CHAPTER VIII. THE RETURN FROM CAPTIVITY
THE PROPHECY OF THE RETURN
Comfort ye, comfort ye my people, saith your God.
Speak ye comfortably to Jerusalem, and cry unto her, that her warfare is accomplished, that her iniquity is pardoned: for she hath received of the Lord’s hand double for all her sins.
The voice of him that crieth in the wilderness, Prepare ye the way of the Lord, make straight in the desert a highway for our God.
Every valley shall be exalted, and every mountain and hill shall be made low: and the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough places plain.
And the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together: for the mouth of the Lord hath spoken it.—Isaiah xl. 1-5.
Who gave Jacob for a spoil, and Israel to the robbers? did not the Lord, he against whom we have sinned? for they would not walk in his ways, neither were they obedient unto his law.
Therefore he hath poured upon him the fury of his anger, and the strength of battle: and it hath set him on fire round about, yet he knew not; and it burned him, yet he laid it not to heart.—Isaiah xlii. 24-25.
But now thus saith the Lord that created thee, O Jacob, and he that formed thee, O Israel, Fear not: for I have redeemed thee, I have called thee by thy name; thou art mine.
For I am the Lord thy God, the Holy One of Israel, thy Saviour: I gave Egypt for thy ransom, Ethiopia and Seba for thee.
Fear not: for I am with thee: I will bring thy seed from the east, and gather thee from the west;
I will say to the north, Give up; and to the south, Keep not back: bring my sons from far, and my daughters from the ends of the earth.—Isaiah xliii. 1, 3, 5, 6.
Thus saith the Lord, thy redeemer, and he that formed thee from the womb, I am the Lord that maketh all things; that stretcheth forth the heavens alone; that spreadeth abroad the earth by myself;
That frustrateth the tokens of the liars, and maketh diviners mad; that turneth wise men backward, and maketh their knowledge foolish.
That confirmeth the word of his servant, and performeth the counsel of his messengers; that saith to Jerusalem, Thou shalt be inhabited; and to the cities of Judah, Ye shall be built, and I will raise up the decayed places thereof:
That saith to the deep, Be dry, and I will dry up thy rivers:
That saith of Cyrus, He is my shepherd, and shall perform all my pleasure: even saying to Jerusalem, Thou shalt be built; and to the temple, Thy foundation shall be laid.—Isaiah xliv. 24-28.
Thus saith the Lord to his anointed, to Cyrus, whose right hand I have holden, to subdue nations before him; and I will loose the loins of kings, to open before him the two-leaved gates; and the gates shall not be shut;
I will go before thee, and make the crooked places straight: I will break in pieces the gates of brass, and cut in sunder the bars of iron.—Isaiah xlv. 1-2.
Bel boweth down, Nebo stoopeth, their idols were upon the beasts, and upon the cattle; your carriages were heavy loaden; they are a burden to the weary beast.
They stoop, they bow down together; they could not deliver the burden, but themselves are gone into captivity.—Isaiah xlvi. 1-2.
Come down, and sit in the dust, O virgin daughter of Babylon, sit on the ground: there is no throne, O daughter of the Chaldeans: for thou shalt no more be called tender and delicate.—Isaiah xlvii. 1.
Sit thou silent, and get thee into darkness, O daughter of the Chaldeans: for thou shalt no more be called, The lady of kingdoms.
I was wroth with my people, I have polluted mine inheritance, and given them into thine hand: thou didst shew them no mercy; upon the ancient hast thou very heavily laid thy yoke.
And thou saidst, I shall be a lady for ever: so that thou didst not lay these things to thy heart, neither didst remember the latter end of it.
Therefore hear now this, thou that art given to pleasures, that dwellest carelessly, that sayest in thine heart, I am, and none else beside me; I shall not sit as a widow, neither shall I know the loss of children:
But these two things shall come to thee in a moment in one day, the loss of children, and widowhood: they shall come upon thee in their perfection for the multitude of thy sorceries, and for the great abundance of thine enchantments.—Isaiah xlvii. 5-9.
Thou art wearied in the multitude of thy counsels. Let now the astrologers, the stargazers, the monthly prognosticators, stand up, and save thee from these things that shall come upon thee.
Behold, they shall be as stubble; the fire shall burn them; they shall not deliver themselves from the power of the flame: there shall not be a coal to warm at, nor fire to sit before it.
