, — a king, wise and just, who would restore prosperity to Israel. § Under Zedekiah, towards the end of the siege (588), he uses almost the same words to repeat his confidence in these invincible illusions. || These passages, like all that belongs to Jeremiah, keenly touched the fancy. Men talked mysteriously in those days ^ * n'aSK, an allusion to nox of Jeremiah and Zechariah. See subse- uently pp. 37, 40, &c. t An allusion to 1 Kings xi. 36; xv. 1; 2 Kings viii. 19; 2 Chroni- cles xxi. 7. % riDX. § Jeremiah xxiii. 5. II Jeremiah xxxiii. 15. See vol. iii. p. 315. 1[ Zechariah. See subsequently p. 35 and what follows. THE END OF THE HOUSE OF DAVID. 33 of a Semakh, or Branch, who would appear as the Saviour of Israel. Zerubbabel for a time seemed to fulfil these expectations. With shades of dif- ference that we cannot now appreciate, he was at the close of the sixth century b. c. to the faith- ful in Israel what the Comte de Chambord has been to Legitimists in our own day. His death or disappearance is a matter of mystery. We know absolutely nothing of his end. The overthrow of the hopes built upon him by his nation was no doubt due to the Persian authorities, who had no wish to en- courage local semi-royalties in the Persian empire ; and we cannot but own that the anomalous position of the heir of a long line of Jewish kings reduced to the position of a sub-prefect* could not last long. Besides, we have seen ten times already in the course of this history that the destiny of Israel was not to found a temporal kingdom. The sacerdotal party, when it had secured its triumph, apparently made haste to efface all traces of its expulsion of the ancient dynasty. The princes of the House of David, who up to this time had been both rich and honoured in the land, sink out of sight, and apparently have passed into neglect and poverty. Zerubbabel, after having played so prominent a part in the history of his people, passes suddenly into oblivion, we know not how. He had no successor. He was, so far as we know, the sole nasi. After him the high-priest takes the first place among his people, * The Persian pekah was a sort of under-satrap. VOL. IV. — 3 34 HISTORY OF THE PEOPLE OF ISRAEL. and becomes more powerful than ever. He is the real Governor of Jerusalem. We have lists of the high-priests* thenceforth, as we have lists of kings preserved elsewhere. The sacerdotal nobility jeal- ously guarded its privileges ; and like every other nobility its claims gave rise to many frauds. Con- sequently a sort of genealogical register was kept in Jerusalem for the purpose of rectifying errors. t How did so important a revolution take place? Its details we would gladly know. Certain things make us suspect that it was not accomplished without violence. The way in which Haggai clings with passionate ardour to Zerubbabel would seem to indi- cate that the power of the nasi was in his time being threatened. With Zechariah it is different. His fourth vision \ is certainly a very strange one. Joshua the son of Josedeck stands before lahveh clad in filthy garments ; Satan § stands beside him to ac- cuse him. lahveh will not hear his accusations, not -because Joshua is innocent, but because Jerusalem has been sufficiently stricken, has suffered from con- flagration. Joshua is a brand snatched from the 'burning. lahveh makes him change his filthy gar- ments II for priestly robes. A clean sanif is placed upon his head ; he is solemnly clothed (i. e. he re- * Snjninan or tysin pO. This function was introduced retro- spectively in the legislation attributed to Moses, and in writings in the itimes of the Kings. t Josephus, Against Apion, i. 7. J Chapter iii. § Compare this with Satan's part in the book of Job. II nisSno = Jodia. THE END OF THE HOUSE OF DAVID. 35 ceives investiture) before the angel of lahveh, and is then told : " If thou wilt walk in my ways, and if thou wilt keep my charge, then thou also shalt judge my house and shalt keep my courts, and I will give thee a place among those that stand by.* Hear now, Joshua the high-priest, thou and thy men which sit before thee (for they are men that are a sign), for behold I will bring forth my servant the Branch, t For behold the stone that I have set before Joshua, upon one stone are seven eyes.|: Be- hold I will engrave the engraving thereof, saith lahveh-Sabaoth, and I will remove the iniquity of thy land in one day ..." It is very difficult for us to comprehend what the Prophet evidently wished not to reveal clearly to his contemporaries. Another vision is a little less unin- telligible. § Zechariah sees a candlestick having seven branches, with a bowl on the top of it commu- nicating by pipes to the seven lamps. On the right side and on the left are two olive-trees. These two olive-trees are the two Anointed Ones || who stand beside the Lord of the whole earth." They are Zerubbabel and Joshua. The oil proceeds from them, they transfer it into the bowl upon the candlestick, and thence it is distributed into all branches of the family of Israel. * The angels. t The allusion is to Jeremiah, xxiii. 5; xxxiii. 15. X I think that this must mean seven times the letter ain. § Fifth vision. Chapter iv. II nns' '«. 36 HISTORY OF THE PEOPLE OF ISRAEL. his is the word of lahveh unto Zerubbabel, saying : Not by might nor by power, but by my spirit,* saith lahveh- Sabaoth. Who art thou, great mountain ? Before Zerub- babel thou shalt become a plain ; and he shall bring forth the head-stone f with shoutings, crying, Grace, grace, unto it. The same voice adds, — The hands of Zerubbabel have laid the foundations of this house ; his hands shall also finish it. . . . For who hath despised the day of small things ? For they shall rejoice and see the plummet in the hands of Zerubbabel, even these seven which are the eyes of lahveh ; they run to and fro through the whole earth. Then comes a clearer vision. \ Three rich Jews from Babylon have arrived at the house of an Hierosolymite : — And the word of lahveh came unto me saying: Go thou into the house of Josiah the son of Zephaniah. There thou wilt find those of the Captivity, Heldai, Tobi- jab, and Jediah, who have come from Babylon. Take of them silver and gold, and make crowns and set them upon the head of Joshua the son of Jehozadak the high- priest ; and speak unto him, saying. Behold the man whose name is the Branch, and he shall grow up out of his place, and he shall build the Temple of lahveh, even he shall build the Temple of lahveh, and he shall bear the glory, and shall sit and rule upon his throne ; and he shall be a priest upon his throne, and the counsel of peace shall be between them both. And the crowns shall be to Heldai and to Tobijah and to Jediah and to Hen the son of Zepha- niah, for a memorial in the Temple