1. A blank of thirteen years now intervenes in the history of Ezra and the Jewish people. When we hear of them again it is in the twentieth year of Artaxerxes (b.c. 446), when Nehemiah, a Babylonian Jew and the favoured cup-bearer of Artaxerxes, asked the king's permission to revisit his native city and to repair its ruined walls. According to the compiler of Ezra-Nehemiah, it was after this event that Ezra read the Law to the people assembled at Jerusalem, and obtained their pledge to observe it. It is singular that Ezra, who had brought the Law to Jerusalem for the purpose of making it the code of the community, should not have promulgated it sooner. It may be that Stade is right in supposing that Ezra had aroused the hostility of the people by the compulsory divorce, and that the times were not ripe before; or it may be that the chronology is not exact, as the compilation was made long after the events described, and the description of the reading of the Law interrupts Nehemiah's narrative. The compiler himself seems uncertain as to the connexion in which he should introduce the coming of the book. By repeating in his prefatory note (Neh_7:73; Neh_8:1) the words of Ezr_3:1, he suggests a connexion with the first Return; while by an earlier mention of the Law of God in the hand of Ezra he connects it with the first arrival of that personage from Babylon. But the time of the occurrence is far less important than the occurrence itself.
The completion of the walls had doubtless rekindled the national enthusiasm of the Jews, and revived their desire to maintain their distinctive character as a “peculiar people.” Ezra's public appearance with the Book of the Law in his hands was evidently the response to a popular demand. An opportunity had at last arrived for carrying out his cherished object and reorganizing the national life on the basis of the Law-book which had been brought from Babylon, but which had hitherto been known only to the priesthood.
The law that Ezra published to the people consisted, as we suppose, of the final expansion of the people's Book of the Law; with Deuteronomist Law and Jehovist-Elohist Narrative had now been combined the Priestly Narrative and the Priestly Laws. The publication of the work heralded a radical change in the religious life of the people. The People's Book was no longer to be confined to the prophetic re-formulation of laws, which had once so deeply aroused Jewish thought and influenced Jewish literature. The priesthood was no longer alone to possess the key of knowledge as to the clean and the unclean, the true worship and the false (cf. Eze_44:23-24). Their hereditary monopoly was to be done away. The instruction of the people was to pass from the priest to the scribe. Not what “the Law” was, but what its meaning was, was henceforth to call for authoritative explanation. The Law itself was to be in the hands of the people.
The conjuncture was a critical one for the history of Judaism. There was a sharp division between the High Priest's party and the supporters of Ezra. The records of Ezra and Nehemiah leave us in no practical doubt on the point. The priests were foremost in supporting a policy of free intercourse with the heathen, of fraternizing, for the sake of material advantages, with the leaders of the Samaritans (cf. Ezr_9:1-2; Ezr_10:18-22, Neh_6:10-14; Neh_13:4-14; Neh_13:28). The opposition of Ezra and the energetic action of Nehemiah averted the evil effects of this policy. But it is probable that, if the patriotic enthusiasm of the people had not been awakened by Nehemiah's successful restoration of the walls, Ezra and his colleagues would not have been strong enough, in the face of the priests, to establish upon a firm footing the public recognition of a larger Canon of Scripture. The far-reaching effect of their action may not then have been so obvious as the immediate advantage to be obtained. The immediate advantage was that a knowledge of the Priestly Law was placed within the reach of every Jew, and that a fatal barrier was thus raised against any attempt at fusion with the stranger and the Samaritan. The far-reaching effect was that a standard of holy and unholy, right and wrong, clean and unclean, was delivered to the Jews as a people, so that all Jews, whether of the Dispersion or in Judea, whether in Babylon or in Alexandria or within the walls of Jerusalem, could equally know the will of the Lord, and equally interpret the difficulties of moral and social life by appeal to the “Torah,” to the verdict, not given by the mouth of the priest or the prophet, but obtained by search into the letter of “the Law.”1 [Note: H. E. Ryle, The Canon of the Old Testament, 81.]
2. On the first day of the civil year (Tisri 1), a great assembly was held for the purpose of hearing the contents of the new code. Standing on the pulpit of wood, Ezra read the book aloud in the audience of the people “from early morning until midday,” the lections being occasionally interrupted by parenthetic comments and explanations. The effect on the audience was remarkable. They broke forth into lamentations at hearing “the words of the law,” which as a nation they had in so many particulars transgressed. But grief was unsuited to the “holiness” of such a day. Nehemiah bade them depart in peace, and celebrate the feast with gladness. “Neither be ye grieved,” he said, “for the joy of Jehovah is your strength.”
