51. § 3. Ezra and Nehemiah

§ 3. Ezra and Nehemiah The sources for this period are the second half of the book of Ezra, in which we have an account by Ezra himself of his activity until the coming of Nehemiah, and the book of Nehemiah, with a statement of what he did for the welfare of the new colony, but also giving a very full account, in Nehemiah 8-10, of an event in which Ezra had the primas partes. Parallel with the book of Nehemiah, giving remarkable disclosures respecting the mind and disposition at that time, we have the prophecy which bears the name of Malachi, a name which in all probability was not a proper name but a symbolical one, borrowed from the prophecy itself. The four Psalms , 147-150, which were sung at the dedication of the walls, under Nehemiah, also serve as a source. Finally, the book of Ecclesiastes, which undoubtedly belongs to this period, whose historical presupposition is the deep humiliation of the people of God, and their bondage to the power of the world, and whose tendency is to give comfort on the one hand, and on the other to expose the moral religious evils of the time, and to urge their removal. Among these we find especially moroseness, avarice, and a righteousness merely external and apparent, the first beginnings of Pharisaism. With respect to chronological relations, this period is not immediately connected with that which precedes it, but they are separated by a considerable interval, which is passed over in sacred history because it offers no material. The former period comprised the twenty years from the first year of Cyrus to the sixth year of Darius. Our period begins with the march of Ezra to Canaan in the seventh year of Artaxerxes. Between them therefore lie the remaining thirty years of the thirty-six years of Darius and the whole reign of Xerxes, regarding the duration of which there is a difference of opinion, some maintaining that it was twenty-one years in length, while others, on the contrary, assert that it was only eleven. Finally, six years of Artaxerxes. These forty-seven years are completely passed over in our first important source, the book of Ezra. In Ezra 7:1 ff. the events which follow are connected with the words, “And after these things Ezra went up.” Among the remaining books Esther alone supplements it. The history narrated in this book belongs, as is now universally acknowledged, to the time of Xerxes, and he is the Ahasuerus of the book. It is necessary for an introduction to the Old Testament to occupy itself much more fully with this book than Old Testament history. The latter has merely to indicate the principal point of view from which this event must be regarded. The centre of it is formed by the great deliverance vouchsafed to the Jews in the diaspora, outside Palestine, in a danger where no human help was available, into which they had fallen by their faith in Jehovah and their acknowledgment of Him; for Mordecai refused to worship on religious grounds, and Haman based his proposal to punish the whole nation on a religious motive. This incident contains an important doctrine, viz. this, that the government of God was not confined to the colony on the Jordan, but that the diaspora was also an object of His special oversight; and it is evident that the Jews took this meaning out of the event, from the circumstance that the feast of Purim, which perpetuated the memory of it, was introduced into the colony on the Jordan no less than the diaspora. If we consider the event and the doctrine contained in it, we recognise that the diaspora was destined in the future for the realization of important designs of God; that we are not to seek the cause of its origin only in the indifferentism of the great mass of the Israelites, but must rather direct our attention to the divine causality. With respect to the condition of the colony on the Jordan in the time between Zerubbabel and Ezra and Nehemiah, we have only one single incidental notice which contains any information. From Nehemiah 5:15 we learn that the new governors who were placed over the people after the death of Zerubbabel did not consider what was best for the people of God in the discharge of their office, but only consulted their own interest. It is true that Zerubbabel had sons, but none of them succeeded him on the throne. Here we read: “But the former governors, that had been before me, were chargeable unto the people, and had taken of them bread and wine, besides forty shekels of silver; yea, even their servants bare rule over the people: but so did not I, because of the fear of God.” How little these governors, who were probably heathen officers, did for the good of the people, is apparent from the melancholy external condition in which Nehemiah found affairs on his coming. And we perceive that even internally everything had become worse after the death of Zerubbabel and the two prophets Haggai and Zechariah, from the great abuses which Ezra finds on his arrival.

Many scholars, after the precedent of Josephus, c. Ap. i. § 22, believe they find a notice referring to the Jews in this interval, in a passage which he has preserved from the poet Choerilus, who, in describing the march of the various nations of which the army of Xerxes consisted, says: “Then followed a nation of peculiar physiognomy and dress, speaking the Phenician language. They inhabit the mountains of Solyma, along which there is a great sea.” The Phenician language, the name Solyma resembling Jerusalem, the mountains, the sea (the Dead Sea),—everything in this description appeared to point to the Jews. But nevertheless Bochart, Geog. Sacr. P. ii. 1. 1, chap. 2, has shown by overwhelming arguments that the Solymi in Pisidia are meant.

Let us now turn to the events of our period. It begins with the mission of Ezra. The most important thing here is to establish the correct view with respect to the authority of Ezra, which is given in Ezra 7:11 ff., and also with regard to his whole position, resting upon it. The common view, recently brought forward again by Auberlen, is that his authority extended to all ecclesiastical and civil matters; that it gave him not merely the rights of a spiritual reformer, but also the dignity of a Persian governor,—the position previously occupied by Zerubbabel, and afterwards by Nehemiah. But this view is undoubtedly false, and has given rise to much perplexity and erroneous thought. The following is the correct view:—Ezra’s mission was only such as became a priest and scribe. It was limited to the sphere of religion. The only passage which is quoted in favour of a more comprehensive mission is Ezra 7:25, “And thou, Ezra, after the wisdom of thy God that is in thine hand, set magistrates and judges, which may judge all the people that are beyond the river, all such as know the laws of thy God; and teach ye them that know them not.” But since this refers only to matters in which the determination was taken from the law of God, it was quite natural that some authority should be conceded to Ezra in this department also, even if he were simply a spiritual reformer. This was the only passage under the Mosaic legislation where the priests took part in civil affairs, while they were quite exempt from administration and government. Nothing appears elsewhere in his authority which would lead to the inference that Ezra had any political position. Against this hypothesis we have the fact that he is always called “the scribe,” a name denoting the character of his office, and never “the governor,” like Zerubbabel and Nehemiah; and, again, all his transactions of which we have any account relate to the sphere of religion in Israel. Moreover, Nehemiah would not have expressed himself as he does, in Nehemiah 5:15, respecting his predecessors, if Ezra had immediately preceded him in his office; the passage presupposes that besides the office of Ezra there was also the office of a governor. Nor can we explain the melancholy state in which Nehemiah found the civil affairs of the colony, if Ezra had received royal authority to ameliorate it; and there is nowhere the slightest indication that Nehemiah, who worked along with Ezra for a considerable time, interfered with him in his office, but, on the contrary, they worked peaceably together without any contact between their respective spheres of activity, holding the same relation towards one another as Zerubbabel and Joshua. According to the more recent view, Ezra must have been partially deposed.