of lahveh. And * The spirit of God, symbolized by the oil. t The stone that crowns the edifice ; perhaps it has a figurative meaning. X Zechariah, vi. 9 and following verses. THE END OF THE HOUSE OF DA VI D. 37 they that are afar off shall come and build in the Temple of lahveh, and ye shall know that lahveh-Sabaoth hath sent me unto you. If this passage has come down to us as Zechariah wrote it,* it is certainly very strange. Zerubbabel is not mentioned at all as taking part in rebuilding the Temple. The whole glory of the work — at least of its completion — is assigned to Joshua, who now seems to unite royalty and priesthood. He is coJien, or priest, upon his throne, and suddenly assumes the rank of Semakk, or Branch. It has been conjectured that the cause of this change was some revolution, possibly effected by gold brought from Babylon. To this supposed revolution some have attributed the well-known Psalm, t written evidently on the acces- sion of a sovereign not yet honoured by the title of melek, a priest forever after the order of Melchize- dek, adopted by lahveh in his wrath against profane melakim, whose power he will break. The Psalm appears to have been sung by two choirs, the second choir speaking in the name of lahveh : — FIRST CHOIK. lahveh saith unto my lord : Sit thou on my right hand, SECOND CHOIR. Until I make thine enemies thy footstool. * This is very doubtful. DrTJiy pD in verse 13 is incomprehen- sible if the name of Zerubbabel be not in what precedes it. In verse 11, nnO;? supposes the same thing. t Psalm ex., the most difficult of all the Psalms by reason of the alterations in its text and the obscurity of its allusions. The fact that it has been placed among the Psalms written after the return from Babylon is our only indication of the circumstances of its composition. 38 HISTORY OF THE PEOPLE OF ISRAEL. FIRST CHOIR. lahveh shall stretch forth the rod of thy strength * out of Zion. SECOND CHOIK. Rule thou in the midst of thine enemies. FIRST CHOIR. The people will bring thee freewill offerings f In the day of thy power, In the glory of thy holy place, t SECOND CHOIR. In my womb T have conceived thee. § FIRST CHOIR. lahveh sware and will not repent. SECOND CHOIR. Thou art a priest forever, after the order of Melchizedek. || FIRST CHOIR. The Lord [Adonai] at thy right hand Shall strike through kings in the day of his wrath. * Thy sceptre. f The text of verse 3, as understood by the Greek translators, seems better than the Massoteric version. % Cf . Psalm xxix. 2, — Thy people offer themselves willingly In the day of thy power In the beauties of holiness. Revised Version. § From the womb of the morning thou hast the dew of thy youth. — Revised Version (Trans.). This verse is imitated from Psalm ii. 7. yfWO is a marginal varia- tion for Dmo ; the four letters SdiV were wanting in the manuscript of the Greek translators. There seems to be some transposition. The original reading may have been ymS' 'OmD. 11 An allusion to Genesis xiv. THE END OF THE HOUSE OF DAVID. 39 SECOND CHOIR. The Lord [Adonai] shall judge the nations, he shall fill the . places with dead bodies, He shall strike through the head in many countries ! BOTH CHOIKS. He shall drink of the brook in the way; Therefore shall he lift up his head.* Of course, all this does not amount to a certainty. Did Joshua the son of Josedeck inherit all the power of Zerubbabel ? After the disappearance of Zerubba- bel was the popular idea of the Semakh, or Branch, transferred to priests of the house of Zadok ? t We are so entirely ignorant of all that was passing in Jerusalem at this period that we hardly dare ven- ture even on conjectures. Jewish historiographers have chosen that this episode should remain dark, and they have succeeded. Two things only are clear : first, that Zerubbabel, by death or in some other way, fell from power shortly after the Tem- ple was completed, or just before ; % secondly, that his descendants became obscure private individuals, § while we have a list of the descendants of Joshua as a line of hereditary sovereigns. || Joshua was succeeded by his son Joiakim, he by his son Eliashib, * An alluision we do not understand. f The passage in Zechariah, given on p. 21, would lead us to suppose so; but the text is strongly suspected of alteration. X According to some Jewish traditions Zerubbabel returned to Babylonia. Derenbourg, Palestine, p. 18 and what follows. § 1 Chronicles iii. 19 and what follows (to say nothing of the two genealogies of Christ, in some places possibly fictitious). II Nehemiah xii. 10 and vfhat follows. This list is defective. 40 HISTORY OF THE PEOPLE OF ISRAEL. whom we shall find to have been contemporary with Nehemiah.* The priesthood was more and more held to be the appanage of the mythical brother of Moses. The office of high-priest was hereditary by right divine. All priests were sons of Aaron ; the high-priest descends from him in direct line by order of birth. This feeling was kept up by the circula- tion of writings in which theocratic authority was far more strongly insisted on than in the ancient scriptures. Old versions were retouched to con- form to the sacerdotal reorganisation of the nation, and a constitutional theocratic authority was cen- tralised in the house of Aaron. A sort of second legitimacy was thus formed in place of that of the now displaced House of David. The high-priest became the leader of the nation. His power, transmitted from father to son, from first-born to first-born, ennobled the whole family, and gave to the brother of the high-priest the right even to ascend the steps of the high altar. t The record of the genealogy of the high-priests is preserved in official documents, which come down to the destruction of -Jerusalem by Titus. Tithes gave wealth and strength to the new power. Israel had ceased to be a nation; it became an ecclesiastical commxmity. Jerusalem gives the first example of the materializing of a spiritual power. The Rome * Nehemiah iii. 1; xiii. 1. •f Josephus, Antiquities, xi. viii. 2. THE END OF THE HOUSE OF DA VI D. 41 of the Papacy there found a model which in lordly fashion it imitated in after years. It is certainly very strange that the official record of the descendants of David should have broken off thus suddenly and silently, and that not one word of complaint or of regret should have come down to us. Some critics have thought that such feelings are embodied in certain Psalms in which they fancy they can detect covert reproaches to lahveh for hav- ing abandoned the family of the man after his own heart, whom he had chosen to be king. Such is Psalm Ixxxix., whose author seems to have himself belonged to the House of David, and sadly recalls to the mind of lahveh the forlorn situation of his faithful ones, while he looks forward to their resto- ration. This Psalm has been attributed to Zerub- babel, or to one of his descendants. It is certain that the Psalms written at this period contain many personal allusions. We have already spoken of the touching Psalm " Lord, remember David," * and how strange it is to find next to it in the Psalter t a little prayer attributed to Joshua the son of Jose- deck, which seems like a protest on his part against accusations made against him of inordinate ambition. The oblivion into which the House of David so suddenly fell need not take us by surprise. Except four or five good kings, the dynasty, according to the pietists, had contained nothing but wicked * Psalm cxxxii. See p. 31. -}■ Psalm cxxxi. Note the Syriac title. 