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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.com | DownloadGreater Men and Women of the Bible by James Hastings: 368. Ezra
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Literature
Alford, B. H., Old Testament History and Literature (1910).
Batten, L. W., Ezra and Nehemiah (1913).
Clifford, J., The Gospel of Gladness (1912), 1.
Driver, S. R., Introduction to the Literature of the Old Testament (1913), 540.
Foakes-Jackson, F. J., The Biblical History of the Hebrews (1903).
Geikie, C., Hours with the Bible, vi. (1884) 474.
Gray, G. B., A Critical Introduction to the Old Testament (1913).
Hunter, P. H., After the Exile, i. (1890) 281; ii. (1890) 1.
Keil, C. F., Ezra, Nehemiah, and Esther (1888).
Kent, C. F., A History of the Jewish People, i. (1899).
Kent, C. F., The Makers and Teachers of Judaism (1911), 38.
McFadyen, J. E., The Messages of the Prophetic and Priestly Historians (1901), 314.
Maclaren, A., Expositions: 2 Kings viii. to Nehemiah (1907).
Ottley, R. L., A Short History of the Hebrews (1901), 235.
Palmer, E. R., The Development of Revelation (1892), 242.
Ryle, H. E., Ezra and Nehemiah (Cambridge Bible) (1893).
Sanders, F. K., and Kent, C. F., The Messages of the Later Prophets (1899), 265.
Sayce, A. H., An Introduction to Ezra, Nehemiah, and Esther (1885).
Stanley, A. P., Lectures on the History of the Jewish Church, iii. (1889) 101.
Townsend, W. J., in Men of the Old Testament: Solomon to Jonah (1904), 143.
Wade, G. W., Old Testament History (1901), 473.
Whitham, A. R., Old Testament History (1912), 398.
Whyte, A., Bible Characters: Ahithophel to Nehemiah (1899), 208.
British Congregationalist, Jan. 22, 1914 (J. Oates).
Dictionary of the Bible, i. (1898) 820 (L. W. Batten).
Dictionary of the Bible, i. (Single-volume, 1909), 253 (G. H. Box).
1. The Books of Ezra and Nehemiah were originally one, and ought really to be so combined now. The evidence of this is overwhelming. Two points suffice for a demonstration: (1) The story of Ezra is partly in one book, Ezr_7:10, and partly in the other, Neh_7:70-73; Neh_8:1-12. In 1 Esd. these two parts are united in a single book. (2) At the end of each book of the Old Testament there are certain Massoretic notes, giving the number of verses, the middle point in the volume or roll, etc. There are no such notes at the end of Ezra, and those at the end of Nehemiah cover both books, showing that the two constituted a single work when these notes were made.
It is also generally admitted that Ezra and Nehemiah, which are the direct continuation of Chronicles, originally formed part of that work. Not only is their style-which is very marked, and in many respects unlike that of any other book of the Old Testament-closely similar, but they also resemble each other in the point of view from which the history is treated, in the method followed in the choice of materials (genealogies, statistical registers, descriptions of religious ceremonies, details respecting the sacerdotal classes, and the organization of public worship). Moreover, the Book of Ezra-Nehemiah begins exactly at the point at which the Book of Chronicles ends, and carries on the narrative upon the same plan to the time when the theocratic institutions under which the compiler lived were finally established through the labours of Ezra and Nehemiah.
2. Though the author breathes much of his own spirit into the history he records, he fortunately leaves much of it practically intact and often transcribes without adapting. This is especially true of the long section Neh_1:1-11; Neh_2:1-20; Neh_3:1-32; Neh_4:1-23; Neh_5:1-19; Neh_6:1-19, a graphic story in the first person, which comes from the personal memoirs of Nehemiah. It is also clear that one of the sources was the memoirs of Ezra, for the sections Ezr_7:27-28; Ezr_8:1-34; Ezr_9:1-15 speak of him in the first person, though the abrupt transition in the tenth chapter from the first person to the third shows the hand of the editor working on the original documents. It is not impossible that he may have edited even that portion of the memoirs which has been preserved in the first person. We do know for a fact that he retouched documents which look like originals. A comparison, for instance, of the decree of Cyrus as given in Ezr_1:2 ff. with the form of that decree preserved in the Aramaic document of Ezr_6:3 ff. leaves no doubt as to which is the original. The Chronicler's hand is obvious in the representation of the decree as a charge given by Jehovah, God of heaven, to Cyrus. Thus we have to face the possibility, which amounts to a practical certainty, that the Chronicler's hand has touched even the original letters and documents preserved in Aramaic, Ezr_4:8-24; Ezr_5:1-17; Ezr_6:1-14; Ezr_7:12-26, but the influence there is, in the main, formal rather than material.
3. The Books of Ezra and Nehemiah embrace the period from the return of the exiles under Zerubbabel (b.c. 537) to the second visit of Nehemiah (b.c. 432); but the history is not told continuously. Indeed, no attempt is made to supply a consecutive narrative. There are long periods on which the narrative is silent; in one case especially (Ezr_6:22; Ezr_7:1), an interval of sixty years, immediately before Ezra's own time, is passed over by the words, “After these things,” in a manner not credible if the writer were Ezra himself, but perfectly natural if the writer lived in an age to which the period b.c. 516-458 was visible only in a distant perspective. It is confined chiefly to certain periods or occasions of importance, viz. the Return, and events immediately following it (b.c. 536), the rebuilding of the Temple (b.c. 520-16), and the visits of Ezra and Nehemiah in b.c. 458, 444, and 432.
But the story told by Ezra-Nehemiah, however defective in continuity, is complete in intention. It tells of slow successive steps in a uniform process, that of making Jerusalem into a “holy city” not only in respect of such sacred buildings as Ezekiel designed in vision, or such boundary walls as Nehemiah erected, but by virtue of dismissing from among its inhabitants first of all “strange women of the peoples of the land,” then “all the mixed multitude,” which had more or less companied with the children of Israel since the days of the Exodus. These reforms, instituted by the leaders of the Return, were embodied in covenants of increasing stringency, which formed the documentary basis of what was virtually a changed religion-no longer Mosaism with its tolerance of the stranger, or Prophetism with its desire to evangelize the heathen, but Judaism with its self-protective holiness keeping off the nations at arm's length.