Ezra did not come to Judea alone, but with a considerable number of his countrymen. His first important undertaking was the removal of foreign wives. The main thing here is to ascertain the relation of this measure to the Mosaic law. If Ezra put away all the strange wives with their children, it appears at the first glance that he went beyond the Mosaic law. In the Pentateuch, for example, there is no prohibition against marriage with Canaanitish women and the heathen generally, in itself, but only against a certain kind of marriage, where the native heathen remained heathen. Wherever we find any ordinances of this nature, the prohibition is only against such marriages as are the result of a covenant with the inhabitants of the land. Heathen women who were captured in war, and were therefore removed from all national intercourse, might be married by Israelites, according to Deuteronomy 21:10-14. Hence it would appear that Ezra might have been satisfied with insisting that the heathen wives should renounce all heathen practices. But, on nearer consideration, it is evident that under existing circumstances the command against unequal marriages was to be regarded as absolutely forbidding all marriages with heathen wives, and involved the unconditional dissolution of all such marriages. For, owing to the circumstances of the time, marriages with heathen wives must necessarily have borne more or less a character of inequality, and it was impossible to remove the deeply-rooted heathen spirit except by the dissolution of these marriages. The great number of heathen women in the new colony was in itself calculated to strengthen individuals in their heathen faith. And, again, it was much less probable that a heathen woman would renounce her heathen consciousness when the nation into which she entered had sunk so low, and was in a state of such deep degradation. Finally, at that time heathen wives had much greater facility in communicating with their kindred. The heathen nations from whom they were descended and the Judaites were both subjects of the Persians, and the case was therefore very different now from the time when the state was independent and flourishing, when a heathen woman who married an Israelite was, eo ipso, cut off from all external communication with heathenism. In this state of things the conduct of Ezra will be found to have been in perfect conformity with the law and the spirit of the lawgiver. The very fact that so many were married to foreign wives, shows how much contact there must have been with the heathen, and under these circumstances it would have been most dangerous to have prepared a hearth for heathenism within the state itself. The heathen woman could have worked more effectively for the spread of heathenism in Israel than any mission. The question was of the existence or non-existence of the people of God; and it redounds to the great honour of Ezra, and to his everlasting credit, that he did not suffer himself to be deterred from vigorous measures by any false sentimentality. The prayer uttered by Ezra on this occasion is characteristic of his whole standpoint, and of the spirit of the post-exile piety generally. In speaking of it, Hess says with some justice, Rulers of Judah after the Exile, part i. p. 367: “A prayer which almost forces upon the reader the conviction that, notwithstanding all his well-meant zeal, the man was not the most spiritual suppliant. It is characteristic of the religious history after the exile, that those who were the most zealous observers of the Mosaic customs were proportionately deficient in the spirit of freedom and heartiness. But we cannot therefore accuse an Ezra either of hypocrisy, or of that small-minded tendency to strange tradition and scholastic lore with which religion was afterwards overladen.” The prayer is certainly calculated to show us the difference between a scribe, however pious, and a prophet, whose place was now filled by the scribes. The tension of extremes had ceased, the religion of Jehovah had gained the victory; but the spirit was not yet so powerful under the old covenant, as to be able to dispense with the powerful impulse which had been given to it by the struggle against a mighty opposition. Under the new covenant the case is different. The spirit then required nothing more for its invigoration than friction and external incentives generally. Of the other efforts of Ezra until the coming of Nehemiah we know very little, and of the time which followed it we have only an account of his participation in one single important act. From his authority, and from the analogy of that first undertaking, which betrays an important personality and a determined zeal for the carrying out of the Mosaic law, which could not possibly have been satisfied with one single performance, we must conclude that he made every exertion to promote the public observance of the ordinances of the Mosaic law, even to its minutest details. That his activity in this respect was extremely important, successful, and regulative for centuries, also appears from the great respect in which he was held by the later Jews. He could not have been so highly esteemed if he had not done far more than he tells us himself in his book. Even Mohammed thought that the Jews looked upon Ezra as the son of God. They do, in fact, call him the second Moses, the chief of the scribes; compare the eulogiums in Buxtorf, Tib. c. 10, § 99 ff. The so-called third and fourth books of Ezra represent him in mythic glorification. The most enduring merit of Ezra is for what he accomplished, for the canon of the Old Testament,—a merit which is unanimously ascribed to him by Jewish tradition. But this must be more fully treated in the introduction to the Old Testament. In order to show that the activity of Ezra, and other men who worked in the same spirit and had a similar mission, was not enough, but that the appearance of a man like Nehemiah was absolutely necessary,—one who would occupy the same position with respect to civil affairs as Ezra had occupied with regard to spiritual matters,—we shall here examine into the condition of Jerusalem, the civil and religious centre of the nation, on whose strength and importance so much still depended at the time of Ezra, and until the coming of Nehemiah. It is also of importance to realize this condition, because a knowledge of it best enables us to understand the very depressed feeling of the God-fearing in Israel, and the murmuring defiance of the hypocrites, with which the three post-exile prophets, Haggai, Zechariah, and Malachi, have everywhere to do. As long as the head was sick, all the members must feel sick; and this feeling of sickness led either to the verge of despair or to defiance, according to the respective dispositions of the individuals. Our view of the condition of Israel until the time of Nehemiah, which teaches us at the same time the importance of his mission and the mercy which was shown in it to the nation, is briefly as follows:—Until the twentieth year of Artaxerxes, the nation had properly no capital. Jerusalem was in a state similar to that of Athens before the Greek war of freedom. It was an open, thinly-inhabited village, exposed to all the attacks of its neighbours. In the wide space covered with the ruins of former splendour, a few isolated dwellings were lost among the rubbish. This lay in such great heaps about the city, that the way round it was impassable.