This joy was put into further practice by keeping the Feast of Tabernacles; the olive, myrtle, pine, and palm branches, commanded in Lev_23:1-44, were procured, and booths were constructed on house-tops and in courtyards and streets, “for since the days of Joshua the son of Nun had not the children of Israel done so.” The feast lasted the prescribed time of eight days, and each day Ezra continued to read extracts from the Law. This revival of religious feeling was clinched by the holding of a day of fasting and confession of sin on the 24th of the same month. Three hours were devoted to hearing the Scriptures read, three to confessing their trespasses and worshipping the Lord. Then Ezra came forward with a prayer of particular beauty and fulness (Neh_9:6-38). He commemorated all the wonderful dealings of God with Israel as their national Founder (Neh_9:7, 8), their Redeemer from slavery (Neh_9:9-12), their Lawgiver at Mount Sinai, their Preserver in the Wilderness, the Conqueror of Canaan, their Deliverer from invading tribes, and their Educator, who with infinite patience had sought to bring them again to His law, when they “dealt proudly,” slew His prophets, and “hardened their neck.” Ezra finally prayed God that all the discipline of exile past and servitude present might not be fruitless; and for that purpose he set forth “a sure covenant” which the princes, Levites and priests sealed and the rest of the community accepted on oath.
3. This covenant-“to walk in God's law”-specified seven points of strict observance. As reported in Neh_10:1-39, these are: (1) to abstain from all intermarriage with heathen peoples; (2) to abstain from buying and selling on the Sabbath or on a holy day; (3) to observe the commands respecting the Sabbatical year; (4) to pay a poll tax of one-third of a shekel to support the services at the Temple; (5) to provide wood for the sacrifices at the Temple in accordance with the decision of the lot; (6) to bring the first-fruits and the first-born, as commanded, to the Temple for the support of the priests; (7) to deliver the tithes of the ground to the Levites, who in turn were to distribute them according to the Law; and, in general, not to neglect to provide for the needs of the Temple service. The trustworthiness of this brief report is strikingly confirmed by the fact that each regulation was intended to correct evils in the Judæan community with which we have become familiar through the memoirs of Nehemiah and the writings of contemporary prophets. There is good ground for believing that the reformation affected the inner spiritual as well as the external life of the community; but it was natural that a tradition, probably preserved among the records of the Temple, should refer only to objective reforms. The articles subscribed to at the Great Assembly became at once the constitution, both of Judaism and of the new Temple service.
The exterior aspect of the stern, strict Judaism of these days is by no means attractive. But the interior life of it is simply superb. It recognizes the absolute supremacy of God. In the will of God it acknowledges the one unquestionable authority before which all who accept His covenant must bow; in the revealed truth of God it perceives an inflexible rule for the conduct of His people. To be pledged to allegiance to the will and law of God is to be truly consecrated to God. That is the condition voluntarily entered into by the citizens of Jerusalem in this epoch of religious awakening. A few centuries later their example was followed by the primitive Christians, who, according to the testimony of the two Bithynian handmaidens tortured by Pliny, solemnly pledged themselves to lives of purity and righteousness; again, it was imitated, though in strangely perverted guise, by anchorites and monks, by the great founders of monastic orders and their loyal disciples, and by mediæval reformers of Church discipline such as St. Bernard; still later it was followed more closely by the Protestant inhabitants of Swiss cities at the Reformation, by the early Independents at home and the Pilgrim Fathers in New England, by the Covenanters in Scotland, by the first Methodists. It is the model of Church order, and the ideal of the religious organization of civic life. But it awaits the adequate fulfilment of its promise in the establishment of the Heavenly City, the New Jerusalem.1 [Note: W. F. Adeney, Ezra, Nehemiah, and Esther, 11.]
4. That first of Tisri, when Ezra stood up on his tribune in the square before the Water-gate, and read the Law of Moses to the congregation, may be called the birthday of Judaism. It is scarcely possible to exaggerate the “epoch-making importance” of that occasion, which closed the long history of ancient Israel, inaugurated the era of reform, and gave a new impulse and direction to the development of the national consciousness. The Jewish people often halted in the path on which they entered that day, sometimes even seemed to retrace their steps; but they never really diverged from that path into any other-never transferred to any other authority the allegiance they had sworn to the Law.
