high-priesthood to the close of the Persian empire on the other. The view given of the rise of two factions among the Jews — the one the strict religious party, ad- hering with uncompromising faithfulness to the Mosaic institutions, headed by Nehemiah; the other, the gen- tilizing party, ever imitating heathen customs, and mak- ing heathen connections, headed, or at least encouraged by the high-priest Eliashib and his family — sets before us the germ of much that we meet with in a more de- veloped state in later Jewish history from the com- mencement of the Macedonian dynasty till the final de- struction of Jerusalem. Again, iu this history as well as in the Book of Ezra, we see the bitter enmity between the Jews and Samaritans acquiring strength and defini- tive form on both religious and political grounds. It would seem from iv, 1, 2, 8 (A. V.), and vi, 2, 6, etc.. that the depression of Jerusalem was a fixed part of the policy of Sanballat, and that he had the design of rais- ing Samaria as the head of Palestine, upon the niin of Jerusalem, a design which seems to have been enter- tained by the Samaritans in later times. The book also throws much light upon the domestic institutions of the Jews. We learn incidentally the prevalence of usury, and of slavery as its consequence, the freijuent and burdensome oppressions of the governors (v, l.'i), the judicial use of corporal punishment (xiii, 25), the con- tinuance of false prophets as an engine of policy, as in the days of the kings of Judah (vi, 7, 12, 14), the resti- tution of the Mosaic provision for the maintenance of ' the priests and Levites and the due performance of the Temple service (xiii, 10-3), the much freer promulgation of the Holy Scriptures by the public reading of them (viii, 1; ix, 3; xiii, 1), and the more general acquaint- ance with them arising from their collection into one volume, and the multiplication of copies of them by the care of Ezra the scribe and Nehemiah himself (2 ^lacc. ii, 13), as well as from the stimulus given to the art of reading among the Jewish people during their residence in Babylon [see IIilkiaii ] ; the mixed form of political government still surviving the ruin of their indepen- dence (v, 7, 13; x), the reviving trade with Tyre (xiii, IG), the agricultural pursuits and wealth of the Jews (v, 11 ; xiii, 15), the tendency to take heathen wives, indicating, jiossibly, a disproportion in the number of Jewish males and females among the returned captives (x, 30; xiii, 3, 23), the danger the Jewish language was in of being corrupted (xiii, 24), with other details which only the narrative of an eye-witness woidd have jire- served to us. Some of these details give us incidentally information of great historical importance.
" (a.) The account of the building and dedication of the wall (iii, xii) contains the most valuable materials for settling the topography of Jerusalem to be found in Scripture. See Jkrisai.km.
"(6.) The list of returned captives who came under different leaders from the time of Zerubliabel to that of Nehemith (amounting in all to only 42,300 adult males, and 7337 servants), which is given in ch. vii, conveys a faithful picture of the political weakness of the Jewish nation as cotnpared with the times when Judali alone numl)crc(l 47(i.(»()(t lighting men (1 Chron. xxi, 5). It justilies the (lescriplion of the Palestine Jews as 'the remnant that are left of the captivity' (Neh. i, 3), and as 'these feeble Jews' (iv, 2), and explains the great difficulty felt by Nehemiah in peopling Jerusalem itself with a suflicient number of inhabitants to preserve it from assault (vii. 3, 4 ; xi, 1, 2). It is an imi)ortant aid, too, in understanding the subsequent history, and in ap- preciating the patriotism and valor by which tiiey at- tained their independence under the Maccabees.
"(c.) The lists of leaders, priests. Levites. and of those who signed the covenant, reveal incidentally much of the national spirit as well as of the social habits of tlic captives, derived from older times. Thus the fact that twtire leaders are named in Neh. vii, 7 indicates the feeling of the captives that they represented the twelve tribes, a feeling further evidenced in the expression
NEHEMIAH, BOOK OF
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NEHILOTH
'the men of the people of Israel.' The enumeration of twenty-one and twenty-two, or, if Zidkijah stands for the head of the house of Zadok, twenty-three chief priests in x, 1-8, xii, 1-7, of whom nine bear the names of those who were heads of courses in David's time (1 Chron. xxiv) [see Jkhoiauib], shows how, even in their wasted and reduced numbers, they strufjsletl to preserve these ancient institutions, and also supplies the reason of the mention of these particular twenty-two or twenty-three names.
"((/.) Other miscellaneous information contained in this book embraces the hereditary crafts practiced by certain priestly families, e. g. the apothecaries, or makers of the sacred ointments and incense (iii, 8), and the gohl- smiths, whose business it probably was to repair the sa- cred vessels (iii, 8), and who may have been the ances- tors, so to speak, of the money-changers in the Temple (John ii, 14, 15) ; the situation of the garden of the kings of Judah by wliich Zedekiah escaped (2 Kings xxv% 4), as seen in iii, 15; and statistics, reminding one of Domes- day-Book, concerning not only the cities and families of the returned captives, but the number of their horses, mules, camels, and asses (ch. vii) : to which more might be added" (Smith).