the great scribe of his age. in position and calling; and since Nehemiah strictly confined himself in his memorial to the mention of his own duties and services at Jerusalem, it is by no means surprising that he says. but little of his great contemporary. But he sprang, like Ezra, from the dispersion (Diaspora), and shared with him that spirit of rigor which was not unnaturally characteristic of the settlers at Jerusalem. He arrived there at a time when the tendency to greater strictness of national and priestly life, excited and powerfully sustained by Ezra, was at its height; and hence, in after years as well, he remained faithful to this tendency, and furthered it with all the power which his office and his reputation gave him. Continuing to take the most zealous care of the well-being of Jerusalem, he observed with great dissatisfaction the paucity of the inhabitants within its extensive walls, and was led by this to make closer investigations into the primitive relations of the new colony. On taking a census of the people he discovered that, contrary to the documentary regulations established under Zerubbabel, not so much as one-tenth of the whole population of Judea was residing at Jerusalem, and accordingly he transferred as many individuals thither as that fundamental law permitted." He showed equal zeal, moreover, in contending constantly against everything which seemed, when viewed in the light of the stricter notions, irreconcilable with the sanctuary and the law; and he took special interest in enforcing the rights granted by the written law to the priests and Levites, although, when sanctity itself appeared to suffer wrong, he did not spare the very highest priests. Thus, for example, at a time when he was away at the court, the high-priest Eliashib assigned one of the very large buildings in the fore-courts of the Temple, formerly used for keeping all kinds of priestly and Levitical stores, to his relative3 the well-known Ammonite Tobiah, as a residence during his

The two men were totally different

More than this we cannot say, for a great deal of the record must have been omitted by the Chronicler before xiii. 4 or xiii. 1.

2 This is the result of a careful comparison of the words of vii. 4 sq. with those of xi. 1 sq. and xi. 3-xii. 26. For however much the Chronicler in this passage, beginning at ch. xi., may have thrown together miscellaneous matter, in much abbreviated form and with later interpolations, it is nevertheless unmistakable that he really found the basis, at any rate, of the census-lists given in xi.

3-36 at the place in the record indicated at vii. 4 sq. The settlement of a tenth of all the inhabitants in the capital, mentioned in xi. 1, certainly took place under Zerubbabel, according to the opening words of xi. 1, which sound like a continuation of the words of the ancient document of Ezr. ii. 70, Neh. vii. 73; their appearance in xi. 1 indicates that the design announced in vii. 4 was carried out by a renewal of Zerubbabel's decree.

frequent visits to Jerusalem; but no sooner had Nehemiah returned than he compelled the high-priest to consecrate the vestibule to its original object again. He maintained the strict observance of the day of rest with all his might, in spite of the great indifference of the nobles, and he even endeavoured, by drawing the Levites together, to guard it with far greater rigour than before;2 while he contended against mixed marriages and all their consequences amongst high and low with inexorable severity.3

From the first moment that he set his foot in Jerusalem he was absolutely untiring in this general effort, and as his life went on he only became more and more zealous in it. After labouring in Judea for twelve years (till 433 B.C.), he was obliged to present himself before the Persian king, as his leave of absence had expired; but at last, before the death of his royal patron (in 424 B.C.), he received leave of absence a second time, and returned as governor with the same powers as before.' After the death of the king he seems to have lost his post, for he never indicates in his memorials that he still occupied it; but in this very record of his services to Jerusalem the same spirit of lofty zeal for God and his Temple and for the welfare of his people is everywhere displayed. He desires no recompense or thanks from any single man, but he appeals again and again all the more urgently to his God to think of his zeal for holiness and for Israel. It seems almost as though the bitter hostility and persistent misunderstanding which had pursued him clouded the peace of this man of many deeds and many services even in extreme old age, so that he could only find the higher peace in the recollection of his undeniable services and an appeal to his God.

But even if the serenity of Nehemiah's old age was again obscured by the envy and quarrelsomeness of many of the contemporary nobles of Jerusalem of whom he so often complained, yet the services he rendered to his time are unmistakably

great. In general terms, he supplemented and completed the work of Ezra, and owed his greatness to the very fact of having accomplished that which Ezra was precluded by his position and occupation from achieving, but without which his work could not have gained nearly so much internal cohesion and permanence. The unwearied valour of Nehemiah's arm and his unshaken loyalty to conviction brought vigorous assistance to Ezra's genius for organisation, and, indeed, the example of such a layman must have produced a more powerful effect than all the mere precepts of the priests. By his means Jerusalem had not only renewed her fortifications, in which all might alike rejoice as in their own laboriously accomplished task, but had also attained to greater order in herself and a prouder consciousness towards her neighbours. The people of Israel could now gradually raise its head among the nations, crowned once more with honour and with pride, and step by step it ripened to a new and mightier race. This consciousness of renewed strength makes itself heard once more in many ways in the songs of the age, the last which have found their way into the Psalter.1 It was only by his instrumentality, therefore, and by his cheerful co-operation with Ezra, that this whole period reached a distinctive development and a fuller measure of tranquillity; so that his name also was soon indissolubly linked with that of Ezra.

III. THE LATER REPRESENTATIONS OF EZRA AND NEHEMIAH.

The Chronicler himself unites these two men very closely in his representations, and depicts their period as the golden age of the priests and Levites, so far as such an age was possible in the later centuries. In after times, when the ancient history was more briefly touched upon, and its details became gradually confused, one of the two was sometimes named without the other. Thus, the son of Sirach mentions Nehemiah alone, but passes over Ezra in silence. one was ascribed to the other. second book of Maccabees, for

1 The psalms collected together in the second edition of the Psalmen, p. 380 sqq., belong to this period; cf. especially Pss. cxlvii. 2, 13, cxlix. 6-8.