Thus shall they be unto thee with whom thou hast laboured, even thy merchants, from thy youth: they shall wander every one to his quarter; none shall save thee.—Isaiah xlvii. 13-15.
Hear ye this, O house of Jacob, which are called by the name of Israel, and are come forth out of the waters of Judah, which swear by the name of the Lord, and make mention of the God of Israel.—Isaiah xlviii. 1.
[586-536 B.C.]
After hearing this sonorous prophecy of Isaiah, in which, at worst, the wish was father to the thought, we may hear what so critical a student of Jewish history as Ernest Renan had to say of the prophets in general.
“As much as half a century before the capture of Samaria,” he says, “almost all the activity of the Hebrew genius had been concentrated in Judah. Prophetism had arrived at its main conclusions—namely, monotheism, God (or Jehovah) being the sole cause of the phenomena of the universe; the justice of Jehovah and the necessity that that justice should be carried into effect on earth and for each individual within the limits of his own existence; a democratic puritanism in manners, hatred of luxury, of secular civilisation, of the obligations resulting from complicated civil organisation; absolute trust in Jehovah; the worship of Jehovah, consisting above all in purity of heart. The immensity of such a revolution astounds us, and when we reflect on it we find that the moment when the creation took place is the most fertile in the whole history of religion. Even the initial movement of Christianity in the first century of our era, gives place to this extraordinary movement of Jewish prophetism in the eighth century before Christ. All of Jesus is contained in Isaiah. The humanitarian destiny of Israel is as clearly written towards 720 as that of Greece will be two hundred years later.
“Down to the time of Elijah and Elisha, Israel is not essentially distinguished from the neighbouring peoples; there is no mark on her forehead. From the moment now reached, her vocation is absolutely laid down for her. After a very favourable reign (that of Hezekiah), prophetism will traverse a long period of trial (the reigns of Manasseh and Amon), and will then completely triumph under Josiah. The history of Judah will henceforth be the history of a religion, first confined during long centuries to her own limits, then mingling by the victory of Christianity in the general movement of mankind. The ancient prophets’ cry of justice will not be stifled. Greece will lay the foundations of lay society, free in the sense in which the economists understand it, without heeding the sufferings of the weak which result from the greatness of the social work. Prophetism will accentuate the just claims of the poor; it will undermine the position of the army and of royalty in Israel; but it will found the synagogue, the Church, societies for the poor, which, from the time of Theodosius, will become all powerful and will govern the world. During the Middle Ages the thundering voice of the prophets, interpreted by Saint Jerome, will awe the rich and powerful, and, for the benefit of the poor, or those who pretend to be such, will prevent every sort of industrial, scientific, or worldly progress.
“Germanic laicism repulsed the thrusts of this oppressive ebionism. The warrior, Frank, Lombard, Saxon, Frisian, took his revenge on the man of God. The warrior of the Middle Ages was so simple-minded that his credulity soon brought him again under the yoke of theocracy, but the Renaissance and Protestantism emancipated him; the Church could not recover her hold on her prey. In fact, the barbarian, the most brutal of lay princes, was a deliverer compared with the Christian priest with the secular arm at his disposal. The hardest oppression is that exercised in the name of a spiritual principle; lay tyranny contents itself with the homage of the body; the community which has the power to enforce its opinions is the worst of scourges.
“The work of the prophets has thus remained one of the essential elements of the world. The motion of the world is the resultant of the parallelogram of two forces—liberalism on the one side, and socialism on the other; liberalism of Greek origin, socialism of Hebrew origin; liberalism making for the greatest human development, socialism paying attention first of all to justice, understood in a strict sense, and to the happiness of the greatest number in practice, so often sacrificed to the needs of civilisation and the state. The socialist of our time who declaims against the abuses inevitable in a great organised state, greatly resembles Amos, representing as monstrous the most obvious necessities of society, such as the payment of debts, loans on security, and taxes.
“Before venturing to say which of these two opposing tendencies is the right one, we must know what is the goal of humanity. Is it the well-being of the individuals who compose it, or is it the attainment of certain abstract, objective aims, as they are called, which require hecatombs of individuals as sacrifices? Each will answer according to his moral temperament, and that is enough. The universe, which never ceases to make revelations, reaches its end by an infinite variety of ways. What Jehovah wills always comes to pass. Let us be calm; if we are of those who are mistaken, who work against the tide of the supreme will, it is of little consequence. Humanity is one of the innumerable ant-hills where reason gains her experience in space; if we miss our part, others will gain it.”