42 HISTORY OF THE PEOPLE OF ISRAEL. ones. The latter kings of Jerusalem, those who came after Josiah, were anathematised by Jeremiah and his school. Ezekiel in his visions rarely men- tions legitimacy, or the House of David. In short, the Prophets seem to have thought little about the dynasty of David or the Temple. In their ideal pictures of Messiah's reign they never predict that a descendant of David shall bear rule in Jerusalem when the whole world flocks thither to do homage to lahveh. Many Jewish puritans would have willingly left the Temple in its ruins, believing that God dwelleth in the heavens, and that all the beasts of the earth are h.is, before any are offered to him in sacrifice. That view it was not, however, possible to accept. The second Temple rose. Feeble efforts to restore the prestige of David availed little. It was not until the last days of the Maccabees, or rather in the times of the Herods, that the idea is seen to spring up that the Messiah was to be a son of David, and pains were then taken to recon- struct genealogies of that line, and to discover those lineal descendants of David who (it was said) for centuries had lived forgotten and unknown. The Asmoneans, it is well known, were noway descended from David, and made no attempt to usurp a title upon that ground. The power of the high-priest seems not to have been considered political in any way by the Persian government. There were always in Jerusalem, be- sides the high-priest, who exercised authority over THE END OF THE HOUSE OF DA VI D. 43 the Jews, a Persian pekah* appointed by the court at Susa.f It. is probable that Jerusalem was a sort of secondary sub-prefecture, forming part of the whole government of the Trans-Euphrates. The residence of the pekah at Jerusalem was near the corner-gate, on the spot where the Tower of Hippicus was after- wards built, now the Kalaa. The high-priest lived in the Temple. The palaces of the ancient kings, which were south of the Temple, lay in ruins. To have restored them and inhabited them would assur- edly have been considered an act of rebellion by the Persian government. Jerusalem in the days of Darius and Xerxes must have been a strange little city, — a city of priests, prophets, and levites, of everything except real citizens. In Greece, the period of which we treat was that of the three hundred Spartans, and of Marathon, Miltiades, and Cimon. There were but few prophets after Haggai and Zechariah. There was nothing left but a temple with its priests and its underlings, not very unlike the heathen temples of that age at Gebel, Tyre, and Cyprus.^ From that time forth there was no attempt to combat an invad- ing idolatry ; monotheism reigned undisputed in Jeru- salem. § A secular civilisation was destroyed there * The pekah of Jerusalem exercised authority under a satrap, who had a fixed residence elsewhere. t Malachi i. 8. The case of Nehemiah differed only in that he was a Jew. X See Corpus inscr. semit., 1st Part, Nos. 1, 10 and the following, 86, 87. § Ezra ix. and what follows. 44 HISTORY OF THE PEOPLE OF ISRAEL. forever. The second Temple, like the first, was built by Phoenician workmen. They settled afterwards in the city, where they carried on trade and commerce, especially in provisions.* The grand aspirations of the Prophets seemed forgotten. Ritualism, or rather casuistry, had absorbed all things into itself. The Torah triumphed. The laws regulating religious observances became stricter every day. It is easy to perceive what fate was in store for Israel. * Nehemiah xiii. and what follows. CHAPTER V. LEVITICAL ADDITIONS TO THE TORAH. — ELABORA- TION OF THE RITES OF WORSHIP. The Torah, during these years whose history is so dark to us, grew by many additions. We have seen* that ever since a period prior to the Captivity there had existed in writing certain laws of ritual, certain Temple customs. More than one arrangement of the liturgy may have been drawn up at the time of the return from Babylon. f Many ancient practices had fallen into disuse, many disputed points needed to be authoritatively adjusted. Priests, about the time of Ezekiel, had one after another exerted them- selves to invent a Temple service as brilliant as they had seen it in their visions or their dreams. Such conceptions must have exercised great influence on the restoring of the Temple worship. The people made — and above all they imagined — all sorts of splendours, on such a scale as their poverty would allow. All difficulties were disposed of by insisting that the scale of this magnificence had been ordained * See vol. iii. pp. 52, 53, 159. t Haggai ii. alludes to levitical laws, especially Leviticus vi. 20. 46 HISTORY OF THE PEOPLE OF ISRAEL. by Moses in his lifetime in the journey through the Wilderness.* The period of Zerubbabel and Joshua the son of Josedeck was poor in every way. The writings of Haggai and Zechariah show such lack of skill that at first view it hardly seems probable that at such a moment the great code of levitical law could have been composed. But in the literary work of those days there were various degrees of skill required. Indeed, we may, if we please, suppose Joshua the high-priest engaged in it, and we may not be wrong in the conjecture. It is as likely to be true as any other. Conjectures founded on probabilities are as legit- imate as conjectures without such foundation are intolerable. Those descriptions of the sacerdotal garments, for example, so carefully elaborated, so minutely detailed, — are they the work of dreamers of the school of Ezekiel, to whom it cost nothing to manufacture them sparkling with jewels ? Or are they due to the first colonists who accompanied Zerub- babel, and comforted themselves in their poverty by imagining costly vestments made splendid by all that was rich and rare ? Or perhaps should we rather refer them to the days of the grand religious ceremo- nies brought about by the active persuasions of Nehemiah ? Who can tell ? The levitical laws con- cerning vows,t those relating to sacrifices,^ the * Exodus XXV. and what follows. t Leviticus xxvii. ; Numbers xxx. % Leviticus i.