While the book as a whole is considered to have come from Nehemiah, it consists in part of compilation. He doubtless wrote the greater part himself, but some por- tions he evidently took from other works. It is allowed by all that he is, in the strictest sense, the author of the narrative from ch. i to ch. vii, 5 (Hiivernick, Einleitunr), ii, 304). The account in ch. vii, 6-73 is avowedly com- piled, for he says in ver. 5, " I found a register," etc. This register we find also in Ezra ii, 1-70, hence it might be thought that our author borrowed this part from PIzra; but it is more likely that they both copied from public documents, such as " the Book of the Chron- icles" (QiTI^ri ■^l^^'l), mentioned in Neh. xii, 23. Had Nehemiah taken his list from Ezra, we might expect agreement, if not identity, in the contents; Imt the two records vary much in details, and are only reconciled with difficulty. "The second part (ch. viii, ix, x) is said to be marked by a strong Levitical or jmestly bias, different from the tone of the rest of the book, whose interests all tend in the direction ai civil society; also by different words and phrases, and by the use of the third person, instead of the first, when speaking of Ne- hemiah. Hence critics differ in their opinions, some as- cribing these chapters to Ezra, some making »hem the composition of an unknown author in a later age. The third portion (ch. ix, xii, xiii) is again pronounced to be the work of Nehemiah, though with certain ad- ditions, which (in the estimation of these critics) are seen to be excrescences, or which betray a different authorship, chiefly on account of chronological facts which are irreconcilable with the supposition that Ne- hemiah wrote them.
"The most of the supposed difficulties vanish, or rath- er give place to a conviction of the unity of the book, as soon as we take the proper position for looking at the events narrated, as they woidd appear to Nehemiah, the narrator of his own feelings and transactions. Such a person does not write exactly in the order of time; nor do events seem in the same proportion to each other in his ej'es and in the eyes of many of his readers. This is notorious to every reader of memoirs and biographies, particularly autobiographies. If at times there be something peculiar in the arrangements of this book of Nehemiah. as we liave indicated that there is also in
Ezra, this ought to be admitted as a consequence of the writer's own state of mind or circumstances. Certainly those who have written later than the date of these books of Ezra and Nehemiah, and have endeavored to arrange their details in a different order to suit their own purposes, have effected little as to the point of con- secutiveness. This is seen in the case of the tolerably respectable compiler of the third Book of Esdras, which is preserved in the Apocrypha.
" On the other hand, the book appears from the course of the life of Nehemiah (see below) to be a continuous record, written in a lively, distinct, and energetic man- ner, such as is admitted by every one to be very suit- able to the circumstances in which it is said to have been composed. This is a fact which strikes us in read- ing all the accounts — the building of the ruins, the earlier and the later reforms, and the sacred services at the feast of tabernacles. Of course such different sub- jects are not described in the self-same words or style ; and this diversity illustrates the working of Nehemiah's mind as that of a man deeply interested in the affairs in which he took an active part. It is only a perverted ingenuity which would make these differences an evi- dence that ch. viii, ix, x have come from a different author. Those who wish to go into the particulars of a verbal criticism may find the materials in Keil's In- troduction to the Old Testament. He sliows how the difference in the use of the names of God is suitable to the different circumstances in which thcj' are used; how the language of the Levites in prayer is naturally more akin to the language of the law of JNIoses and of the Psalms than to that of plain history ; how the ex- pression, ' the nobles and the rulers,' which is frequent elsewhere, is wanting in this section ; while instead of it we once meet with the Mosaic term, 'chief of the fathers,' or rather, ' heads of the fathers' houses' (ch. viii, 13); though he might have mentioned that still a different expression is found in this disputed section, and in a passage which is confessedly genuine (ch. x, 29, and iii, 5) ; and that Ezra is not named among those who signed the covenant, because he acted the part of * mediator' in the transaction, as Moses had done before. This pre-eminent position assigned to Ezra necessarily threw even Nehemiah somewhat into the background, and led him to speak of himself in the third persiin in- stead of in the first, as in the rest of his book. Indeed this was the more natural and more distinct, because the first person plural, 'we,' 'our,' is used throughout the account of the sealing (ch. ix, x), which sufficiently marks the writer as an eye-witness and party in the transactiwn, yet one who wished not to appear singled out from his countrymen, except where this was un- avoidable on account of his official capacity. When he does so mention himself it is with the addition, 'the Tirshatha,' a peculiar word, of uncertain origin and meaning, though unmistakably an attributive title of the governor. Perhaps he may have used this title rather than another, in these descriptions of ecclesias- tical affairs, because of the title being given to Zerub- iaabel, the governor whom God had so greatly honored in the restoration of the church, while it occurs nowhere else" (Fairbairn).