Accepting the prophets and prophecy, then, in whatsoever spirit one individually will, it is interesting to note in what manner and to what degree the prophecy is fulfilled, for the Jews return to rebuild the temple and the walls, only to remain obscure, and helplessly to pass from master to master.[a]
THE CONDITION OF THE EXILES
The history of the Hebrews is divided into two distinct periods. The first, purely legendary until the time of Samuel, only becomes a true history under the kings; it ceases abruptly for Israel at the siege of Samaria by Shalmaneser IV [and Sargon II] and for Judah about a century later at the siege of Jerusalem by Nebuchadrezzar.
The ruin of Israel was complete; the tribes, transported to the other side of the Euphrates, by degrees forgot their former recollections, customs, language, even their religion, and became confounded with the nations of Higher Asia. When and how, it is not known. Colonists brought into Canaan by Esarhaddon, replaced them by mingling themselves with the remains of the Israelite population. Such was not the case with the Judeans taken to Babylon; although not so numerous, they kept to their national life during exile. When the occasion arose, they returned to their own country, surrounded themselves by the rural population left by the conqueror to cultivate the land, and became the centre of a new nation.
The Jews transported by Nebuchadrezzar had been established in different provinces of the Chaldean Empire, in which they dwelt together. Their condition was infinitely better than that of political exiles in Siberia, Cayenne, or Numea at the present time. Jeremiah advised his compatriots to cultivate and build, which proves that they were given land and that they formed colonies.
They were governed by their elders who judged without appeal even in extreme cases, as is seen by the story of Susanna in the addition to the Book of Daniel. Nothing prevented them from carrying on their religion freely. It is true that as sacrifices could be offered regularly only at Jerusalem, the sacrificers had no employment: but the prophets maintained their influence, and Ezekiel speaks several times of the visits paid to them so as to consult the Lord. M. Munk says: “There were probably meetings where prayer was offered up in common, and perhaps the origin of synagogues dates back to this time. A tradition referred to in the Talmud of Babylon, Meghilla, fol. 28, a, attributes the foundation of a synagogue built of stones from the Holy Land, to the exiles who had accompanied Jehoiakim.”
The legends of Daniel in the lions’ den, and of the three men in the furnace, do not suffice to make one believe in a religious persecution, which the contemporary prophets would not fail to have mentioned; all that can be concluded from these popular traditions, gathered very much later, is that some Jews, doubtless eunuchs or diviners, were able to play a part at the court of the Babylonian kings. The natural wrath of the Jews against the destroyer of Jerusalem, gave rise to a legend according to which, Nebuchadrezzar, in punishment of his arrogance, was driven from amongst men for seven years and reduced to being a beast. “And he did eat grass as oxen, and his body was wet with the dew of heaven, till his hairs were grown like eagles’ feathers and his nails like birds’ claws.” It is probable that the Jewish captives in Babylon took the large winged bulls with human heads at the gates of the Assyrian palaces, for images of the kings. The historical books of the Bible do not mention this legend, which is only quoted in the Book of Daniel, written in the time of Antiochus Epiphanes. A song of triumph on the death of Nebuchadrezzar is written in the Book of Isaiah.
THE COMING OF CYRUS
[538 B.C.]
In the reign of Nabonidus, called Belshazzar in the Book of Daniel, Babylon was besieged by Cyrus, king of the Persians. The town was well supplied with provisions, and relied on the strength and height of its walls: but Cyrus turned aside the waters of the Euphrates, and made his army enter the dried-up bed of the river. Had the Babylonians suspected his intentions they might have caught the enemy in a trap by closing the doors leading to the Euphrates: but they were occupied in celebrating a feast. This circumstance gave rise to the legend of Belshazzar, related in the Book of Daniel.