-vii. LEVITICAL ADDITIONS TO THE TOR AH. 47 commands respecting sexual relations,* laws con- cerning what was clean and what unclean,! — we cannot be sure as to their date. All we can say is that they appear to belong to a time when an anxious casuistry had become dominant in Israel. It however seems as if the lawgivers of the Res- toration had altered very little as to important things. They drew up a code of costumes; they gathered together scattered laws that had remained unwritten.^ But while they copied ancient texts they not unfrequently added to them.§ Perhaps it is to them we owe the strange manner in which death was made the punishment of mere infringe- ments of ritual, though such passages may have proceeded from the pen of some believer in a religious Utopia, who scattered his penalties here, there, and everywhere. These years after the return may also have been the time when regulations were made concerning feasts and pilgrimages to Jerusalem, || the system of which is more complicated in the levitical code than it is in the book of Deuteronomy or even in Ezekiel. Sacrifices were also duly regulated. They received technical names ; ritualistic observances were affixed * Leviticus xii., xv., xviii. The law concerning leprosy was most certainly in writing in the days of the first Temple. See vol. iii. p. 52, note. •(■ Leviticus xi., xii., xiii., xiv., xv., xviii., xxi., xxii. % See vol. iii. p. 52, note 1. § As, lists of beasts clean and unclean. See vol. iii. p. 52, note 2. 11 Leviticus xxiii. 48 HISTORY OF THE PEOPLE OF ISRAEL. to the smallest details of existence. The sacrifices were no longer family feasts. The victims belonged almost entirely to the priests, who alone seemed to profit by them. The gift of prophecy became limited to the priesthood, and indeed became almost the prerogative of the high-priest. Purity of heart, so much insisted on in Deuteronomy, became only legal purity of an outward kind. Isaiah and the prophets of the classic period, who were so hostile' to sacrifices, were set aside. The money expended to provide victims was the first consideration. Pharisa- ism, against which Jesus directed his sharpest darts, already existed in all its essentials. There was never a more striking example of how the mere ceremonial development of religion leads to mate- rialism rather than to progress. The new feasts had all an expiatory character, which put them far below their old character of festivals devoted to thanksgiving and joy. The lom kip2mriin * (the Kippour of the present day) and the penitential fasts f took an exaggerated place. The idea of expiation (a very false one, for the only way in which men can expiate what has been evil on their part is to do better in future) always opens the door to abuse. The rite concerning the ashes of the red heifer \ had most likely provoked the ridicule of the Prophets ; but now it was taken up, consecrated, * Exodus xxix. 36; xxx. 10, 16; Leviticus xxiii. 27; xxv. 9. t Leviticus xvi. 1-34; xxiii. 26-32; Numbers xxix. 7-12. J Numbers xix. LEVI TIC A L ADDITIONS TO THE TOR AH. 49 and made a dogma. It was the same with the law of purification. A belief in Azazel* was almost the sole pagan superstition which clung to the Jews. Is it not wonderful that a people which had spent its strength in. expelling superstition in all its forms should have written whole pages on the manner in which the wretched scape-goat was to be chased into the wilderness? Religion is on the decline when it is given up to masters of ceremony and sacristans. Fasts took deep root in the old religion of Israel, and in that of all peoples of the Semitic race.f AH that was now done was to regulate them. But the system strengthened in the popular mind one of the saddest errors of lahvism ; namely, that God is jeal- ous of man, and is glad to see him humbled. The important part of the Semitic som, or fast, i& not abstinence from food, but humiliation, sackcloth and ashes, the dishevelled hair, the disfigured face. About this time the observance of the Sabbath and the rite of circumcision became the very basis of Jewish life. In scrupulous observance of these things men forgot the fundamental conditions of true piety. They did as the peasant does, who eats no meat on Fridays, and goes scrupulously on Sun- days to mass, but continues nevertheless in his evil ways. The Passover \ was becoming the great feast of the Jews. The rites of this grand public cele- * Leviticus xvi. t See vol. i. p. 47; vol. iii. p. 161. X 2 Chronicles xxx. ; 2 Esdras i. VOL. IV. — 4 so HISTORY OF THE PEOPLE OF ISRAEL. bration took an especial character of national solem- nity, not unmixed with mysticism. The laws of health and cleanliness were rightly a matter of chief attention among ancient lawgiv- ers* The laws that forbade certain unwholesome or filthy meats to be eaten were an essential part of the old codes. t The swine, which almost always transmits disorders in the East, deserved the strict exclusion which the law required, at a time when the only safe r.eniedy against sickness was a rigid system of precautions. The additions made by levit- ical law to the list of other proscribed animals \ are naive. The ideas concerning clean and unclean were founded at first on what is really clean or foul ; § they responded to man's inbred feelings of refine- ment, to those disgusts which very often we our- selves are unable to account for.|| Almost all na- tions in the East exaggerate these distinctions, and make of them burthens grievous to be borne. The levitical code was in the daily life of the Jews the cause of many evils.][ Questions about clean or unclean became the source of endless scruples and the * See vol. i. pp. 103, 104 ; vol. ii. p. 311, note 5. t Compare the laws of other nations on such matters, — the codes of Manou, of the Zend-Avesta. Herodotus i. 140; ii. 37. I Leviticus xi. Compare Deuteronomy xiv. Cf. vol. iii. p. 52, note 2; p. 53, note 1, &c. § It is so to this day in the higher castes in India. II Strange mixtures, contacts that make us fancy we may catch cutaneous maladies or sores, or fermentations generally held to be disgusting. IT Leviticus, from chapter xi. to xxii. LEVI TIC A L ADDITIONS TO THE TOR AH. SI most minute inquiries, which, especially when they had relation to women, were extremely inconvenient. The life of a Jew was singularly hedged about with restrictions. It is true that sometimes the saving strength of a religion is afforded by the uncomfort- able obligations it may impose. The more onerous they are the more men cling to them. The religions of the East are fenced round by material regulations and prohibiiions, till they become