We must first set aside the arguments which have been brought forward against this view of the condition of Jerusalem and in favour of a more advantageous one. In the first place, Haggai 1:4 is appealed to. The prophet there, in the beginning of the reign of Darius Hystaspis, reproaches the inhabitants of Jerusalem for dwelling in ceiled houses while the house of the Lord lay waste. But nothing more can be inferred from the passage than the existence of a number of better built houses in Jerusalem, which no one doubts. On this supposition alone the prophet had sufficient foundation for making the contrast palpable, for applying to the whole what in reality applied only to a part. If he had spoken as an historian, he would have said, “While the people of the Lord already dwelt in houses, of which many were even ceiled, the habitation of the Lord still lay in ruins.” Again, appeal is made to Ezra 4:12, where the enemies of the Jews write to Artaxerxes, that the Jews, with rebellious intent, are restoring the walls of the city. But here the allusion is to an unsuccessful attempt to restore the walls, made in the earlier time of Artaxerxes. Immediately after its beginning, a strict prohibition came from the Persian court, at the instigation of the enemies of the Jews. The passage shows, on the contrary, that Jerusalem was an open village very shortly before the coming of Nehemiah. Only a misunderstanding of the passage Ezra 9:9 has led Auberlen to quote it in favour of a restoration of the walls before the time of Nehemiah. The allusion there is not to the restoration of the walls, permitted by the grace of God, but to a hedge. The hedge is an image, borrowed from Isaiah 10:5, of the protection which hovered over Israel. Finally, appeal is made to Nehemiah 1:3, where those who had come from Jerusalem to Nehemiah say, “The remnant that are left of the captivity there in the province are in great affliction and reproach: the wall of Jerusalem also is broken down, and the gates thereof are burned with fire.” On the presupposition that it was necessary for these strangers to tell Nehemiah something quite new, some have concluded from the passage that the town was already built up again before the time of Nehemiah, and was provided with walls and doors, but that it was again destroyed by the surrounding enemies, and that the only merit due to Nehemiah is that of having obviated the consequences of this destruction immediately after it had taken place. But this presupposition is certainly false. What Nehemiah heard from the strangers he knew very well, but it had probably never affected him so deeply as now, when he heard it from eye-witnesses, who spoke with an emotion drawn from their own painful experience, of the misery, of the deep humiliation of the people of God; for in them he saw, as it were, the delegates sent to him by the ruins of Jerusalem. The destruction of the walls and gates here spoken of, is no other than the Chaldee. Nowhere do we find the slightest trace of any other. The enemies of the Jews, in Nehemiah 4:2, know only of one. The book of Ezra contains no allusion to the walls having been restored. No edict of any Persian king, previous to that issued by Artaxerxes in his twentieth year in favour of Nehemiah, gave them the slightest vestige of permission to undertake the work; and surely no one will maintain that this permission was taken for granted. The contrary is evident, from the fact that the enemies of the Jews could find no more effective accusation against them than that they were building the walls. It was a different thing to give an unarmed nation permission to return, and to give this same people permission to fortify their capital. The Persians still vividly remembered how much this capital had troubled the Chaldees, their predecessors in the supremacy over Asia; and if they had forgotten it, they would have been reminded of it by the hostile neighbours of the Jews. Only the closeness of the relation in which Nehemiah stood to Artaxerxes had power to overcome the suspicion common to all Asiatic rulers, who were well aware that their power rested solely on the weakness of their subjects. In positive confirmation of our view we may adduce the following arguments. In Zechariah, the condition of Jerusalem appears throughout as provisional. Those who mourned over the melancholy present he comforts with a prediction of the impending future restoration; comp., for example, Zechariah 2, Zechariah 6:13, Zechariah 8:5. That this condition lasted until the time of Nehemiah, we learn from his own book. In Nehemiah 2:3, Nehemiah 2:5, for example, Nehemiah says to the king of the Persians, “The city, the place of my fathers’ sepulchres, lieth waste, and the gates thereof are consumed with fire. Send me unto Judah, unto the city of my fathers’ sepulchres, that I may build it.” According to Nehemiah 2:17 of the same chapter, he says, in Jerusalem itself, to the inhabitants, “We see the distress that we are in, how Jerusalem lieth waste, and the gates thereof are burned with fire.” Nehemiah 7:4 is also very significant: “How the city was large and great, but the people were few therein, and the houses were not builded,”—a passage which refers to the time immediately after the completion of the city walls. These had been restored in their old extent, for it was not necessary to make an absolutely new erection, but only to repair the old. The walls were of course not completely thrown down, but only very much broken, and the few houses were completely lost in the great area.

We have a remarkable contrast to this condition of the city before Nehemiah, in what we are told by some heathen writers respecting its condition after Nehemiah; and here let us refer to them, in order by this contrast to throw light on the whole significance of the mission of Nehemiah, and to show how great things the Lord did for His people by His invisible activity. The most remarkable accounts are contained in Herodotus. That the Cadytis which he mentions was Jerusalem we consider fully established, notwithstanding the contradiction of Hitzig, who tries to prove that it is Gaza. The conviction forces itself upon every unprejudiced reader, and has therefore always been upheld by the greater number of critics and the most important authorities. Among the earlier ones we shall name only Prideaux, i. p. 106 ff., and Cellarius, ed. Schwarz, ii. p. 456; and among the later, Dahlmann, Researches, Part ii. p. 75, and Bähr on Herodotus, l. 922, where other literature is also found. Herodotus mentions the town Cadytis in two passages. The first, ii. 15 “After the battle he took Cadytis, which is a large city in Syria,” refers to the occupation of Jerusalem by Pharaoh-necho, therefore to the time previous to the Chaldee destruction. Yet Herodotus describes Jerusalem as a city which was very large, even in his day. But the second passage, iii. 5, is far more important. He here speaks of Cadytis, “a city of the Syrians, which is called Palestine,” in his opinion not much smaller than Sardis. But even under the Persian supremacy, and after it had ceased to be the residence of the Lydian kings, Sardis was so important a town, that in antiquity it was always called The Great. While these passages in Herodotus refer to a time which bordered closely on that of Nehemiah, the account of Hecatäus of Abdera, a writer of the time of Alexander and of Ptolemy Lagi, has reference to the condition of the city about a hundred years later, but nevertheless possesses no small interest for our purpose. It is to be found in a fragment in Josephus, l. 1, c. Ap. § 22, and in Eusebius, proep. ix. c. 4. “The Jews,” we there read, “have many citadels and villages in their territory; but they have one fortified city, of about fifty stadia in circumference, inhabited by nearly twelve myriads of men. They call it Jerusalem.” The maturity of the Israelitish nation had begun at the time when David raised it to be the capital of the kingdom, and enabled it really to fulfil this its destination. Nehemiah was not able to do as much for Jerusalem, and, through it, for Israel, as David had done. The nation remained in subjection to the Persians; yet the national consciousness was very much strengthened by what he did, while a foundation was given for Israelitish piety. Hence Jesus Sirach justly exclaims, in Sir 49:13 : Νεεμίου ἐπὶ πολὺ τὸ μνημόσυνον τοῦ ἐγείραντος ἡμῖν τείχη πεπτωκότα καὶ στήσαντος πύλας καὶ μοχλοὺς, καὶ ἀνεγείραντος τὰ οἰκόπεδα ἡμῶν (has restored our waste places, our ruins). Only a false, unpractical spiritualism can mistake the importance of acts such as those of Nehemiah, or object that he did not possess the same spiritual maturity which we find in other servants of God, whose mission was more immediately directed to spiritual things, while his only aim was to place them on a secure foundation. With regard to the personal relations of Nehemiah we know but little. His ancestors must have dwelt in Jerusalem, for in Nehemiah 2:3 he says that the graves of his fathers are there. But we know neither his race nor his tribe. His father Hachaliah had not availed himself of the permission to return to the fatherland, withheld probably by possessions and honours acquired in the land of captivity. It appears that he dwelt at Susa, and that it was he who opened up to his son the path to the influential position which he occupied. Nehemiah was namely one of the cupbearers at the court of Artaxerxes,—a very important post, since it gave an opportunity of being often about the king, and of taking advantage of his favourable humours. This position also gave him an opportunity of increasing the considerable fortune which he probably possessed originally,—a circumstance which afterwards very much facilitated the success of his mission, since he did not set his heart on riches, but willingly and joyfully employed them in the interest of his calling. In spite of his great fortune, he was not a rich man.