Cyrus is not even mentioned in this account, a strange omission, considering it was he who gave the Jews back their country. M. Munk identifies the Median Darius of Daniel with the Xerxes of Xenophon; but the Cyropædia is a romance bearing no more authority than the Book of Daniel. After the accession of Cyrus, the Jews had followed the rapid progress of the New Persian Empire with interest. The siege of Babylon seemed to them the vengeance of their God on those who had oppressed his people. They considered the Persians as deliverers, for the enemies of our enemies are always our friends. This sympathy and hope are vividly expressed by the second Isaiah. He calls Cyrus, “the Shepherd of Jehovah, who performeth his pleasure even in saying to Jerusalem, Thou shalt be built, and to the temple, Thy foundations shall be laid.”
He is so persuaded that Cyrus is the instrument of the God of the Jews, chosen especially to deliver them, that he gives him the name of Messiah like to a true king of Israel: “Thus saith the Lord to his anointed, to Cyrus whose right hand I have holden, to subdue nations before him, to open before him the gates. I will go before thee, and make the crooked places straight: I will break in pieces the gates of brass and cut in sunder the bars of iron.… I am the Lord and there is none else. I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I the Lord do all these things.” The last sentence is an allusion to the Mazdean doctrine of the two principles. The Persians attribute the good to a good god named Ormuzd, and evil to a wicked god named Ahriman. The prophet on the contrary proclaims one only god, author alike of good and evil, which proves that at this time the belief in the devil had not yet been accepted by the Jews.
Nevertheless, there was a great connection between the Jewish and Iranian religions: both were iconoclastic, and the Bible never accuses the Persians of idolatry, as it does other nations. The kindness Cyrus showed to the Jews is generally attributed to these religious affinities. It can also be accounted for by political reasons. The facility with which he had taken Babylon seems to indicate that he had accomplices in the place. In favouring the Jews he was acquitting himself of a great obligation. It may be that he proposed from thence to conquer Egypt, and that he thought it would be advantageous to place on the Egyptian frontier, an energetic people whose fidelity was assured to him. According to the Bible, from the first year of his reign, or rather in the year following the siege of Babylon, he allowed the Jews to return to Jerusalem and build their temple. He even gave the chief priest all the sacred vessels that had been taken from the temple at Jerusalem by Nebuchadrezzar. This chief priest, grandson to King Jehoiachin, bore the characteristic name of Zerubbabel, that is to say, “born at Babel.” In other passages he is designated under the name of Sheshbazzar, which seems to be more of a title than of a proper name.
The Damascus Gate, Jerusalem
THE RETURN TO JERUSALEM
[536-515 B.C.]
The decree of Cyrus appeared in 536 B.C., fifty-two years after the fall of Jerusalem, and sixty-three years after the exile of King Jehoiachin. Ineffectual efforts have been made so that these figures should correspond to the seventy years of captivity prophesied by Jeremiah, which only represents a round and undetermined number in the mind of the prophet. The greater part of the Hebrew captives had followed the advice of Jeremiah, and built houses and cultivated their fields. In the land of their exile they had developed that aptitude for commerce which to-day distinguishes the Jewish race. It was hard for them to sacrifice their interests to begin a new life in a ruined country. Those who, having taken advantage of the decree of Cyrus, had left Babylon under Zerubbabel, numbered about forty thousand without counting the slaves according to Ezra, who also gives a list of the families; this list is reproduced with variations in the Book of Nehemiah and in the Third Book of Esdras.
“In adding up the detailed numbers,” says M. Munk, “there are scarcely thirty thousand. According to the Jewish doctors one must take into consideration the surplus of the Israelites of the ten tribes.”
In spite of this explanation made to conciliate the figures, it is generally acknowledged that the emigrants all, or nearly all, belonged to the ancient tribe of Judah. The name Jehoudin, Judeans, corrupted into that of Jews, must henceforth be used to designate the new political and religious society which established itself in Palestine.
It was, thanks to the unceasing efforts and exclusive patriotism of the theocratic party, that the Jews had gone through the long years of exile without ceasing to be a nation, without mixing with strange people. Among the families who returned to Judea, those of the priests formed at least one-eighth of the total. Some, not having their genealogies, were excluded from the priesthood.
After the return to Jerusalem, the first care of Zerubbabel and the high priest Jeshua was to raise the altar for the sacrifices, and to gather together the offerings of the chiefs of the fathers for the reconstruction of the temple.
