On the second day's reading the peojile licard the directions for observing the feast of booths. Stejis were taken at once to celebrate this feast, and the reading of the law was continued on each day of its observance. Two dsys later a great fast wa8 held, the people separttting themselves from strangers, and confessing their sin. E. gave utterance to a remarkable prayer, § praising God for His great goodness to Israel, deploring the apostasy and disobedience of the jieople, and triicmg the past misfortunes of the nation, as well as their present condition of vassalai;e, to their great sins. II The relation of E. and Nen. is one of the perplex- ing problems of this period. Neh. in his memoirs mentions E. but once (12"). H In the E. portions of Neh, Nehcmiah is mentioned but once (8').**
• RMMilnfr, iftw Ewald (Uitt. ». 142 n. 4), SS S^3:i, Kit IO".
t 8«fi Uertheau-UyMel, A'zr., Neh.^ Kit., io * Kurxf(. Ex. Hand, buch,' in toe
I On thl« readlnfr of the law aee Trumbull's Yaii Ltcturt* on Vu Sunday School, is.'is. p. 7.
I Fotlowtnt; LXX, which nr«flxei the wordj) 'and Ezra said' to QA. On this ptwaaj^e seo LzaA-NlllKUuu, Uookh op.
I E. estAblished the caoonicity of the Pent, by tboae readings ; unOTJCp. 171.
1 The Eira of Neh 141- >»■ •• li another peraon.
•• Th« beet (Ir. Teralone lack the title Tirnhatha (8») ; 1 E» hot the title, but lAoks the name (tH^) ; Laf^arde's e<l. agrees with Heb. The Neh. of 10 Is the aame as that of Ezr 2^.
There is scant justification for Ewald's statement that ' the chronicler unites these two men very closely in his representations' !,I/ht. r. 161). I?, and Nchemiah were f^anted hifrh authority in the Judaean colony, and tliat in th«> liame sphere. Yet Nehemiah entirely ignores E. * Their purposes were ditt'erent, it is true, one desiring to promote especi- ally the religious welfare of tlie colony, the other the political ; but among the .lews these spheres overlapped or rather interlaced at all points. It is probable that E.'s chief work in Jerus. was accom- plislied before Nehemiah's arrival. t
E. m-ade a lasting impression upon the Jewish people. The development of the later .Jewish life followed the lines laid dovra by him. This is due, not so much to liis keen foresight in forecasting the future, as to the fact that his influence shaped Jewish life and thought in a way from which it never wholly departed. He gave the law an authority wliich it had never had before in Jewish history. This zeal was contagious, and accounts for tliat enthusiasm for the letter of the law which characterizes later ages.
LiTEiiATURR.— Besides works referred to above, see PRE'-' art. 'Esra und Nehemia'; OTJC^ p. 168; Wellhausen, Hist, of Isr. and Jui. 130 ff. ; see also literature at end of foil. art.
2. The eponym of a priestly family which re- turned with Zei-ubbabel, Neh 12' '--^sAzariah of Neh Itf". L. W. BATTEN.
EZRA AND NEHEMIAH, THE BOOKS OF.—
There is mucli gain in treating these two hooka to- gether. They present similar problems ; they deal with the same period ; they were originally one in the Jewish canon ; and they were put into their present form by the same hand.
That Ezr-Neh constituted but one book in the early Jewish canon is indisputable. The Majisoretes have appended notes to the end of each book of OT, statinjj the number of verses, etc. Tliere are no such notes at the end of Ezr, but those at the end of Neh include both books : * the book of Ezr contJiins 085 verses, and the middle verse is .1:3.1 n'Sy rai ' (Neh 332). The Masso- retic sections show that our two books were regarded as one, one section being Kzr 8S*-Neh 2*.t The twenty-two sacred hooks do not allow Neh to be reckoned as a separate book. The Talm. , in giving the origin of the various Iwoks, says that ' Ezra wrote his book,' and does not mention Neh, manifestly includ- ing it with Ezr. In LXX the two are included under Esdros B in Swete's ed. ; under Esdras A in the ed. of Lagartle.g
Ezr-Neh precedes Ch in the Heb. Bible, but follows it In the LXX. 'The illogical order of the Heb. has been attributed to the earlier acceptance of Ezr-Neh into the canon, it is by no means certain that the present Heb. onler is original. Tlie OT was divided into three portions. At the end of each portion the Mas.'^oretes placed notes similar to those found after the separate books. The notes on the Kethubim or llagiographa are found at the end of Ezr-Neh, not at the end of Ch. Moreover, as Ezr-Neh is a continuation of Ch, and in its present form haa come from the same hand, it is altogether unlikely that th« original arrangement was so unmindful of chron. order.
A. CONTENT.S. — A review of the following out- line reveals the striking fact that Ezr-Neh is far from a complete history of the restoration. We find rather a short sketch of a few important events in that history. There are long periods, — one of more than a half-century (515 to 458), — about which our book is absolutely silent. The whole time covered by this book, from the return of the first exiles in 5:57 to the second visit of Neh. in 432 is more than a cent., but as a matter of fact the actual time covered by the narrative is scarcely more than one-tenth of this time.