Although born and educated in a strange land, yet his heart clung to Zion. His constant wish to be able to do something for it became a definite resolve, when the melancholy condition of affairs there was brought home to him by people who came from Jerusalem. He began to carry out this resolve by making an earnest petition to the Lord for Israel, His people, and for the sanctuary of His choice, having first fasted,—the symbolic expression of the repentant heart under the old covenant,—and Nehemiah here regarded himself as the representative of the whole nation. Having assured himself of help from above, he turned to the earthly king. Looking at the matter from a merely human point of view, he had some reason for hoping to prevail with his request. For Artaxerxes—called The Long-handed by Grecian historians, because he could touch his knees with his hands when standing upright—was a magnanimous and gracious prince, and the special favour in which he was held by him already opened up and prepared the way for his mission before he received it. The king himself gave him an opportunity of preferring his request. He noticed his melancholy, and inquired into the cause of it. Nehemiah answered, that he mourned for Jerusalem, and begged to be sent there with authority to do what was best for it. At once a decree was issued, commanding the restoration of the walls and gates of Jerusalem, and Nehemiah was invested with the dignity of a governor of Judea, and charged with the carrying out of this decree. The king gave him a military escort, sent instructions to the royal governor on this side of the Euphrates to give him every assistance, and commanded the head overseer of the royal forests in that district to supply him with as much wood as he required. Nehemiah retained his position at court. He was to return there as soon as he had finished his work. But it seems that his patriotism, which had its root in piety, did not permit him to return as soon as the king expected, according to Nehemiah 2:6, but that he remained twelve full years in the new colony without undertaking a journey to the court; and even when he did set out on this journey, in the thirteenth year, he did so with the determination to return to his sphere of activity in Jerusalem, for he recognised that the fulfilment of this was the true task of his life, while he attached no importance to his position at court except as a means to an end.

Nehemiah encountered not a few difficulties on his arrival at Jerusalem. He had first to deal with foreign enemies, whose heads were Sanballat the Samaritan, Tobiah the Ammonite, and Geshem the Arabian. The surrounding nations were bent upon forcing the people of the Lord to relinquish their obstinate exclusiveness, and heathenizing them; and an undertaking such as that of Nehemiah, which consolidated the nation in itself, must necessarily interfere with this plan. Moreover, there was a heathenizing party even in the nation itself, who combined with the enemy outside in making every effort to hinder the undertaking, and even attempted to work on the people by false prophets. In almost every period we find a heathenizing party of this kind among the covenant-nation, which was, à priori, only to be expected. How powerful they were at this time, we already see from the many mixed marriages which Ezra found, as well as from the fact that the vigorous measures which he instituted against it proved effectual for so short a time. There does not, however, seem to have been any actual idolatry at that time. The broken power of heathenism is seen in the circumstance that the heathenizing tendency within Judaism after the exile, as a rule, shares only the heathen scepticism, but holds aside from heathen superstition. That heathenizing party, which powerfully reasserted itself during the subsequent absence of Nehemiah, rightly saw in the external openness of Jerusalem to the heathen a symbol and pledge of the abolition of the inner wall of partition. This explains their opposition. But Nehemiah would not be discouraged by these difficulties. He urged on the work with such zeal, that it was accomplished in fifty- two days. It would have been impossible to have finished it in so short a time if it had been necessary to build up an entirely new wall. That very important remains of the former city-wall were still standing, is not merely probable, but can be demonstrated by positive proof, so that there was nothing more to do than to fill up the gaps. Owing to the machinations of the enemy, it was necessary for one part of the nation to remain under arms while the other built, and even those who were building had their weapons at hand, that they might seize them at the first signal,—a fact which has often been regarded as having symbolic significance, as an individualization of the truth that in every reformation of the people of God which is to raise them from a deeply degraded condition, the building and the struggling activity must go hand in hand. This necessity has its basis in the fact that important interests are invariably attached to the maintenance of the old wickedness, of the old man, of the world, of Satan, who cannot bear to see the kingdom of God flourish; therefore it is impossible to recover in a peaceful way from a state of decay. The first great work of Nehemiah was therefore now finished, that which has always been regarded by the Jewish nation as the principal object of his mission, as we learn from the passage quoted from Jesus Sirach. The consecration of the walls and gates was performed with great solemnity. The psalms sung on this occasion, which have already been pointed out, the last of the whole collection, are distinguished from all others belonging to the post-exile period by their tone of unqualified rejoicing, without any background of sadness. The nation here first exhibits renewed joy in its existence. In Psalms 149 we even meet with a warlike tone again. At the building of the wall Judah had again raised the sword against the heathen for the first time since the Chaldee destruction, and with a happy result. This taking up of arms awakened in the nation the new and lively hope of future victory over the servile heathen world,—a hope which was first of all externally fulfilled in the victories of the time of the Maccabees, whose success had their foundation in what was done by Nehemiah; but infinitely more gloriously when Israel in the time of the Messiah took up the sword of the Spirit, and with it executed the most noble revenge on the heathen conquerors.

