“Under that Xerxes, whose millions, you Greeks, Myron, boast to have overcome, Ezra, the priest and scribe, a teacher of the word of the Lord, came from Babylon to Jerusalem. An [Israelitish maiden] was Xerxes’ queen, a Jew his prime minister, and Ezra was sent as viceroy to Jerusalem, commissioned to appoint judges, superior and inferior, to correct abuses and enforce the observance of the law. He came with a company of not more than 6,000 men.[[66]]
“The work, however, proceeded slowly, and incessant wars interfered with it. After thirty years Nehemiah came, as viceroy from the court of Artaxerxes, and urged on the building and fortifying of Jerusalem, which the Samaritans, Sanballat, Tobiah, and Geshem, had hindered in every possible way. As Ezra had been the restorer of the worship of God, Nehemiah was the restorer of the civil constitution of Israel. On his arrival, he makes the circuit of the city in the stillness of the night; then addressing the people, he encouraged them to labour. Half the young men wrought at the fortifications, the other half kept watch in arms, and the rulers stood behind. If danger threatened any where, the trumpet was sounded and the people assembled from every part of the walls; for even the builders wrought with a sword by their side. Neither Nehemiah nor any other took off their clothes, except for the purpose of washing them.[[67]]
“Thus were the walls completed; but the space included between them was much greater than was necessary for the actual population, and very few houses had been built. The feast of tabernacles was approaching. The people assembled on the open space before the Watergate, and Ezra read the law there, from morning until evening.[[68]] And the people lifted up their hands and wept when they heard the words of the law. And Nehemiah and Ezra said, This day is holy unto the Lord, therefore weep not nor be sad: for the joy of the Lord is your strength! Finding from the law that the time of the feast of tabernacles was at hand, they went to the hills and fetched olive branches and pine branches, and myrtle branches and palm branches, to make booths; and they made them every one upon the roof of his house and in their courts, and in the courts of the house of God, and in the street of the Watergate, and in the street of the gate of Ephraim. And the whole congregation of those who were come out of captivity made booths, and dwelt therein. For since the days of Joshua, the son of Nun, until that day, the children of Israel had not done so. After this the people cast lots, to decide who of them should occupy Jerusalem; and who take up their abode in the towns. A tenth part was destined to the city, where the chiefs already dwelt.[[69]]
“When all these arrangements were made, the walls were consecrated. The Levites were sent for from all parts, to give solemnity to the consecration. The priests and Levites purified themselves and the people, the walls and the gates. The princes of Judah stood upon the walls. Two choirs, with cymbals, psalteries, and harps, went round the walls, as far as the temple. On the same day great sacrifices were offered, and the people rejoiced greatly, so that the joy of Jerusalem was heard afar off.
“Nehemiah was compelled to return to court; but he revisited Jerusalem after some years,[[70]] and laboured earnestly to induce the people to put away their foreign wives, as Ezra had done at an earlier period.[[71]] Their children spoke a mixed dialect, half Hebrew, half the language of Ashdod, Ammon, or Moab. Malachi, the last of the prophets, enforced his advice with the words of the Lord. Such support was necessary, for some of the leading men were involved, and Manasseh, (the son of Joiada the high priest) who had married the daughter of Sanballat, refused compliance. Nehemiah expelled him from the city,[[72]] and as Sanballat had just obtained from Darius Nothus permission to build a temple on mount Garizim, [Manasseh] became high priest in it.
“Thus Israel had been restored to the possession of the land of their fathers, had rebuilt the holy city, raised the temple from its ruins, and ordered the worship of God, according to the law. So far was the law from having been lost in their captivity, that in some parts it had never been fully practised by the people till now. The visitation of Jehovah had wrought the designed effect on the minds of the people. Since the days of Moses, an interval now of 1000 years, they had never manifested such zealous obedience to the law. They had learnt, by long and bitter experience, that obedience and national prosperity were inseparably connected together. In their captivity the better part of the people had sought each other out, had formed little associations, and had been strengthened by the words of the prophets, whom Jehovah sent to them for this purpose. These formed the chief strength of the nation which returned from the captivity. Their peculiar institutions, especially that of circumcision and the prohibition of eating unclean food, tended powerfully to keep them, even in the midst of strangers, a separate people; and the glorious prophecies, whose fulfilment they still expected, seemed to belong to them only so far as they were the pure unmixed descendents of those to whom the promises were given. The greater part of those who returned were besides of the tribes of Judah and Benjamin, who had before been most faithful to Jehovah, and most closely connected with the temple. The baser part of the people remained behind in foreign lands, just as they do now in Egypt. From this time, therefore, a new period begins in Israel, in which the fruits of the discipline which the people had undergone in preceding periods are displayed. The voice of prophecy is henceforth dumb: for they had learnt that lesson, which prophets were sent to impress upon them.
“It is true, that those revolutions in the kingdoms of the earth, which are preparatory to the coming of the Messiah, often interrupted the internal peace of Israel. The Persians, from whose subjection Judea was not entirely free, were engaged in wars, in which we were obliged to take part. The expedition of Alexander brought him to Jerusalem, but the [conqueror of the world acknowledged] the merits of Israel on the heights of Sapha, while Tyre sunk beneath his sword. In the division of his empire, Palestine fell to the share of Ptolemy, king of Egypt, who took many Jews with him into Egypt, and many emigrated thither of their own accord. Antigonus wrested our country from Ptolemy, and for more than a century it was the theatre of war between Syria and Egypt. But these wars were not so much punishments of Israel, as the ways by which Jehovah had decreed to weaken the heathen, and prepare the way for the complete emancipation of his people. This alone was still wanting to their happiness. Israel was obedient and walked all in the ways of the Lord.”
