him well, he hoped he would come to a conference with him. Nehemiah, however, declared all that was said against him to be simple calumny on the part of his enemies to enable them to attain their well-known object.'-Even prophets, and a certain prophetess, Noadiah, were found base enough to allow themselves to be bribed against him by the national enemy. He had once occasion to go to a certain Shemaiah, hitherto an eminent prophet, but at that time prohibited from entering the Temple, though a priest by birth, on account of some bodily uncleanness. This man confided to him, in the profoundest secrecy, that it had been revealed to him by God that someone was going to murder him on the following night, yet, in spite of his sickness, he would himself go into the sanctuary with him, and shut himself in there with him. Nehemiah, however, replied that he did not think it would be seemly in him to shrink from even a manifest danger, and further that as a layman he must not break the divine command by entering the sanctuary itself, and so rouse the anger of the Holy One. Not till afterwards did he see the real motive of this prophet too! Even at the last, when the walls were quite finished, and the heathen had already lost almost all heart for making any kind of attack, the baseness of some of the nobles showed itself in full colours; for they still kept up their secret correspondence with Tobiah, and informed him that Nehemiah had boasted in their presence of having received threatening letters from him.4

3

3. The building was completed in September, probably in the twenty-fifth year of Artaxerxes I. (B.c. 440), about five years after Nehemiah's arrival as governor.5 All the inhabitants of

1 Neh. vi. 1-9.

2 As had been once the case with Jeremiah, Jer. xxxvi. 5.

Neh. vi. 10-14; that this Shemaiah was really a prophet of this sort may be gathered with certainty from the real meaning of the words of ver. 12.

4 vi. 16-19.

According to vi. 15 the building only lasted fifty-two days. This must be understood of the works of construction in the narrowest sense, when all the preliminary labours had been completed; but this space of time is, in fact, even then extremely short, and, when we consider all the manifold circumstances explained above, seems hardly credible. Josephus, Ant. xi. 5, 7 sq., certainly does not supply us with a trustworthy chronology in other respects, since he makes Nehemiah come to Jerusalem in the 25th year (of

clerical error from the end of Neh. vi. 15. In the 25th year mentioned by Josephus we may find a correct tradition of the termination of the building; but Josephus certainly framed the whole of his chronology of this period either from the continuation of 1 Esdras, which we no longer possess, or from some similar work, and we may take it for granted that it cannot have been invented in all its details.

3

2

Jerusalem, and many from the country, priests and Levites as well as laymen, had shared in the labour. It is especially noticed that the nobles of Tekoah refused to work by the side of the common people of that place,' but all the others who took a part have received a noble memorial from Nehemiah himself, in the careful mention inserted in his narrative of the special portion of the great task in which they gave proof of their devotion. The whole work was divided into forty-two parts, some of which consisted of gates, some of sections of wall, and some of both together. Each division was undertaken by some person of position, with the aid of his connections; if he lived in Jerusalem, he built by preference the portion over against his own house. When the list of these was exhausted, the remaining portions were executed by some wealthy guilds 5 and provincials. Nehemiah, also, with all his dependants, took a most active share in the work, without, however, devoting himself specially to anyone of the forty-two divisions. The consecration of the walls was at last performed in full solemnity, with intense joy and rich sacrifices. Nehemiah arranged two festal processions, one of which marched round the southern and the other the northern side of the city, by the outer walls, until they met together at the Temple, each one headed by priests with trumpets, and accompanied by Levites singing praise; Ezra led the first, and Nehemiah closed the second.'-But even after this Nehemiah had strict watch kept constantly at the gates of Jerusalem, by his brother and by Hananiah, the captain of the fortifications.

8

6

This description of the festive procession after the successful completion of the building of the walls was perhaps the only passage in Nehemiah's record in which he expressly mentioned

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

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

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

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

* P. 153.

frequent visits to Jerusalem 1; but no sooner had Nehemiah returned than he compelled the high-priest to consecrate the vestibule to its original object again.' He maintained the strict observance of the day of rest with all his might, in spite of the great indifference of the nobles, and he even endeavoured, by drawing the Levites together, to guard it with far greater rigour than before; while he contended against mixed marriages and all their consequences amongst high and low with inexorable severity.3

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

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

so that the high-priest is here described as appointed over the buildings,' i.e. as their chief resident and manager in virtue of his office; cf. ver. 9. It is certainly surprising that a high-priest could so far forget himself at this period; but we

v. 19, xiii. 14, 22, 29, 31; cf. also

remarks below.

only see from this how capriciously the iii. 36-38 [iv. 4-6], vi. 14, and further spiritual authority easily learned to behave in times like these, when not rigidly controlled by the ruling arm; Ezra, as

See more below.

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

III. THE LATER REPRESENTATIONS OF EZRA AND NEHEMIAH.

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

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

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

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

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

3 Neh. viii.-X., xii. 44-47.

4 Ecclus. xlix. 11-13.