Nehemiah now proceeded to provide for the civil welfare of the city, leaving the care of spiritual affairs, in so far as they did not directly interfere with civil matters, to Ezra, who held the same relation towards him which Joshua had formerly held towards Zerubbabel. The next thing which he did was to make regulations respecting the way in which the re-fortified city was to be guarded. His attention was then drawn to the small population of Jerusalem, which would necessarily make its defence a matter of far greater difficulty; and he saw clearly how the strength of the national consciousness was dependent on the strength of the centre. He first persuaded the heads of the nation to build themselves houses in Jerusalem, and to dwell there. Others followed their example, and voluntarily resorted to the capital, whose good fortification, in the view of many, outweighed the advantages offered by a residence in their country possessions. Of the remainder, every tenth man was to move into the city. What most strikes us here is the proportion of priests and Levites who determined to repair to the city to those who remained. After all who had resolved to become citizens had carried out their determination, the number of grown up men was 468 of the tribe of Judah, 928 of the tribe of Benjamin, 1192 members of the priesthood, and 456 Levites. The cause is easily understood. The vicinity of the sanctuary must have been especially attractive to the priests and Levites; but in its consequences the circumstance was necessarily very significant. The preponderance of the priesthood in the capital must infallibly act as a powerful incentive to the priestly spirit in the nation, which had already made great progress even apart from this. Not only would the priests by this means obtain a direct influence in affairs of government, but by their strength in the very centre of the nation they must necessarily exercise a far more powerful influence on its spirit.

One circumstance which very much facilitated the official activity of Nehemiah was his freedom from material interests, and his considerable fortune, which enabled him to renounce all those advantages to which his external position gave him a just claim. His predecessors, who had probably belonged to the great families who combined against Nehemiah with his foreign enemies, had taken advantage of their position to enrich themselves. They demanded a very considerable salary. But Nehemiah took nothing; and of his own means provided free tables, generally containing 150 covers. This disinterestedness could not fail to tell in his favour, especially in the reform which he undertook respecting matters of debt. By his example he put to shame the rich men who practised usury contrary to the law, who had taken possession of the lands of the poor, and even of their persons; and he succeeded so far as to obtain the remission of all debts, and the emancipation of possessions and persons. By all these ameliorations of their outward condition the people were rendered very susceptible, and their chiefs thought it would be unjustifiable to allow this favourable moment to pass by without trying to make a deeper impression on them. What use they made of it we learn from a section of Nehemiah, Nehemiah 8-10, which in recent times, after the example of Joh. Dav. Michaelis, has generally been taken out of the connection in which it there stands, and made to refer to the time previous to the coming of Nehemiah, on the utterly false ground that, according to Josephus, Ezra did not Jive to see the coming of Nehemiah. This testimony of Josephus has no weight whatever against the testimony of the book of Nehemiah, which represents Ezra as having performed that religious act under the civil rule of Nehemiah. It is a strange quid pro quo to correct the book of Nehemiah by Josephus.

Ezra, on whom, as the spiritual head of the nation, the direction of the solemnities devolved, appointed on the civil new-year’s feast, and on the feast of tabernacles which also fell in the seventh month, a great public reading of the law, connected with a translation of it into the Chaldee language,—a circumstance from which we gather that Hebrew was at that time quite unintelligible to the mass of the nation, who had brought the Chaldee language with them out of exile. This reading made a very deep impression on the nation, which is not to be explained on the assumption that the law had hitherto been unknown to them, but solely and alone from the circumstances under which they now heard it. The proofs of faithfulness to the covenant which the Lord had just given them had touched their heart, and the reading of the law made them painfully conscious of their own unfaithfulness. Ezra and Nehemiah, discerning this repentant spirit, ordained a fast, i.e. a fast-day, two days after the feast; and on this day a solemn act was undertaken, by which the nation bound itself thenceforward to try and keep the law inviolable. This covenant was signed and sealed by the most important members of every class, Nehemiah at the head. In particular, they pledged themselves to keep certain prescriptions of the law which had been most frequently neglected in the times after the exile, as appears from the prominence here given to them, as well as from other reasons, viz. to avoid all mixed marriages, and to keep the sabbaths and sabbatical years, to pay the annual taxes to the temple, and also the tithes to the priests and Levites, from whose payment avarice was so prone to try and escape, as we learn from Malachi. The good impression which the reading of the law produced on this occasion called forth the determination that in future the law should be read in every city by the most learned Levites, or other scholars who had studied it well. This reading, like that of Ezra, may have taken place at first in the open air. But the inconveniences connected with this mode soon made themselves felt; the reading was transferred to tents or houses, and thus the institution of synagogues reached its full development, though its germs go back into far earlier times; comp. Acts 15:21.

After Nehemiah had held his office for twelve years, he undertook a journey to Persia, which took place, therefore, in the thirty-second year of Artaxerxes. We have already seen that he had not been finally dismissed from Persia, but had only received temporary leave of absence. It might be of consequence to him to re-establish himself in the favour of the king, whose assistance he needed so much in the face of powerful opposition both at home and abroad. It is uncertain when Nehemiah returned from this journey. In Nehemiah 13:6 we read that it happened לקץימים. It is evident that this expression must be translated “after some time,” thus leaving the length of the absence undetermined, and not, as most translate it, “after the expiration of a year,” for the abuses which he found on his return were too great and numerous for so short an absence. After his return, he applied himself with the greatest zeal to the removal of the abuses which had crept in. The most important of these was the renewed prevalence of mixed marriages. The fact that this should have recurred so soon after the activity of Ezra, which was directed against it, and who must have died before the departure of Nehemiah, or at least soon after it; that it should have recurred so soon after the formal obligation to refrain from such marriages, which the nation had undertaken on the occasion already named,—shows how strong a temptation to such marriages lay in the relations of that time, and how difficult it then was to maintain the Israelitish national consciousness upright. The other abuses also belong mostly to the same department, and are due to a weakening of this national consciousness, to a removal of the barrier between Israel and heathendom. We see, therefore, how important it was that this evil should be opposed in the most energetic way. A false spiritualism would here have led to the destruction of the covenant-nation. We learn how deeply-rooted the evil was, from the fact that even the family of the high priest was tainted with it. One of the sons of Jehoiada the high priest had married the daughter of Sanballat the Horonite, a native of Horon or Beth-horon, a city formerly in the tribe of Ephraim, now in Samaria, who, according to Josephus, was Persian governor in Samaria. Nehemiah acted with great severity. He obliged all those who had taken strange wives either to separate from them or to leave the country. The son and brother of the high priest, called by Josephus Manasseh, preferred the latter. He repaired to his father-in-law in Samaria, who made him high priest in the temple on Gerizim, built on the occasion of his going over: so that the measures of Nehemiah against mixed marriages produced most important results, But here we must enter somewhat more closely into an important difference which occurs between Nehemiah and Josephus respecting this marriage of a son of the high priest, since the determination of the time of the building of the temple at Gerizim depends on it. In Nehemiah 13:28-29, we read, “And one of the sons of Joiada, the son of Eliashib the high priest, was son-in-law to Sanballat the Horonite: therefore I chased him from me. Remember them, O my God, because they have defiled the priesthood, and the covenant of the priesthood, and of the Levites,” i.e. of the covenant which Thou hast concluded with them. God had given glorious promises and prerogatives to the priests and Levites, but He had also imposed sacred obligations upon them. They were to set a pattern to the whole nation in their observance of the law, in their fulfilment of the command, “Be ye holy, for I am holy.” According to this, the event belonged to the time of Nehemiah, and therefore occurred under Artaxerxes. In Josephus, on the other hand, Ant. xi. 8. 4, it is related that Sanballat, who was made governor of Samaria by the last Darius, married his daughter to a distinguished priest of the Jews; his son-in-law was deprived of the priesthood and. banished from Jerusalem on account of this marriage, which was forbidden by the law. Sanballat then got permission from Alexander, whose party he espoused at the time of the siege of Tyre, to build a temple on Mount Gerizim, close to Samaria, after the pattern of the one in Jerusalem, and to appoint his son-in-law as high priest. After Sanballat, at the head of 8000 men, had personally assisted Alexander in this siege and that of Gaza, he died about the time when the latter place was taken.