2 Neh. viii. 9, xii. 26; cf. x. 2 [1], xii. 47. 1 Esdras ix. 49 omits the name of VOL. V.

In other cases, what belonged to In the account preserved in the example, Nehemiah is credited

M

Nehemiah from the words of Neh. viii. 9, but perhaps only by accident. At any rate there appears no reason to think that any other governor was meant.

Neh. viii.-x., xii. 44-47.

4 Ecclus. xlix. 11-13.

with an activity in collecting the holy books,' which should rather have been attributed to Ezra. Nehemiah's memoir shows, it is true, that for a layman he used his pen with skill; but any proper literary activity was quite foreign to his character as known to us, though no doubt he might have sanctioned, as governor, the ordinances recommended by Ezra and the other scholars.

The succeeding centuries, as we shall presently see, proved less and less faithful to historical fact, and their spirit was such that as the reverence paid to the two leaders of the people rose higher and higher, all kinds of loose representations connected themselves with their names, even at a tolerably early period, and they frequently became the subjects of half poetical narrative and purely literary art. Thus they were often regarded as the first founders of the new Jerusalem, and events and actions were ascribed to them which stricter history at best only admits as possible in the time of Zerubbabel and Joshua. As early as in the book of Enoch2 the three who return from the exile together to rebuild Jerusalem are Zerubbabel, Joshua and Nehemiah, for though they are not designated by name there is no doubt that they are meant. The author of the second book of Maccabees, however,3 accepted a very free account of Nehemiah as the founder of the new sanctuary, which was doubtless to be read already in works current in his time. This story centres in the conception of the holy fire of the Temple,' and, not content with the indestructible endurance implied in its higher signification, desires to establish a literal belief in its external preservation during the interval subsequent to the destruction of the Temple by the Chaldees. At the time of that disaster Jeremiah and certain other priests had taken the holy fire from the altar and secretly conveyed it in safety to the bottom of the shaft of a dry well. Many years after Nehemiah sent the descendants of these same men, who knew the secret, to bring it up again. As we can easily understand, they could find no fire there; and he accordingly bade them sprinkle the sacrificial wood and the offering itself with water drawn from that same well. When this was done, at the prayers and songs of the priests, the sun, scattering the clouds on a sudden, kindled the wood and the offering into a great

1 2 Macc. ii. 13.

2 lxxxix., 72, ed. Dillmann.

2 Macc. i. 18-36, cf. also ii. 1.

See the Alterth. pp. 31 sq., 129 sqq. The great strength with which the ancient belief in these cases clung to the beams

of the sun as the specific principle of life and holiness may be proved not only from this very story, 2 Macc. i. 22, but also from a perfectly different narrative in 2 Macc. x. 3.

LATER REPRESENTATIONS OF EZRA AND NEHEMIAH.

163

blaze of fire. Nehemiah then gave orders for the rest of the water to be poured out upon some large stones. Bright flames gleamed forth from these also, but as they did not shine on the right spot they were at once consumed by the fire of the altar which glowed over against them. It was this occurrence which induced the Persian king to decree that the great sanctuary should be laid out and built on this very spot. This, it will be seen, is but one of the many stories which sought in later times to enhance the very high sanctity of the Temple with reference even to its origin; but when, in conclusion, the narrator adds that this wonderful fire from the earth has usually been called Naphtha since that time,' he betrays clearly enough that the well-known Zarathustrian-Persian notions of the sacred fire of the earth and sun, and the sacred naphtha fountains, hovered before him, and that it was only under their influence that he gave his narrative its present form. -In a similar spirit the author of the fourth book of Esdras (the further discussion of which belongs to the history of the first century after Christ) makes Ezra live in the middle of the Chaldean exile, and in its thirtieth year see the wonderful history which God was conducting;2 so that he is here actually confused with Salathiel.3

But it was Ezra especially who rose higher and higher in importance as time went on and the mere learning of the scribe grew to be the ruling power among the remnants of the ancient people, until at last he was elevated indefinitely above all the limits of time. He was regarded as the wonderful master of all the learning of the scribes, as the restorer of the

1 In order to refer this name back as completely as possible to a Hebrew word, the author considers it an abbreviation of Nep¤áp, i. 36; as if, to separate, to release, and, unleavened, lead to the idea of καθαρισμός. The narrator can hardly have been thinking of the Persian

, a rare and poetical word, meaning pure.-Further, it may be noticed that the high-priest Jonathan of ver. 23 is the later one mentioned in Neh. xii. 11; and, according to p. 123 sq., note 1, his name was probably borrowed from this

passage.

24 Esdras iii. 1, 29. It best suited the object and artistic requirements of this book to place Ezra's career about this time; but it is evident that the exact number 30 rose out of a confusion for 130, for Ezra really did flourish 130

years after the destruction of Jerusalem. Further, if the author found some older work already in existence in which a similar story was told of Salathiel, we can understand the extraordinary circumstance of his identifying him with Ezra. The author proceeds to ring a number of changes on the number 30, ix. 43, sqq., x. 45 sqq., but its origin can only be that suggested above; see Gött. Gel. Anz., 1863, p. 648. We may see how easily 100 years might be skipped over by bearing in mind what is to be explained immediately, and remembering that, according to Epiph. Haer. viii. 7, there were many, even before the author of 4 Esdras, who, in the priest mentioned in vol. iv. p. 216, discovered Ezra and transferred that event to the thirtieth year after the destruction of Jerusalem.

3 P. 83, note 5.