“They gave money also unto the masons, and to the carpenters; and meat and drink, and oil, unto them of Sidon and to them of Tyre, to bring cedar trees from Lebanon to the sea of Joppa, according to the grant that they had of Cyrus, king of Persia. Now in the second year of their coming into the house of God at Jerusalem, in the second month, began Zerubbabel, son of Shealtiel, and Jeshua, the son of Jozadak, and the remnant of their brethren the priests and the Levites, and all they that were come out of the captivity unto Jerusalem; and appointed the Levites from twenty years old and upward, to set forward the work of the house of the Lord.… And when the builders laid the foundation of the temple of the Lord, they set priests in their apparel with trumpets, and the Levites the sons of Asaph with cymbals, to praise the Lord, after the ordinance of David, king of Israel” (Ezra iii. 8, 10).
In this, the Book of Ezra describes an event which Josephus places in the time of Darius, and which shows that in the narrow zeal of the sacerdotal aristocracy, the pride of race had as large a share as religious intolerance. We remember that after the destruction of the kingdom of Israel, populations from Media and Chaldea, principally Kutheans, had been established by Esarhaddon in the land of Samaria, so as to replace the Israelites transported over the Euphrates. According to the Book of Kings, these strange colonists adopted the God of their new country. They feared the Lord and served their own gods after the manner of the nations out of which they had been brought to Samaria.
The descendants of these colonists having mingled themselves more and more with the remains of the former Israelite population, the custom of strange worship diminished. The reform of Josiah spread itself over the land, and in the Book of Jeremiah we read that after the destruction of Jerusalem, the people of Shiloh, Shechem, and Samaria came and wept over the ruins of the temple. Thus, in spite of their strange origin, the Samaritans had the same religion as the Jews, and although the Book of Ezra calls them the enemies of Judah and Benjamin, the step they took with regard to the emigrants of Babylon showed the most brotherly dispositions.
“Now when the adversaries of Judah and Benjamin heard that the Children of the Captivity builded the temple unto the Lord God of Israel; then they came to Zerubbabel, and to the chief of the fathers and said unto them: Let us build with you: for we seek your God, as ye do; and we do sacrifice unto him since the days of Esarhaddon king of Asshur, which brought us up hither. But Zerubbabel and Jeshua and the rest of the chief of the fathers of Israel said unto them: Ye have nothing to do with us to build an house unto our God; but we ourselves together will build unto the Lord God of Israel, as king Cyrus the king of Persia hath commanded us. Then the people of the land weakened the hands of the people of Judah, and troubled them in building. And hired counsellors against them, to frustrate their purpose all the days of Cyrus king of Persia, even until the reign of Darius king of Persia.”
[515-450 B.C.]
But the temple was built in spite of the intrigues of the Samaritans, and the dedication took place in the sixth year of the reign of Darius (515 B.C.). According to the Book of Ezra, Darius found the decree of Cyrus among the records at Ecbatana and ordered it to be carried out. We know nothing of the fate of the Jewish colony during the last thirty years of the reign of Darius and during the twenty years of the reign of Xerxes. The Book of Ezra contains no fact relating to this period for more than half a century.
In the seventh year of the reign of Artaxerxes Longimanus (458 B.C.), more than half a century after the establishment of the temple, a new colony of Jews left Babylon for Jerusalem under the leadership of Ezra, grandson of the priest Seraiah who had been put to death by Nebuchadrezzar at the fall of Jerusalem. Ezra had taken the title of “sophar,” that is to say, scribe or doctor of the law: “he had prepared his heart to seek the law of the Lord, and to do it, and to teach in Israel statutes and judgments.” The firman he had obtained from Artaxerxes has come to us travestied by the Jews, and the terms are even more suspicious than those of the decree of Cyrus. It is possible that the king may have helped the emigrants with money or provisions and even exempted the priests from taxes; but it is not likely that he would have condemned to death, as the Book of Ezra says, those who would not submit to the religious law which the leader of the expedition was going to enforce. This law, wrought during the captivity under the influence of the prophet Ezekiel, answered to the authoritative inspirations of the sacerdotal party of whom Ezra was the chief. All privileges were reserved for the priests, of whom the Levites were only the servants. This explains why among the fifteen chiefs of families, who answered to Ezra’s appeal, there was not one Levite. Nevertheless, there was a great number of them in Babylonia. Ezra, with a great deal of trouble, succeeded in recruiting a few of them.