This is a characteristic of the religion of law; it is a bondage, though a bondage willingly submitted to by those who stoop to its yoke. To St. Paul it became a crushing slavery. But the burden was not felt at first, simply because neither the range of the Law, nor the searching force of its requirements, nor the weakness of men to keep their vows, was yet perceived by the sanguine Jews who so unhesitatingly surrendered to it. As we look back to their position from the vantage ground of Christian liberty, we are astounded at the Jewish love of law, and we rejoice in our freedom from its irksome restraints. And yet the Christian is not an antinomian; he is not a sort of free lance, sworn to no obedience. He too has his obligation. He is bound to a lofty service-not to a law, indeed, but to a personal Master; not in the servitude of the letter, but, though with the freedom of the spirit, really with far higher obligations of love and fidelity than were ever recognized by the most rigorous covenant-keeping Jews. Thus he has a new covenant, sealed in the blood of his Saviour, and his communion with his Lord implies a sacramental vow of loyalty. The Christian covenant, however, is not visibly exhibited, because a formal pledge is scarcely in accordance with the spirit of the gospel. We find it better to take a more self-distrustful course, one marked by greater dependence of faith on the preserving grace of God, by turning our vows into prayers. While the Jews “entered into a curse and into an oath” to keep the Law, we shrink from anything so terrible; yet our duty is not the less because we limit our professions of it.1 [Note: W. F. Adeney, Ezra, Nehemiah, and Esther, 309.]
5. Ezra must have died during Nehemiah's first tenure of office. The chief part of his literary labours must have been accomplished during the thirteen years that elapsed between the close of his own narrative and the beginning of that of Nehemiah. They were years of official repose, in which he would have been able to collect and arrange the earlier books of the Old Testament, and more especially the Book of the Law. How little these were known to the community at large appears from the narrative of Nehemiah. The words of the Law came to the Jews with the force of a new revelation when they heard them read by Ezra after Nehemiah's arrival in Jerusalem. Possibly Ezra's work of collection and arrangement was but just finished, and he had had no previous opportunity of making known to his countrymen the injunctions of their inspired lawgiver. We need not believe the legend in the Second Book of Esdras (2Es_4:21-47), that he and his five companions re-wrote the Law which had been burnt, or the tradition of the Talmud, which ascribes the revision of the Old Testament to Ezra and “the men of the Great Synagogue”; but it is scarcely probable that a fact does not underlie both the legend and the tradition, and that the preservation of much of the text of the sacred volume is, humanly speaking, due to the labours of the great scribe.
To secure the worship of God, free from all contamination-this was Ezra's ultimate purpose. In accomplishing it he must have a devoted people also free from contamination, a priesthood still more separate and consecrated, and a ritual carefully guarded and protected from defilement. To a Christian all this has its defects-formalism, externalism, needless narrowness. Yet it succeeded in saving the religion of the Jews, and in transmitting that religion to future ages as a precious casket containing the seed of the great spiritual faith for which the world was waiting. There is something of the schoolmaster in Ezra; but he is, like the Law he loved so devoutly, a schoolmaster who brings us to Christ. He was needed both for his times and also in order to lay the foundation of coming ages.
The Law was something more than a system of restraint and condemnation. It contained an element of progress. Under the tutelage of his pedagogue the boy is growing up to manhood. At the end of its term the Law will hand over its charge mature in capacity and equal to the responsibilities of faith. Judaism was an education for Christianity. It prepared the world for the Redeemer's coming. It drilled and moralized the religious youth of the human race. It broke up the fallow-ground of nature, and cleared a space in the weed-covered soil to receive the seed of the Kingdom. Its moral regimen deepened the conviction of sin, while it multiplied its overt acts. Its ceremonial impressed on sensuous natures the idea of the Divine holiness; and its sacrificial rites gave definiteness and vividness to men's conceptions of the necessity of atonement, failing indeed to remove, but awakening the need and sustaining the hope of its removal.1 [Note: G. G. Findlay, The Epistle to the Galatians, 225.]
The Disposition by God of the religious inheritance which ultimately is intended for all men, involved a gradual training of mankind in order that they might be able to accept the inheritance by fulfilling the conditions: the Disposition is first in favour of one man, then of a nation, finally of all nations. The one man at first needed no schoolmaster: he was able to respond at once to the requirements of God. But the nation, when it came to exist, was not able in itself to rise to the conditions which God demanded. It needed education and the constant watching of a careful guardian: the Law was given to watch over the young nation as it was being trained and educated in the school of life: the Law was not itself the teacher, but the paidagogos. Then came the age of Christ, who opened, first to the Jews and through them to all nations, the door of Faith.2 [Note: W. M. Ramsay, A Historical Commentary on St. Paul's Epistle to the Galatians, 384.]