the business of men's lives. On the other hand, they are ruined in the end by such restrictions, men being isolated by them from the great stream of human progress. These fatal distinctions between clean and unclean have made society impossible in the East. Society assumes the free contact of individuals ; the rules of which we speak raise barriers of separation be- tween them. The Asiatic world accepts these pue- rile distinctions of religion or of caste ; but Europe will have nothing to do with them. As soon as the Jews were dispersed throughout Europe, their levitical law prevented their free contact with other individuals of the human race. Judaism will never conquer the world till it renounces them, — that is, till it becomes Christianity, such as Saint Paul con- ceiA^ed it, without circumcision, without distinctions of separation either in board or bed. The Torah thus, as it were, remained incomplete during the later years of the sixth century B. c. Those who accept the narratives in Ezra as authority make the end of the labour spent upon its revision 52 HISTORY OF THE PEOPLE OF ISRAEL. come down to about 450 b. c. And, indeed, half a century is no long time in which to suppose so great a task, attended with many hesitations and inter- ruptions, could have been accomplished. It would appear, however, that the additions made in the time of Ezra, if indeed there were any, were not considerable, and that no essential part of the Torah is of later date than the year 500 B. c. No attempt was made to give unity to what resulted from this revision. The additions seem to have principally affected the levitical code, reduced to writing during the Captivity * and generally believed to have been given on Mount Sinai. t Creative energy had died out in Israel. The fount of prophecy had run dry. Meditation on the Torah, not the making of it, was thenceforward to absorb the religious activity of the nation. The second Isaiah, the latest and most in- spired of the ancient Prophets, was perhaps still liv- ing when some pious Israelite composed Psalm cxix., that mass of repetitions, which rings its changes on the same thoughts through twenty-two times eight verses, the octaves corresponding to the twenty- two letters of the Hebrew alphabet, each verse containing in every variety of synonym praises, one hundred and seventy-six times repeated, of the law of lahveh. All the legal part of the Torah, which is relatively modern, though far inferior in moral breadth to the Book of the Covenants, to the Decalogue, or to * See vol. iii. p. 340. f Exodus xxiv. 16. LEVITICAL ADDITIONS TO THE TOR AH. S3 Deuteronomy, bad in one way an importance not belonging to tbe older books. It forged the chain that Judaism could never break, which on the con- trary it has used its best efforts to make heavier and heavier. The first founders of Christianity threw it off, and went back to the life-giving record of Israel, — that which contains the spirit of the Prophets. Christianity was the teaching of the second Isaiah springing to life after an interval of six hundred years, and reacting against the routing of centuries. But routine was not conquered. The fanaticism en- gendered by the Torah survived all attempts to kill it. The best energies of the race were engaged in mad squabbles of mere casuistry. The Talmud, that bad book which to this day is the evil genius of Judaism, took life from the Torah, and then in great part filled its place, becoming the new law of Juda- ism. It has been said that Israel, in lack of other superstition, created a new superstition out of the Torah. The desire of the writer of Deuteronomy has been accomplished. The Law has become the absolute rule of life to Israel. Each Jew has it for a frontlet between his eyes, — a hypnotic plaster. Ask a learned Jew at what hour it is permitted to study Greek, he will allow none to be lawful but when it is neither day nor night ; " for is it not written of the Law, Thou shalt meditate thereon day and night " ? Worship became every day more and more strangely complicated. The Sabbath was no longer merely a 54 HISTORY OF THE PEOPLE OF ISRAEL. day of rest : it became a sort of Sunday, a weekly religious festival, having its especial servifces.* The daily sacrifice (tamid) was regulated.! The three prayers a day, and the custom of kneeling to pray, date possibly from this period4 When adopted by the Moslems this custom became like rhythm in Oriental life, scanned as it were by the cry of the muezzin. Another Jewish custom which was adopted into Mahometanism and became a matter of great im- portance was the practice, when out of Jerusalem, of turning towards the Holy City in the act of prayer.§ Worshippers thought to invite a sort of electric current that could be set up, as they ima- ginedj if they should open their windows in the desired direction. The Samaritans had the same habit of turning towards Mount Gerizim. || The practice was mucli in favour among Judaising Christians, "[[ and no doubt it was from them that Mahomet adopted it. Mahomet looked upon the Kihla — that is, the act of turning towards a sacred spot in prayer— as essential to any reli- * Leviticus xxiv. 8; Numbers xxviii. 9. Cf. 1 Chronicles ix. 32; 2 Chronicles xxxi. 3; Nehemiah x. 33 (Ezekiel xlvi. 4). f Numbers xxviii. : Daniel viii. 11-13; xi. 31. % 2 Chronicles vi. 13; Ezra ix. 5; Daniel vi. 11; Acts ii. 15; iii. 1; ix. 40; X. 9; Luke xxii. 41. Cf. 1 Kings viii. 54. § 2 Chronicles vii. 34; Daniel l. c; 2 Esdras iv. 58. Mischna, Berakoth, iv. 5, 6, Tertullian, Clement of Alexandria, Origen, — all speak of it as no longer the custom. II Epist. Sichem. ed. Bruns. p. 14 (Eiohhorn, Repert., ix. 9). IT Grig, du Christ., vol. v. pp. 52, 53, 461; vol. vi. pp. 279, 280, 286. LEVITICAL ADDITIONS TO THE TOR AH. 55 gion. He hesitated some time as to his choice, and at one period in his prophetic career adopted Jerusalem, like the Judaising Christians his masters.* But at last the Kaaba decided him ; and Mecca, five times in each day, became the central spot to which the whole Mussulman world turns in prayer. The Sabbath, which was legally sanctioned by the penalty of death,t and circumcision, which was obligatory, \ became at last terrible burthens because of the scruples of conscience to which they gave rise. § Before the Captivity, no correct man neg- lected these duties ; but afterwards their observance became an exaction which engendered a thousand inconveniences and a thousand perils. Judaism became a powerful vise, which threatened to crush all within its grasp, had not Jesus and Saint Paul by more than human effort succeeded in loosening its grip, returning, as the elder Prophets had aspired, to the worship of God in spirit and in truth. * Sprenger, Das Leben Mohammed, vol. iii. pp. 46, 47. f Exodus xxxi. 14 and what follows; xxxv. 2; Numbers xv. 32 and what follows. Mischna, Sanhedrim, vii. 8. J Leviticus xii. 3. § Exodus xxxv. 3 (the Jews forbidden to light fire on the Sabbath). Later the observance of the Sabbath gave rise to the wildest casuistic reasoning (The Gospels; Joseph us; Talmud). CHAPTER VI. KEHEMIAH AND THE WALLS OF JERUSALEM. While this labour of revision silently went on in Judea, the Jews who still remained in the East went their different ways, according to their degrees of piety. Some fell away from day to day, until their religion was little more than a kind of deism.