The first colony led by Zerubbabel, arrived in Judea under very trying circumstances. The land had not remained unoccupied during the captivity at Babylon. Besides the poor people whom Nebuchadrezzar left there, because they were not worth taking away, Idumæans, Moabites, and other strangers had come and settled themselves. A place had to be found among them, for the new-comers were not powerful enough to expel them. The emigrants had to consider themselves lucky in forming alliances with the families who were in possession of the territory, without ascertaining whether these families were of pure Israelite blood. But when Ezra arrived at the head of a new colony, the difficulties of the first installation no longer existed. The marriages contracted by his predecessors with strange women seemed to him abominable and ungodly. He prayed, fasted, rent his garments, assembled the people, and begged that these wretched beings should be sent away with their children. It was, as the authors of The Family Bible remark, like a new form of sacrifice of children to Moloch. But without seeking examples in the Canaanite religions, Ezra could remind them of Abraham sending his servant Hagar into the desert accompanied by her child.
[450-445 B.C.]
The authority of a priest and the national pride stifled all family feeling: “All the congregation answered and said with a loud voice, As thou hast said, so must we do. But the people are many and it is a time of much rain, and we are not able to stand without, neither is this a work of one day or two: for we are many that have transgressed in this thing.”
An assembly, presided over by Ezra, held a severe investigation. The Bible gives us the names of one hundred and thirteen individuals who had married strange women, and who had to send them away with their children. Those belonging to the priesthood offered a ram in expiation of their sin. The number of children is unknown, also whether each mother was able to take away the bread and water such as Abraham had given to Hagar in sending her into the desert. In the following year great events took place, the counterblow of which must have been felt in Judea, although the Bible does not mention it.
THE WALLS UPRAISED AGAIN
[445-415 B.C.]
Egypt raised itself against Persia and took as king the Libyan Inarus. The armies of the land and sea, destined to crush this rebellion, assembled in Syria and Phœnicia. Inarus having been put to death with fifty Greek prisoners in spite of the conventions sworn, the satrap of Syria, Megabyses, indignant at this treachery, in his turn revolted. It is not known whether the Jews took the part of the king or of the satrap. It is supposed that on this occasion the walls of Jerusalem were again destroyed, but the Book of Ezra does not say so; it ends abruptly after the account of the expulsion of the strange women, and we only find Ezra again, thirteen years later, in the Book of Nehemiah, which also bears the title of The Second Book of Ezra. Nehemiah, whose recollections helped to compose this work, was a zealous Jew, cupbearer to king Artaxerxes. He obtained his master’s permission to go to Jerusalem and raise the walls, and started as a pasha of Judea with an escort of cavalry, and royal letters to the keeper of the forests who was to supply the timber for construction. In spite of his official position, and the prestige which the favour of the king was to give him, he had to fight against adversaries who were sufficiently powerful to raise serious difficulties for him. He names three of them: Sanballat, the Horonite; Tobiah, a royal servant in the land of the Ammonites; and Geshem, the Arab.
The pride of the Jews began to bear its fruit; the Samaritans whose disinterested help they had refused, the strange families whose daughters they had repudiated, were not anxious to see Jerusalem a stronghold once more: those who were for peace feared the dreams of independence pertaining to the Messiah, and useless rebellions followed by blood-shed: the country people feared the concentration of political and religious authority in the capital.
At first they mocked at the fortifications begun, then threatened the workmen; Nehemiah made them work with their swords at their sides; at night there were sentinels. They tried to intimidate him, and told him that he was accused of wishing to be proclaimed King of the Jews, they wanted to draw him to meetings, but by prudence he refused to go. He was even suspicious of his friends; prophets told him his life was in danger, and advised him to hide in the temple; he thought a trap was being laid for him, and that they were trying to make him violate the law which forbids the laity to enter the temple; and he answered, “Should such a man as I flee?” Thanks to his energy and activity, the work was finished at the end of fifty-two days.
After having raised the walls of Jerusalem, Nehemiah resolved to quiet the discord which was beginning to show itself among the classes. The poor complained of the rich. Many people had to borrow money to pay the taxes; they had hired out their fields and vineyards, and then sold their sons and daughters so as to have bread.