There is therefore a difference of more than a hundred years. The usual way of obviating this difficulty is by assuming that Nehemiah and Josephus spoke of a different event,—that there were two Sanballats. But this explanation is quite inadmissible. The Sanballat mentioned in the last chapter of Nehemiah is the same who frequently appears in the first chapters as the great adversary of Nehemiah, who sought to thwart every attempt for the deliverance of his people. And this Sanballat of Nehemiah is also identical with the one spoken of in Josephus. The Sanballat of Nehemiah was governor of Samaria, according to Ne 3:34; so also was the Sanballat of Josephus. Each was a great enemy of the Jews. Each gave his daughter to a distinguished Jewish priest. The authority of Josephus must indeed be extraordinarily great, if it were able to set aside such convincing arguments as these which speak for the identity, or to justify the assertion that the error is due to the author of the book of Nehemiah, which is the less admissible, since Nehemiah himself speaks in this passage; and all critics, even those who hold that the book contains later elements, and did not come from Nehemiah in its present form, agree in this, that all the passages in which Nehemiah himself speaks, do really belong to him. But in Josephus the history of the Persian period is full of the most palpable errors. For example, he speaks of a second return of the Israelites under Darius Hystaspis, of which the Scriptures know nothing. No less than 4,008,680 men are said to have returned on this occasion, but he gives them only 40,740 wives and children. The events narrated in the book of Esther he places under Artaxerxes instead of Xerxes; and, on the other hand, represents Ezra and Nehemiah as having come to Jerusalem under Xerxes instead of under Artaxerxes; he makes Ezra die before Nehemiah arrives, and places the coming of the latter in the twenty-fifth year instead of in the twentieth, while he makes the building of the walls to have lasted for three years and a half instead of fifty-two days, etc. When such is the character of his statements, how can it be a matter of surprise that in this case also he should have taken events out of their true connection, and have placed them in a fictitious one? The confusion is probably due to the fact that Josephus held the opinion common to nearly all Jews, that the Darius whom Alexander dethroned was the son of Ahasuerus (in his opinion, of Artaxerxes) and of Esther. From Artaxerxes he suddenly passes over in his history to Darius Codomannus, without saying a word of those who reigned in the interval. But however great the inaccuracy of Josephus be, yet his account is of essential value to us. Nehemiah carries his history no farther than the expulsion of the priest who had allied himself by marriage with Sanballat. The consequences of this expulsion had probably not begun to appear at the time when Nehemiah concluded his book. We learn what they were from Josephus, who throws light on the connection between that expulsion by Nehemiah and the building of the temple on Gerizim. This connection is quite natural. Owing to the whole tendency of the Samaritans, to the insecurity of a bad conscience which everywhere characterizes them, it must have been a matter of great rejoicing to them that they could oppose something analogous to the Jewish priesthood which was consecrated by the law. Not until they were able to do this did they summon courage to establish a Samaritan sanctuary in opposition to the Jewish one. Probably by the advice of Manasseh, they built it on Mount Gerizim, because this mountain, according to Deuteronomy 27:12 and Joshua 8, had been made sacred by the circumstance that the blessing on the faithful observance of the law had been pronounced there by the direction of Moses, after immigration into the land. To this real dignity they added a stolen one, by changing Ebal, which occurs in Deuteronomy 27:4 of the same chapter in Deuteronomy where the stones on which the law was written are commanded to be set up on Mount Ebal, into Gerizim. The example of Manasseh found many imitators. Not a few members of the heathenizing party, among them even priests, were attracted by the freer tendency of the Samaritans, who could never deny their origin, and, going over to them, were received with open arms. To these renegades (and not to the kingdom of the ten tribes) we must attribute the Israelitish element presented by Samaritanism, and even the language of the Samaritans. By this Jewish influence the last remnants of idolatry were banished from their midst. The Jewish hatred did not, however, diminish on this account, but acquired still greater intensity. It burned far more violently against the Samaritans, who were regarded as heathen that laid claim to the dignity of the people of God, than against the heathen themselves. It even went so far that all intercourse with them was forbidden; all the fruits of their land, and all that belonged to them, especially food and drink, was pronounced to be defiled, and equally unclean with pork; while all the members of this nation were for ever excluded from the right of being accepted as proselytes. So also they were excluded from all participation in eternal life after the resurrection from the dead. Compare the compilation in Lightfoot, Opp. i. p. 559. Jesus Sirach, Sir 50:26-27, speaks of “the foolish nation at Sichem as the most detestable of all nations;” and in the New Testament, John 8:48, the Jews employ the phrases, “Thou art a Samaritan,” and “Thou hast a devil,” almost indiscriminately.