* Others scrupulously guarded the shrine of lahveh, and took great interest in what was passing at Jeru- salem. It was decided that those who stayed behind should one day rejoin the pious multitude who were already singing praises to lahveh upon the hill of Zion. In 518 B. c, as we have seen, certain Jews of consequence, residents in Babylonia, bearing fine Chaldean names, had come as envoys to perform their devotions at Jerusalem, and to inquire of the elders whether now, after all that had been accom- plished, it • was still necessary to keep the Fast by which they mourned for the destruction of the Temple.t About the same time rich Babylonians brought much gold to Jerusalem, | and may very * The Boot of Jonah possibly proceeded from some one of these persons. Tliey may have been few, but they certainly existed. See vol. iii. p. 420, &o. t See what came before p. 20. J Zechariah vi. 9 and what follows. NEHEMIAH AND THE WALLS OF JERUSALEM. 57 probably have played a part in the overthrow or banishment of Zeriibbabel. In some respects it seems that the Jewish families who had remained in Babylonia were richer and more cultivated than those who had decided to re- turn. The study of the ancient Scriptures, especially those relating to the Law, was in these orderly retired families, living apart from the surrounding popula- tion, certainly carried on with as much interest as in Jerusalem. In Babj'lon they possessed more pages of the ancient writings than at Jerusalem, and these were commented upon with ardour. The sqferim were numerous. Associated with the Priest there now begins to appear the Doctor, or Teacher, called in Hebrew mebin, — ^.that is, "he who expounds" the Law. It was a sort of official title.* The name of sofer-maJdr t (" scribe," or " ready writer "), given in allusion to a verse in one of the ancient poems, \ implied the constant habit of holding the pen, which the poverty-stricken life led at Jerusalem w^ould hardly have permitted. Time facilitated this state of things. Nearly a hundred years, passed before the Eastern Jews ceased to send fresh reinforcements to the colony at Jerusalem, composed of men often more enterprising than the older immigrants. Great in- tellectual and moral changes took place during this interval. The peace of the Orient during the long and prosperous reigns of Darius, Xerxes, and Arta- * 1 Chronicles xxvii. 32 ; Ezra viii. 16. f Ezra vii.' 6. , i Psalm xlv. 1. S& HISTORY OF THE PEOPLE OF ISRAEL. xerxes Loiigimanus, gave opportunity for steady sedentary development. There wasnot much inter- course between the Jews and Persia. The great evolutions of the Iranian religion took place at a later period. One single rite was borrowed from Persian custom,* and one non-religious festival, that of the New Year.t Israel, as it had done during the days of its Captivity, shut itself up in its own lit- erature, in its own past. The proximity of. the central power under the Achsemenian kings was of great advantage to the Jews of the East. Susa and other ancient capitals were fountains of favour and of wealth, of which the Jew did not fail to take advantage. To be head of a great feudal house, the channel by which every- thing came in and everything went out, was a posi- tion greatly coveted. High posts in the state were open only to men of the conquering race ; but govern- ment had many employments to dispose of in which the Jewish ram, and especially the sofer, well skilled in the Aramaic script,:! found lucrative employment for his industry. It was thus that towards the middle of the fourth century a certain Nehemiah, son of Hachaliah, a very pious Jew, found a career in one of the sub-prefectures. In the year 445 b. c. he arrived in Judea, from the Persian court, with the * See what follows p. 140. t The names of the angels, Asmodeus, &c., were borrowed at a later period. The demonology of Psalm xci. is doubtful. X Clermont-Ganneau, Retiue orcAeW., August, 1878, pp. 93-107. Compare Corpus inscr. semit., 2d part, Nos. 144 and the following. NEHEMIAH AND THE WALLS OF JERUSALEM. 59 title of pekah of Jerusalem, and very extended powers committed to him, as he said, by the sover- eign at Susa.* His arrival was very welcome to the stricter party among the Jews; for Nehemiah, like all pious men bred in the East, belonged to the party of strictest observance, and brought with him a plan for very conservative reforms, on which he had already determined. Nehemiah, who was possibly a eunuch,t had made his little fortune in the household service of the court in the reign of Artaxerxes Longimanus. Ac- cording to the recital, which seems written by him- self, — throughout which one feels his desire to make himself appreciated according to the ideas of his own people at that period, — he had been the king's cup-bearer, and while exercising the functions of * There exist memoirs of Nehemiah, in which Nehemiah speaks in the first person, besides what, in the hands of the author of Chroni- cles, has come dovpn to us as the Book of Nehemiah, sometimes called the 2d Book of Ezra. To obtain the original text, we must cut out chapters viii., ix., x., which formed part of the Memoirs of Ezra (see on that subject p. 85, note 1 ; 94, note), and some additions by the writer of Chronicles, in chapter xii. 1-26 and 44-47 ; in chapter xiii. 1-3. The style of Nehemiah's Memoirs has its own peculi- arities; for example, he never uses the word "lahveh." The au- thenticity of this narrative, though many parts of it seem romantic, is not so doubtful as that of the memoirs of Ezra. See especially chapters iii., vi. If there has been any imitation between the memoirs of Eizra and the memoirs of Nehemiah, it is the writer of Ezra who has imitated Nehemiah, not Nehemiah who has borrowed from Ezra. In after years the Jews strangely added to the power and importance of Nehemiah. He and Ezra were both made leaders of the first return to Jerusalem: (2 Maccabees i. 18. Cf. Ecclesiasticus xlix. 13, Greek). t See later, p. 89, note 1. 