“Allow me, venerable Herodotus, for so I must call you,” said Myron, “to make a remark here. I know how much you dislike interruption, but this will not displease you. On the contrary, it will gratify you to find your own account confirmed by the mouth of a heathen. [Hecatæus] (it is true he was a native of Abdera) has written a book respecting your nation, in which he gives them the highest praise for the firmness with which they adhered to their law, when in the midst of foreign nations, in military service, and on other occasions.”
Elisama was pleased, and proceeded with his narrative. “At this time too a work was undertaken, which would never have been thought of at an earlier period, the collection of the oral traditions respecting the law. [Antigonus Socho], president of the great council, collected them in a volume. In earlier times the simple law had been found too heavy a burthen; now the people eagerly adopted explanations and additions, by which it was enlarged and made more precise. Such obedience was occasionally rewarded by Jehovah’s disposing the hearts of neighbouring princes very favourably towards them. [Antiochus the Great] was so much pleased with the faithfulness of Israel, that he commanded victims, wine, oil, frankincense, meal, wheat, and salt, to be furnished for the sacrifices; gave them wood from Lebanon for the repairs of the temple; recalled the Jews who had left their country, and freed the nation from all tribute for three years.
“Still the yoke of foreign dominion pressed heavily, till at last Jehovah hardened the heart of [Antiochus Epiphanes], king of Syria, who carried his cruelty to such a length, as to prepare the way for the complete emancipation of Israel. This Antiochus, whom the surname of Epimanes (frantic) would have better suited, bestowed on the wretched Joshua, the brother of Onias the third, the office of high-priest, and allowed him, in consideration of an enormous increase of tribute, to open a Grecian gymnasium in Jerusalem, and grant to the Jews the privileges of citizens of Antioch. A strange infatuation seized a part of the people, to witness the contests of this gymnasium; even priests, for this object, forsook their duties in the temple. His younger brother Onias, (who as Joshua, in his passion for every thing Greek, had called himself Jason, took the name of Menelaus) tempted Epiphanes by still higher offers, abjured in Antioch the religion of his fathers, promised an increase of three hundred talents of tribute, and by force of arms installed himself high-priest. A report being spread, that Antiochus had died in Egypt, Jason returned with 1000 men of the Ammonites, and possessed himself of Jerusalem. Antiochus hastened back from Egypt, took Jerusalem, plundered the city, cut to pieces 80,000 men, and sold as slaves, or carried away captive, an equal number. He added impiety to cruelty. Entering the temple with Menelaus, he reviled the God to whom it was dedicated, directed all the gold and silver, the table of shew-bread and the candlestick to be carried away, and then offered—I can scarce relate the horrible atrocity, a swine upon the sacred altar, and sprinkled the whole temple with the water in which a part of it had been boiled. This was not all that Israel was doomed to bear from the heathen. Some time after, being in Egypt, and being compelled to return home by an embassy of the Romans, he vented his ill-humour upon Jerusalem, sent thither 22,000 men, who marched in on the sabbath day, plundered the houses, pulled down the walls of the city, turned the hill of Zion into a fortification, and made the streets of Jerusalem flow with the blood of its inhabitants. The daily sacrifice ceased. The worship of the Grecian idols was commanded upon pain of death; the holy scriptures were cut to pieces or taken away; the temple on Garizim dedicated to Jupiter Xenius; that at Jerusalem to Jupiter Olympius. On the altar of burnt-offering another was erected to these idols, and groves and shrines of idolatrous worship were introduced into every town. To practise circumcision, or to observe the sabbath, was forbidden on pain of death. Two women were discovered to have circumcised their children; the infants were bound on their breasts, they were led round the whole city, and at last precipitated from the walls. Some had crept into caverns near the city, in order to keep the sabbath—they were all burnt alive. Every month, at the return of the day on which the king was born, the Jews were forcibly driven to perform a sacrifice. On the festival of Bacchus, they were made to appear in garlands of ivy in his honour. Eleasar, an aged man and learned in the law, had his mouth forced open, that he might swallow swine’s flesh; but in spite of force or fraud, he preferred to die, rather than violate the law. A mother with seven sons was taken, and scourging applied, to make them eat the unclean food, but in vain. The executioners then took the eldest of the sons, cut out his tongue, lopped off his hands and feet, and broiled him in the fire, while he exhorted his mother and brethren, who were standing by, to die undauntedly for the law. The other sons shared the same fate, and last of all the mother, who had thus addressed her last son, ‘My dearest child, whom I bore nine months beneath my heart, and three years at my bosom, have pity upon me! Fear not the man of blood, but die willingly, as thy brothers have done, that the God of mercy may restore you with them living to my embrace!’ What miracles of steadfastness under such torments! Israel was oppressed, as it had never been before; but it stood the trial nobly, and deserved to obtain its perfect freedom, which was at length accomplished in the following manner.