There is scarcely a doubt that it was Manasseh who first brought the Mosaic book of the law to the Samaritans, and introduced it among them. The idea that they possessed the Pentateuch at a much earlier time, and that it was transmitted to them from the kingdom of the ten tribes, is connected with the very erroneous opinion that the Samaritans were to a great extent descendants of the Israelites. Even the Israelitish priest who was sent to them, according to 2 Kings 17:28, by Asarhaddon, to teach them how they should fear the Lord, probably did not take them the law. At that time they were still too rude to have wanted it. Even towards the close of the exile, according to the testimony of the author of the books of the Kings, they united the worship of their old idols with the worship of Jehovah, which could scarcely have been the case if the Pentateuch had been publicly recognised among them. Their later acceptance of the Pentateuch rested, it seems, on the same ground as their joyful readiness to receive Jewish priests, and to entrust them with the guidance of their sacrificial offerings; which also accounts for their lying assertion that they were descendants of the ten tribes, viz. the endeavour to make themselves of equal birth with the Israelites, which may be regarded as the centre of the Samaritan nationality. The first legitimization for a nation which laid claim to a part in the covenant was the possession of the book of the covenant, and the regulation of their lives according to it. In observing the precepts of the Pentateuch, the Samaritans displayed no little zeal, though this had its origin in the external reasons already given, more than in any of an internal nature. The Jews themselves are obliged to bear testimony to this; comp. the passage from Maimonides in Reland, de Samarit. p. 10. Even the most troublesome ordinances, such as that with respect to the sabbatical year, were practised among them. Josephus tells that they entreated Alexander that he would remit their taxes, like those of the Jews, in the seventh year. But we recognise the continuance of a heathen background in the Samaritan consciousness, in the fact that they eagerly adopted every freer tendency which appeared among the Jews. Thus they borrowed the Sadducee doctrine respecting angels, and held that they were mere powers which emanated from God and returned to Him. The Sadducee denial of the resurrection also found acceptance with them. The striving of the Alexandrian Jews to avoid everything anthropomorphic and anthropopathic likewise passed over to them, for they were especially dependent on Alexandrian-Jewish theology, on account of its greater tendency to freedom. But no sooner was a freer view or tendency separated from the Jewish consciousness as heretical and heathenizing, than they also timidly drew back from it, fearing that by retaining it they would give a handle to their opponents, and injure their claim to belong to the people of God. Though they always went as far as those who went farthest among the Jews, yet they fell back as soon as they were forsaken by their models, which accounts for the fact that we find no more trace among the later Samaritans of the denial of the personality of angels or the resurrection. The other sacred books, besides the Pentateuch, were not accepted by the Samaritans; which may be explained from the circumstance that the post-Mosaic sacred literature had its centre in the temple at Jerusalem. With the Pentateuch it is quite different. It speaks very frequently of the future place of the sanctuary, but never designates it more exactly. The Samaritans interpreted these passages as referring to their sanctuary on Gerizim. Some of the later sacred books, such as Joshua and Judges, like the Pentateuch, are free from all allusions to Jerusalem as the relative centre of the nation. But if the Samaritans had accepted these, they would have rendered their rejection of the remaining ones suspicious. Hence they could only do this with plausibility by laying down the principle that the divine Lawgiver alone was to be heard.

Among the Samaritans, however, we find in full development even those Old Testament dogmas which are so faintly indicated in the Pentateuch that they could scarcely have been drawn from it alone; for example, the doctrine of the resurrection and of the Messiah. This may be explained from the dependence of the Samaritans on the later Jewish theology, which had taken these doctrines from the later sacred writings. This theological and religious dependence of the Samaritans on the Jews is universal. Nowhere do we find among them any trace of peculiar and independent development. Their whole virtuosity consists in the invention of lies by which they seek to pervert the true relation, and to ascribe the priority to themselves. So much for the temple at Gerizim and the Samaritans. The information respecting Nehemiah comes to an end with the account of his reformation after his return from the Persian court. We know neither how long his activity still continued, nor when he died. With respect to the political condition of the Jews in the time of Nehemiah, there was still much to be desired, even after the great benefits which God had conferred upon His people through his instrumentality. It was still far removed from what Moses had promised to the nation in event of the faithful observance of the law, Deuteronomy 28, and therefore formed a strong and real accusation against them. In Nehemiah 9:36-37, we have a very vivid description of this state: “Behold, we are servants this day; and for the land that Thou gavest unto our fathers, to eat the fruit thereof, and the good thereof, behold, we are servants in it: and it yieldeth much increase unto the kings whom Thou hast set over us because of our sins: also they have dominion over our bodies, and over our cattle, at their pleasure; and we are in great distress.” It appears from this that the Jews were obliged to pay a very heavy tribute to the Persians, and that even the favour in which Nehemiah was held by Artaxerxes had brought them no alleviation in this respect. In harmony with this, we have the allusions contained in the book of Ecclesiastes respecting the state of matters at that time. According to the beginning of Ecclesiastes 4, the people of God were in deep affliction; heavy misfortune had come upon them; everywhere the tears of the oppressed; the dead more to be praised than the living. According to Ecclesiastes 7:10, they lamented bitterly that the former days were better than the present. According to Ecclesiastes 7:21, Israel was derided and insulted by the heathen; those who, by the law of God and justice, ought to have been servants of the nation which, in its first beginning, had been called to the supremacy of the world, were exalted. It was a time when, to judge from the beginning of Ecclesiastes 9, the facts of life threw great stones of stumbling in the way of faith, since it led to perplexity respecting God and His just rule upon the earth; for the lot of the righteous and of the wicked was entangled together. That this condition was no contradiction of the law, but rather a remarkable confirmation of it—the outward misery being a true representation of the inner wretchedness, consistently with the statement of the law, that God could not give more than He did give; that He was not hard towards the nation, but that the nation was hard towards itself;—all this we learn from the prophecy of Malachi, which, as we have already seen, was contemporaneous with the last reformation of Nehemiah. The very superscription, “The burden of the word of the Lord to Israel,” points to the retributive and threatening character of the prophecy, allowing no anticipation of good. Even Zechariah found occasion to announce a new and heavy judgment on Judah, to take place after the ungodliness, which was already germinating in his time, would have struck deeper roots and have thrown out branches; comp. Zechariah 5 and Zechariah 11. In the interval between him and Malachi, the development of the germ made rapid progress, as the prophecy of the latter shows. Only on the form in which the ungodliness manifested itself did the exile still continue to exercise any great influence. There was no return to gross idolatry, although doubtless there still existed a not insignificant heathenizing party in the nation, the forerunner of later Sadduceeism. The main tendency, however, was towards the later Pharisaism; and this, in its fundamental features, is to be found in Malachi. Characteristic of this externally pious, inwardly godless party, or rather national tendency, we have the complete want of a deeper recognition of sin and righteousness, the boasting of the external fulfilment of the law, the eagerness for judgments on the heathen, who can only be regarded as the object of the divine retributive justice, and the murmuring against God, which is always to be found where the punishment of sin coincides with a want of the recognition of sin. It is remarkable that Malachi, the last of the prophets, concludes with the words, that unless the nation repent, the Lord will come and smite the land with a curse. In describing the moral condition of the people, the book of Ecclesiastes runs side by side with Malachi. In it also we find no traces of idolatry in its description of the internal defects of the nation, but, on the contrary, we are everywhere met by a tendency to the later Pharisaism,—a hollow righteousness, which sought to compensate for the want of a lively fear of God and inward resignation by miserable outward works, empty sacrifices (Ec 4:17), copious prayers Ecclesiastes 5:1-2),—the murmuring spirit which always accompanies a spiritless piety and a soulless righteousness when deceived in their speculations,—the avarice which can only be destroyed where there is a true impulse of the soul towards God, such as pharisaic piety cannot take away, but only excites—an avarice which proves itself especially seductive in troublous times: here lies the danger of constant accumulation. Yet even at this time, as at all periods prior to every infliction of the curse, there was still an ἐκλογὴ in the nation which was advancing towards its destruction. They are expressly mentioned in Malachi 3:16 : “Then they that feared the Lord spake often one to another: and the Lord hearkened, and heard it; and a book of remembrance was written before Him for them that feared the Lord, and that thought upon His name.” The vindication of God by the truly pious though small community is here placed in opposition to the godless but seemingly pious masses. In Malachi 3:9 the whole nation is represented as murmuring. In Malachi 3:17 the Lord gives a comforting promise to the faithful: the day of judgment on the ungodly will at the same time be the day of salvation for the godly. With respect to the worship, we may already infer, from the national tendency to Pharisaism, that the regulations of the Pentateuch regarding it were more strictly observed at this time than at any former one. Nehemiah strengthens the observance of the Sabbath, which was far more closely kept immediately after the exile than it had been before it, by new and stricter regulations; comp. Nehemiah 13:15 ff. From Nehemiah 10:31 we learn that even the sabbatical years were kept; and the more burdensome this ordinance is, the better can we argue from the observance of it, to that of the other ordinances. At this time there was an addition made to the feasts in the establishment of Purim. According to the book of Esther, this was introduced into those districts which had been the scene of the events it was intended to perpetuate, immediately after these events. Whether it was also observed in Palestine or not, we are not told; but if we consider the way in which the feast was celebrated in later times, we can scarcely look upon its establishment as a gain. The celebration had a profane, sensuous character. It gave bold prominence to the worst sides of the Jewish national character, viz. national pride and revenge. How completely it left the ethical-religious ground of the old Jewish feasts, and lost itself in heathenism, already appears from the fact that drinking was on this occasion regarded as meritorious; it was the custom to drink until it became impossible to distinguish between “Blessed be Mordecai” and “Cursed be Haman.” But the very circumstance that the feast bore this carnal character gave it the greatest importance in the eyes of the carnally-minded nation, which was especially the case when, by the destruction of the temple, the three principal feasts lost a portion of that dignity which distinguished them from all the rest.