6o HISTORY OF THE PEOPLE OF ISRAEL. that office found means to serve his race. Domestic service was in the Persian empire, as it has always been in the Ottoman empire, a very common way of attaining administrative employment. On the other hand, this custom of arriving at some high position by first serving in a menial one is too often found in Jewish stories of the same period* to let us accept it very confidently. The cringing nature of Orientals made domestic service come easy enough to them. There are persons in our own day willing to claim close relations with a king or with the Presi- dent of the Republic because they have obtained a letter from some subordinate official. The Jews were proud of anything which apparently brought them into connection with the. head of the govern- ment ; they boasted of it to make others fancy they were powerful, and not seldom have they employed their favour to injure or annoy their enemies. Among the official powers that Nehemiah de- rived, as he asserted, from the King of Kings, he had one that his countrymen must have deemed inestimable : he was authorized to rebuild the walls of Jerusalem. Jerusalem for ninety years had re- mained a defenceless city, and its condition often led to jeers from neighbouring nations very irritating to patriotic Jews. The outline of the former walls was still traceable by a long line of great detached stones. There were places, particularly near Siloam, where the ruins of the walls blocked up the public way, but * Daniel, Zerubbabel (Josephus, Antiquities, xi. iii. 1). NEHEMIAH AND THE WALLS OF JERUSALEM. 6i others where there was little need of doins: more than to repair the breaches. Nehemiah tells us him- self, if his memoirs are authentic, of his first night- visit to this scene of ruin :* — So I came to Jerusalem, and I was there three days. And I arose in tlie night, I and some few men with me ; neither told I any man what my God had put into my heart to do for Jerusalem ; neither was there any beast witli me save the beast that I rode upon. And I went out by night through the valley gate,t even toward the dragon's well, and to the dung gate,J and viewed the walls of Jerusalem which were broken down, and the gates thereof were con- sumed with fire. Then I went on to the fountain gate and to the king's pool ; § but there was no place for the beast that was under me to pass. Then went I up in the night by the brook, and viewed the wall ; and I turned back and entered by the valley gate, and so returned. And no one knew wliither I went, nor what I did ; nor had I yet told it to the Jews, nor to the priests, nor to the nobles, nor to the rulers, nor to the rest that did the work. Then said I unto them : Ye see the evil case that we are in, how Jerusalem lieth waste, and the walls thereof are burned with fire ; come and let us build up the walls of Jerusalem, that we be no more a reproach. And I told them of the liand of my God which was good upon me, as also of the king's words that he had spoken to me ; and they said, Let us rise up and build. So they strengthened their hands for the good work. Nehemiah's enterprise could not be otherwise than disagreeable to the inhabitants of Samaria. The * Nehemiah ii. 11 and following verses. f The present Gateiof Jaffa. % At the southwest corner of the Eastern Hill. § The Pool of Siloah. 62 HISTORY OF THE PEOPLE OF ISRAEL. relations between this people and the Jews, continued to be strained. The wealthy, the chief-priests, and those who were about them would willingly have assented to a reconciliation of the two branches of the worshippers of Tahveh, which would have led to intermarriage. Notwithstanding the harsh answer which the Samaritans are said to have received from Zerubbabel,* the entire nation was not by any means converted to intolerance. There were, amongst the Judean nobles,! large-hearted men, who did not think that their fidelity to lahveh demanded hatred and religious exclusiveness. Among the principal persons in Samaria was a certain Tobiah, whose son was called Johanan, and surnamed "officer of the Ammonites," probably because he came originally out of the country of Ammon. The names of these two persons indicate that they were worshippers of lahveh, but assuredly they had not conformed to the pious reforms of Josiah. Now, Tobiah was con- nected with the high-priest Eliashib ; \ he had mar- ried the daughter of Zechaniah, son of Arach, one of the leading men in Jerusalem, and his son Johanan married the daughter of Mesullum, the son of Bere- chiah. These Hierosolymite Jews [men who loved the rule of the ancient kings better than that of the high-priest] spoke of Tobiah in high terms, and sometimes took rather a malicious pleasure in enlarg- ing upon his good qualities before the other party, * See above, p. 12. + Nehemiah vi. 17. miri' ''^^. X Nehemiah xiii. 4. NEHEMIAH AND THE WALLS OF JERUSALEM. 63 who considered him an enemy of God. Associated with Tobiah we find Sanballat, the Horonite,* a rich raan,t who seems to have been at one time governor of Samaria. One of his daughters afterwards mar- ried Joiada, son of Eliashib, who was high-priest after his father. A certain Arabian Sheik, Geshem or Gashmu,| appears to have joined with Tobiah and Sanballat in plans for retarding the new work of the Jews. One can see that the priestly aristoc- racy of Jerusalem, attracted by the prospect of rich marriages, had become very tolerant towards the Samaritans. It is not uncommon to find fanati- cism more fierce among lay zealots than among the clergy. At first, when Sanballat and his friends were in- formed of the intentions of Nehemiah, they affected to treat the matter as a joke. Sanballat mocked at the idea of raising those mighty stones into their place, and Tobiah said that the spring of a jackal would bring down their stone wall. By a manoeuvre that might have been dangerous to themselves, they affected to think the enterprise denoted an intention to revolt against the Persian government. Nehemiah took no notice of all this, but divided the circum- ference of the city into sections, and distributed the work to the principal groups of the population of Jerusalem and its environs.§ * Either he came from Horonaim (which would make him a Moab- ite), or from Beth-Horon, near Jerusalem. \ Josephus, Antiquities, xl. viii. 2. t Geshem, in the English Bible. — Trans. § Nehemiah xiii. 28. 