[987] Ezra iv. 6–23.
[988] This is recorded in the Aramean document which has been incorporated in our Book of Ezra, and there is no reason to doubt its reality. In that document we have already found, in spite of its comparatively late date, much that is accurate history. See above, p. [212]. And it is clear that, the Temple being finished, the Jews must have drawn upon themselves the same religious envy of the Samaritans which had previously delayed the construction of the Temple. To meet it, what more natural than that the Jews should have attempted to raise the walls of their city? It is almost impossible to believe that they who had achieved the construction of the Temple in 516 should not, in the next fifty years, make some effort to raise their fallen walls. And indeed Nehemiah’s account of his own work almost necessarily implies that they had done so, for what he did after 445 was not to build new walls, but rather to repair shattered ones.
[989] See above, p. 335, n. [970], and below, p. [354], on “Mal.” i. 8.
[990] Cf. Stade, Gesch. des Volkes Israel, II., pp. 128–138, the best account of this period.
[991] “Mal.” iii. 14.
[992] “Mal.” i. 2, 6; iii. 8 f.
[993] Id. i. 7 f., 12–14.
[994] Id. i. 6 f., ii.
[995] Id. ii, 10.
[996] “Mal.” ii. 10–16.