We have now only to speak of two institutions which Jewish tradition ascribes to this period, viz. the Synedrium magnum and the Synagoga magna. Of the former we find just as little trace at this time as in earlier ones. At this time, as before, we meet with elders of the nation under the name of שרים, and heads of families, who were consulted by the royal governors on important occasions. But nowhere do we find any trace of a Synedrium. Here the argumentum e silentio has great significance, since the Synedrium must necessarily have been mentioned had it been in existence. The most important things are done, and the Synedrium has no part in them. On the renewal of the covenant, which is described in Nehemiah 8-10, the document is signed by many of the most distinguished of the nation, priests and Levites, but no mention whatever is made of a Synedrium.

While the Synedrium is an actual Jewish institution to which Jewish tradition attributed far greater antiquity than belonged to it, only for the purpose of giving it additional glory, the so-called Great Synagogue is a pure Jewish fiction, invented in the interest of pharisaic propositions. This was already pretty universally acknowledged when the work of Joh. Eberh. Rau, entitled De Synagoga magna, appeared at Utrecht, 1726. But to this work, which may be regarded as a model of critical research, the merit is due of having finally settled the matter, and completely destroyed the authority of the tradition. Many, indeed, have subsequently given credence to the tradition, but only because the work was unknown to them. Ewald has in vain sought to reestablish it on a historical basis; it is his way never to acknowledge truth without fiction, nor fiction without truth. The substance of Jewish statement respecting the Great Synagogue is as follows:—In the time of Ezra, and under his superintendence, there was a college of 120 distinguished men, which, under public authority, preserved, inculcated, and transmitted the so-called oral law, i.e. the pharisaic statutes, which had been handed down to them from the prophets. This was the main business of the Great Synagogue, and is attributed to it alone in the oldest passages which refer to it, in the Pirke Aboth, chap. i., where we read, “Moses received the (oral) law on Mount Sinai, and transmitted it to Joshua; Joshua to the elders; the elders to the prophets; but the prophets (whose chain ended in the time of Ezra and Nehemiah) to the men of the Great Synagogue.” In later Jewish writings other occupations also are ascribed to the Great Synagogue. Thus it is said to have done meritorious work for the Holy Scriptures, and especially to have written out those books whose authors lived out of the Holy Land, where no sacred book could have been written, such as Ezekiel, Daniel, and Esther; then again, to have added the K’ris, the vowels and accents to the text, and to have divided the Pentateuch into sections, and the text generally into verses, besides having composed certain formulas of prayer, given regulations with respect to Purim, and so on. Evidently the Great Synagogue was a depositary for everything that was difficult to dispose of otherwise. The tradition is already sufficiently refuted by the circumstance that the alleged main business of the Great Synagogue, care for the oral law, will not suit the time of Ezra. Of this oral law we find no trace whatever in Ezra and Nehemiah. Their whole endeavour seems rather directed to the enforcement of the ordinances of the Pentateuch. But the silence of all credible sources regarding this institution, which is said to have been so magnificent, is decisive. We do not read a word of it in the books of Ezra and Nehemiah. Even Josephus knows nothing of it. The first trace of it is to be found in the Pirke Aboth. In this state of affairs it is no longer worth the trouble to prove, from the separate employments of the Great Synagogue, that we have to do with a mere fable.

We learn the origin of this fable from the oldest passages referring to it, viz. those in the Pirke Aboth. The task was to prove an unbroken succession of trustworthy depositaries for the so-called oral law. A link was wanting between the prophets and the rabbis, the pharisaic teachers of the law, and this empty space must be filled up by the men of the Great Synagogue. After the Great Synagogue had thus come into existence, a multitude of other things were attributed to it for which there was no authority, however much it might be desired. But, owing to the gross historical ignorance of the later Jews, they were unable to invest the fiction with even the semblance of truth. They represent as members of the Great Synagogue men such as Mordecai and Daniel, who were never at Jerusalem. Haggai, Malachi, and Simon the Just, separated from each other by comparatively great distances of time, take part in it as contemporaries, etc.