64 HISTORY OF THE PEOPLE OF ISRAEL. The sections were about forty. All persons in eas}' circumstances, all rich corporations, merchants, jewellers, and sellers of perfumes, took charge of that part of the wall which was nearest to their ba- zaars or houses. The priests, from the high-priest Eliashib downwards, showed much zeal on the occa- sion, and built long portions of the wall. The le- vites arid the nethinim were not less industrious. Besides this, the towns and districts near Jerusalem, under the conduct of their elders, contributed their share largely to the work, — Jericho, Gibeon, Mizpah, Zanoah, Beth-haccherem, Beth-zur, and Keilah. The men who lived in villages around Jerusalem worked during the day, and returned home at night. The only people who showed slackness were the men of Tekoa, at least their leaders. The walls seem to have been rebuilt entirely on the line marked out by the ruins of the former ones. Workmen dug the old stones from piles of rubbish, and from under the soil that had been covering them, little by little, for a hundred years. And this work was very hard.* The city of that day nearly corresponded with the present one, excepting some parts towards the south and a broad belt towards the north. The numerous gates and towers were rebuilt with exceeding care. The somewhat com- plicated erections which surrounded the Pool of Si- loam, the reservoirs of the king's gardens, the steps that were on that spot, and the tombs of the family * Neheraiah iii. ; iv. 2. NEHEMIAH AND THE WALLS OF JERUSALEM. 65, of King David, were restored to their original state. Nehemiah does not seem to have thought of rebuild- ing the palaces and the great buildings w^hich had been erected south of the Temple. A fortress near the Temple* seemed, hovpever, necessary. This cit- adel, or hira {baris in the time of the Maccabees), was a large construction, occupying the spot wliere Herod afterwards built the tower of Antonia (which is now the seraglio).! When the wall in its different sections had reached nearly half its height, the animosity of the surround- ing nations broke suddenly into violence and opposi- tion. Sanballat, Tobiah^ the Arabs, the Ammonites, and the Ashdodites joined together to go up to Jeru- salem and lay it waste. The Persian empire was a feudal one ; private wars could • be carried on be- tween tow^ns, nations, and powerful chiefs. The men of Jerusalem were informed, by other Jews liv- ing on the plains, of these evil designs against them. The dwellers in neighbouring villages tried to per- suade their friends in Jerusalem to come home, and so escape the danger that threatened the capital. Nehemiah took open precautionary measures which prevented an attack. From that moment every man was on his guard. They worked, as Nehemiah's memoir metaphorically tells us, with one hand, while * Nehemiah ii. 8; vii. 2. • t It is singular that no mention is made of this in the division of labour among the sections. Perhaps mon 10 does not imply a real bira. TOL. IV. — 5 66 HISTORY OF THE PEOPLE OF ISRAEL. they fought with the other.* They had their swords girded to their sides while they built, or while they carried burthens. Nehemiah commanded them, hav- ing a trumpeter beside him to give, if necessary, in- stant signal of combat, and half the population was kept under arms from morning until starlight. At night the men who had been accustomed to return home stayed in the city, and helped to keep watch. Nehemiah and his men never put off their clothes, and kept their weapons within reach of their hands. t The financial condition of the city during this time was extremely perplexing. Before the arrival of Nehemiah the population of Jerusalem and its outlying villages had become deeply in debt. In order to pay tribute to the King of kings the chief part of them had mortgaged their houses and their lands, nay, even had had to sell their sons and daughters, and to hypothecate all they possessed so deeply that they were in danger of in a short time becoming slaves. The rebuilding of the wall brought matters to a crisis. If there was not absolute usury in these proceedings, money was lent on conditions very shocking to religious feeling, for it was by rea- son of their piety that these people were going to be robbed. By previous mortgage the crops became the property of the money-lender, and the poor were destitute of food. Such behaviour of Jews to Jews * Several Psalms may be referred to this really poetic moment in the history of Israel, — Psalm oxxvii., for example, which is supposed to have been written by Nehemiah. f Nehemiah iv. 17. Instead of O'DH inW, read 1T3 innSe'. NEHEMIAH AND THE WALLS OF JERUSALEM. 67 was most abominable ! Neheraiah, his relations and his officers, ha'd lent money on these terms. Nehe- miah was the first to release his debtors, and his eloquence on behalf of the poor was so persuasive that all other creditors followed his example. When the work was almost finished, the breaches repaired, and nothing wanting but to set up the doors to the gates, Sanballat, Tobiah, and other creditors of the Jews renewed their opposition. Four sev- eral times Sanballat and Geshem invited Nehemiah to a conference in one of the villages on the plain of Ono, near Lydda. Their intentions were treacher- ous. Nehemiah made a reply that ought to be in the heart of every one who has a duty to fulfil : " I am doing a great work, and I cannot come down." * Sanballat returned to the charge. He sent an open letter to Nehemiah, which ran thus : " It is reported among the nations, and Geshem saith it, that thou and the Jews think to rebel ; for which cause thou buildest the wall. And thou wouldest be their king, according to these words. And thou hast also appointed prophets to preach of thee at Jerusalem, saying, There is a King in Judah. And now shall it be reported to the king according to these words. Come now, therefore, and let us take counsel together." Sanballat's design was, by alarming Nehemiah, to hinder the com- pletion of the work and the placing of the doors of the gates. * Magnum opus faoio, et non possum descendere. 68 HISTORY OF THE PEOPLE OF ISRAEL. Nehemiah was careful not to fall into the snare. There were still in truth nehiim in Jerusalem, but all were not favourable to Nehemiah. One of them, Shemaiah, son of Delaiah, * allowed himself to be won over by Sanballat, and strove to ruin Nehemiah by a plot, with most complicated details ; but the wise pekah, who well knew his countrymen, skilfully frustrated his design. It is singular that Nehemiah should have encoun- tered, even among the class considered eminently pious men, an active opposition. A little poem which possibly belongs to this period seems to contain allusions unfavourable to him. His activity and human skill seemed to denote self-confidence and a proud heart, a sin unpardonable in any Jew. Except lahveh build the house, f They labour in vain that build it ; Except lahveh keep the city, The watchman waketh but in vain. It is vain for you that ye rise up early And so late take rest, And eat the bread of toil ; Eor so he giveth unto his beloved sleep. X Lo ! children are an heritage of lahveh, And the fruit of the womb is his reward. * Nehemiah vi. 10 and what follows. In the 14th verse read □3 S<'3jn n'JTDt?'? DJl ^r\^