ao the entire number must have exceeded Gen. xxiii. 14, 15; 2 Chron. xvii. 11; Job rio 000-e.n enormous body of persons to xlii. 12). They may perhaps be viewed as tr~nsport a distance of above e. thousand teaching the lesson that with God nothing miles e.ccording to Western experience, but one ,:hich will not surprise those e.cquainted is too trivial for exact knowledge, even "all with the East. In the East care.vans of the hairs of our head" being "numbered" from ten to twenty thousand souls often (Matt. x. 30). In the present passage the traverse huge distances without serious mis- enumeration is not altogether without a hap, e.nd migrations frequently take place further historical value, since it is indicative on a much grander scale. In the year 1771, 60 000 families of Torgouths, reckoned to of the general poverty and low estato of the u~ber 300,000 souls, arrived on the frontiers returning exiles, who had but one slave ancl of China, after a journey of 10,000 leagues one ass to every six of their number, one through a m?st diflicu!t country1 and were horse to every sixty, one camel to every given lands m the Chmese emprre. They hundred, and one mule to every one hundrecl were followed in the next year by 180,000 E!euths and others, who had accomplished and seventy-five. a similar distance (see De Holl, 'Travels,• pp. Ver. 65.-Two hundred singing men e.nd ~28, 229). J enghis Khan is said to have ~orced singing women. Nehemiah says two hun- 100,000 e.rtisans e.nd craftsmen to emigrate dred and forty-five, and so the apocryphal in a body from Khiva into Mongolia (How- Esdras. Perhaps, in the great default of arth's 'History of tlie Mongols,' p. 86). The Levites, the services of these persons may transplantation of entire nations was an have been used to swell the sacred choruses established practice among the Assyrians, of the time (eh. iii. 10). Hence, it may be, Babylonians, and Persians. the mention of this otherwise unimportant THE NUMBER OF THE SLAVES, HORSES, fact. MULES, CAMELS, AND ASSES OF THOSE Ver. 67.-Their e.sses. The ass (we see) is still, as in the earlier times, the ~hief WHO RETURNED (vers. 66-67). It may beast of burden employed by the Israelites. seem strange that matters of this trivial Horses are rare, camels and mules still rnrcr ; character should be recorded with such but most emigrant families had, it would exactness in Holy Writ; but enumerations seem, one ass (comp. 1 Sam. viii. 16; 1 similar in character are not unfrequent (see Chron. xxvii. 30 ; Isa, x..u. 6).
HOMILETICS. Vera. 1-67.-The muster -roll. The last chapter gave us a catalogue of the sacred vessels returned. In that portion of the present chapter which concludes with the above verses we have a similar catalogue of the sacred people returned (see Lam. iv. 2). The first verse seems to show us where this catalogue was made out, viz., in th_e land of their exile, where Judrea was constantly spoken of as "the pro- vince" (comp. Ezra v. 8; Neh. i. 3; xi. 3). If the nearly identical catalogue which Nehemiah (eh. vii. 5) describes himself as having found at Jerusalem, about 103 years afterwards, were the same catalogue as corrected and laid up after the arrival of the exiles at Jerusalem, this might account for the various minor differences whicl. are discoverable between them. Many enrolled to start might never start, or never arrive ; some not enrolled to start might join afterwards and be enrolled then. At any rate it is easier to suppose something of this kind than to suppose, in connection with such careful and formal documents of state, so many glaring II mistakes." Seo also the very curious coincidences with regard to numbers in this case adduced by Wordsworth in loc.; coincidences hardly to be accounted for except on the suppo~ition of some secret but perfect method of numerical reconciliation. We may take the catalogue before us, therefore, very much as it stands. Not improbably, accordin 6 !o its own methodiy of interpretation, it is quite correct as it stands. Can we regard it as being also instructive from a moral point of view? Perhaps if we merely regard it in a general way, and as setting before our notice, first, the kind of men, and second, the number of men, that came up, we shall find even this apparently barren Scripture not without some sacred use to us. Some lessons c~n also be gathered from the very names we find here, c2 20 THE BOOK OF EZRA. LOH. II. 1-87.