Zecli. says : ' The hands of Zerub. have laid the foundation of this house: his hands sliall also finish it'(4«), referring to the laying of the foundation just accomplished. Two years later he said : ' Let your hands be strong, ye that hear in these days these words from the mouths of the prophets, which were in the day that the foundation of the temple of J" of hosts was laid ' (s^). The prophets must have been Hag. and himself.
A large part of the letter sent to Darius is taken up with the defence of tbe Jews. They urge that they were only doing wliatOyrus had authorized. Sbesbbazzar had been appointed governor, and be came to Jerus., 'and laid the foundations of tlie house of God which is in Jerus.; and since that time even until now hath it been in building, and yet it is not com- jileted ' (Ezr 5iG). Haj' 2^ shows tbe contempt for the new temple felt by those old men, who still remembered the glory of tbe temple of Solomon. We find the same feelings expressed in Ezr ^''■i-i^. It seems impossible that these two passages do not refer to tbe same event.
In Ezr 51 we read that ' Zerub. and Josh, stood up and began to build the house of God.' NoUiing is said about completing a work begun before ; the inference is plainly that a new task was taken up. Tbe rpiestifui of Tattenai in v. 3, ' Who gave you a decree to build this house? ' t and his subsequent action implv not a resumption of a work which had been forcibly stopped, but tbe conung up of a new issue. The passage in &18 already quoted, which may appear to harmonize with the resvimption tlicory, does not do so, for it proves too much ; its statement tliat the temple had been in protress of building ever since the decree of Cyrus bad been issued, is contrary to all that we know from other sources. It ma^ be a sufficient explanation of this inaccuracy to note that it is contained in the letter, and Tattenai may have misunderstood the Jews, who miifbt have siiid that from tbe time of Cynis they had purposed to build the temple, but hafl not been able to do so. Konig holds that Ezr 31-48 contains fragments which, by tradition, have been re- ceived into the original picture of the temple-building story. It is quite possible tliat we have here, in fact, poorly preserved fragments of an orig. Ileb. account of the rebuilding of the temple. The passage would then bo parallel with the Aram. section oc. 6, 0; and in that case the troublesome j^iassage 4*-*' would not be seriously out of place ; that is, it originally would
• Sayce'B view that v.»* properly follows v.", ' as indicated by the grammatical construction of the original Chaldec,' and that the whole paasage is introduced here episodically, Is quite un- tenable. See his Introd. p. 2*2.
t Tlio words following * and to finish this wall' do not sup- port the view of an earlier work on tbe temple. KprK rendered *wair is a word of doubtful meaning. Kautzsch. Gram, des Bib. At. {82, suggests the emendation K'K'N 'foundations' u vifl. Uleek held that the word refers to the walls of the city, Kinl.^ p. 207. Bertbeau-Kyiisel InterpreU after LXX the woodeo framework for the building.
824
EZRA AND NEHEMIAH
EZRIL
h»ve Btocd Just before the beginning of the histor>' of Ezra. Its present position would simply be further evidence of the limited critical uisigtit of the compiler. For further discufision of this questioD, see Konig, Eini. p. 281 ff. ; Driver, LO'f^ p. 647 (where other references will be found); Benzinger, Heb. ArchaoL p. 400.
To this Aramaic portion a fragment is added in Hebrew, 6'*"*'. It is peculiar in that it applies tlie term ' king of Assyria ' to Darius. It may be due to the Chronicler, who felt the importance of the celebration of the Passover festival after the dedication of the new temple.
We have seen above that the books under con- sideration were originally one in the Jewish canon. The editor who put the material into its present shape undoubtedly left the book as a unit. This editor, however, found the process of compilation already begun. He did not iind all the various sources scattered and independent, but they were already gathered in two main documents, the material having clustered about the stories of the two chief figures in the community. The last editor may have rearranged his sources ace. to his own ideas ; he probably made additions from other sources, and we fear omitted portions which we should appreciate more than he did ; certainly, he made additions from his own pen. The convincing evidence of the existence of two separate books before the last revision, is found in the presence of the duplicate lists Ezr 2 and Neh 7. The lists were already a fixed part of the narrative in which they are imbedded, so that the Chronicler could not omit either one without disjointing his narra- tive. The list may have been attached to N by Neh. himself, though it is more likely that a later hand, who felt the propriety of the connexion, is responsible for the addition. When the material was collected for the life of Ezra and the time pieceding, the list was naturally placed where it properly belongs.