Nehemiah, instead of preaching resignation and patience to the poor, made the rich ashamed of their hardness. He reminded them that at Babylon, according to his means he had redeemed those Jews who had become slaves to strangers: “And will ye even sell your brethren? or shall they be sold unto us? Then held they their peace, and found nothing to answer. And I said: It is not good that ye do: ought ye not to walk in the fear of our God because of the reproach of the heathen our enemies? I likewise, and my brethren and my servants might exact of them money and corn. I pray you let us leave off this usury. Restore, I pray you, to them, even this day, their lands, their vineyards, their olive yards, and their houses. Then said they We will do as thou sayest.” Nehemiah made them take the oath before the priests and shook his garment, saying: “So God shake out every man from his house, and from his labour, that performeth not this promise, even thus he be shaken out, and emptied. And all the congregation said Amen.”
With its walls and gates Jerusalem was a town and not a city; there were no inhabitants. The Jews preferred living in the country, where they cultivated their fields, to shutting themselves up in this town without any resources, which in the time of the monarchy owed its riches only to the presence of the court. Nehemiah and the chiefs of the people agreed that one-eighth of the population of Judea should establish itself at Jerusalem, and they cast lots for the families who had to transfer, nolens volens, their dwellings thither. They established a sort of police; sentinels were placed at the gates, which were shut at night, and only opened in the morning after sunrise. But the new Jewish state could only be constituted by the promulgation of the law. Standing on a platform facing the people, solemnly assembled for the autumn feast, Ezra read the Law called by the name of Moses.
If Josephus can be relied on, the public reading of the Law took place several years sooner, and Ezra had died before the arrival of Nehemiah in Jerusalem: but the Bible attests the presence of Nehemiah beside Ezra. The congregation indulged in oriental demonstrations, there were fasts, prayers, loud confessions; they smote their breasts, clad themselves in sackcloth, and put dust on their heads, after which they signed the agreement to conform to the Law. The Bible gives the names of those who signed in the name of all the people. There were twenty priests, almost as many Levites, and forty-four laymen. Ezra’s name is not on the list; it is supposed that he had died before the act was drawn up.
Those who signed undertook to repudiate all strange marriages, to buy nothing on the Sabbath day, to observe the sabbatical year, to pay one-third of a shekel (about twenty cents) yearly for the divine service, to supply the wood for the sacrifices, to offer the first-born of men and animals and the first fruits of the earth, and to pay tithes for the maintenance of the priests and Levites. As they had to live in Jerusalem they had to be kept: but the precepts which appeal to peoples’ purses are not readily received. Malachi, the last of the prophets, complains of the negligence in the paying of the tithes. At the same time he accuses the priests of failing to do their duty and making themselves despised by the people.
[415 B.C.]
After a sojourn of twenty-two years in Jerusalem, Nehemiah had resumed his duties at the court of Artaxerxes. He soon heard that his constitution had difficulty in establishing itself, and he obtained fresh leave from the king. He found his work compromised: buying and selling took place on the Sabbath as on other days; the Levites not being paid, had left their posts; mixed marriages had become so frequent that the children spoke a mixture of Hebrew and strange dialects. The ruling class set the bad example, as is nearly always the case. The high priest, Eliashib, had given a lodging in the temple to Tobiah, one of his relations, and had married one of his sons to a daughter of Sanballat; these two men were adversaries of Nehemiah. He showed himself very severe; he sent away the son-in-law of Sanballat, turned Tobiah out of his apartment, closed the gates of the town during the whole Sabbath, and forbade the merchants of Tyre to approach the walls on that day. He entirely shared the ideas of Esdras on the subject of mixed marriages. Had not strange women been the fall of the wise king Solomon? Israel must be purified from this contamination. He struck those who were refractory and pulled out their hair. They had to submit, willingly or unwillingly. The payment of the tithes was assured to the Levites and priests, and regular order was established in the administration of the revenues of the temple. That was the chief point, and Nehemiah had the right to consider himself the benefactor of the Jewish theocracy: “Remember me, O my God, concerning this, and wipe not out my good deeds that I have done for the house of my God, and for the offices thereof.”[4] [d]
FOOTNOTES
[4] [It should perhaps be mentioned that some critics and historians are not inclined to accept the statements of the writers of Ezra and Nehemiah en masse.]
The Dead Sea, looking towards Moab, with the Convent of Mar Saba in Foreground
