_THE SECOND EXODUS._
Ezra ii. 1-67.
The journey of the returning exiles from Babylon has some points of
resemblance to the exodus of their fathers from Egypt. On both
occasions the Israelites had been suffering oppression in a foreign
land. Deliverance had come to the ancient Hebrews in so wonderful a
way that it could only be described as a miracle of God: no material
miracle was recorded of the later movement; and yet it was so
marvellously providential that the Jews were constrained to
acknowledge that the hand of God was not less concerned in it.
But there were great differences between the two events. In the
original _Hegira_ of the Hebrews a horde of slaves was fleeing from
the land of their brutal masters; in the solemn pilgrimage of the
second exodus the Jews were able to set out with every encouragement
from the conqueror of their national enemy. On the other hand, while
the flight from Egypt led to liberty, the expedition from Babylon did
not include an escape from the foreign yoke. The returning exiles were
described as "children of the province"[13]--_i.e._, of the Persian
province of Judæa--and their leader bore the title of a Persian
governor.[14] Zerubbabel was no new Moses. The first exodus witnessed
the birth of a nation; the second saw only a migration within the
boundaries of an empire, sanctioned by the ruler because it did not
include the deliverance of the subject people from servitude.
[13] Ezra ii. 1.
[14] Tirshatha. Ezra ii. 63.
In other respects the condition of the Israelites who took part in the
later expedition contrasts favourably with that of their ancestors
under Moses. In the arts of civilisation, of course, they were far
superior to the crushed Egyptian bondmen. But the chief distinction
lay in the matter of religion. At length, in these days of Cyrus, the
people were ripe to accept the faith of the great teachers who
hitherto had been as voices crying in the wilderness. This fact
signalises the immense difference between the Jews in every age
previous to the exile, and the Jews of the return. In earlier periods
they appear as a kingdom, but not as a Church; in the later age they
are no longer a kingdom, but they have become a Church. The kingdom
had been mainly heathenish and idolatrous in its religion, and most
abominably corrupt in its morals, with only a thin streak of purer
faith and conduct running through the course of its history. But the
new Church, formed out of captives purified in the fires of
persecution, consisted of a body of men and women who heartily
embraced the religion to which but few of their forefathers had
attained, and who were even ready to welcome a more rigorous
development of its cult. Thus they became a highly developed Church.
They were consolidated into a Puritan Church in discipline, and a High
Church in ritual.
It must be borne in mind that only a fraction of the Jews in the East
went back to Palestine. Nor were they who tarried, in all cases, the
more worldly, enamoured of the fleshpots. In the Talmud it is said
that only the chaff returned, while the wheat remained behind. Both
Ezra and Nehemiah sprang from families still residing in the East long
after the return under Zerubbabel.
It is in accordance with these conditions that we come across one of
the most curious characteristics of the Books of Ezra and Nehemiah--a
characteristic which they share with Chronicles, viz., the frequent
insertion of long lists of names.
Thus the second chapter of Ezra contains a list of the families who
went up to Jerusalem in response to the edict of Cyrus. One or two
general considerations arise here.
Since it was not a whole nation that migrated from the plains of
Babylon across the great Syrian desert, but only some fragments of a
nation, we shall not have to consider the fortunes and destinies of a
composite unity, such as is represented by a kingdom. The people of
God must now be regarded disjunctively. It is not the blessing of
Israel, or the blessing of Judah, that faith now anticipates; but the
blessing of those men, women, and children who fear God and walk in
His ways, though, of course, for the present they are all confined to
the limits of the Jewish race.
On the other hand, it is to be observed that this individualism was
not absolute. The people were arranged according to their families,
and the names that distinguished the families were not those of the
present heads of houses, but the names of ancestors, possibly of
captives taken down to Babylon by Nebuchadnezzar. As some of these
names occur in later expeditions, it is plain that the whole of the
families they represented were not found in the first body of
pilgrims. Still the people were grouped in family order. The Jews
anticipated the modern verdict of sociology, that the social unit is
the family, not the individual. Judaism was, through and through, a
domestic religion.
Further, it is to be noted that a sort of caste feeling was engendered
in the midst of the domestic arrangement of the people. It emerges
already in the second chapter of Ezra in the cases of families that
could not trace their genealogy, and it bears bitter fruit in some
pitiable scenes in the later history of the returned people. Not only
national rights, but also religious privileges, come more and more to
depend on purity of birth and descent. Religion is viewed as a
question of blood relationship. Thus even with the very appearance of
that new-born individualism which might be expected to counteract it,
even when the recovered people is composed entirely of volunteers, a
strong racial current sets in, which grows in volume until in the days
of our Lord the fact of a man's being a Jew is thought a sufficient
guarantee of his enjoying the favour of Heaven, until in our own day
such a book as "Daniel Deronda" portrays the race-enthusiasm of the
Israelite as the very heart and essence of his religion.
We have three copies of the list of the returning exiles--one in Ezra
ii., the second in Nehemiah vii., and the third in 1 Esdras v. They
are evidently all of them transcripts of the same original register;
but though they agree in the main, they differ in details, giving some
variation in the names and considerable diversity in the
numbers--Esdras coming nearer to Ezra than to Nehemiah, as we might
expect. The total, however, is the same in every case, viz., 42,360
(besides 7337 servants)--a large number, which shows how important the
expedition was considered to be.
The name of Zerubbabel appears first. He was the lineal descendant of
the royal house, the heir to the throne of David. This is a most
significant fact. It shows that the exiles had retained some latent
national organisation, and it gives a faint political character to the
return, although, as we have already observed, the main object of it
was religious. To fervent readers of old prophecies strange hopes
would dawn, hopes of the Messiah whose advent Isaiah, in particular,
had predicted. Was this new shoot from the stock of David indeed the
Lord's Anointed? Those who secretly answered the question to
themselves in the affirmative were doomed to much perplexity and not a
little disappointment. Nevertheless Zerubbabel was a lower, a
provisional, a temporary Messiah. God was educating His people through
their illusions. As one by one the national heroes failed to satisfy
the large hopes of the prophets, they were left behind, but the hopes
still maintained their unearthly vitality. Hezekiah, Josiah,
Zerubbabel, the Maccabees all passed, and in passing they all helped
to prepare for One who alone could realise the dreams of seers and
singers in all the best ages of Hebrew thought and life.
Still the bulk of the people do not seem to have been dominated by the
Messianic conception. It is one characteristic of the return that the
idea of the personal, God-sent, but human Messiah recedes; and
another, older, and more persistent Jewish hope comes to the
front--viz., the hope in God Himself as the Saviour of His people and
their Vindicator. Cyrus could not have suspected any political
designs, or he would not have made Zerubbabel the head of the
expedition. Evidently "Sheshbazzar, the prince of Judah," to whom
Cyrus handed over the sacred vessels of the temple, is the same man as
Zerubbabel, because in v. 16 we read that Sheshbazzar laid the
foundation of the temple, while in iii. 8 this work is ascribed to
Zerubbabel, with whom the origin of the work is again connected in v.
2.
The second name is Jeshua.[15] The man who bears it was afterwards the
high-priest at Jerusalem. It is impossible to say whether he had
exercised any sacerdotal functions during the exile; but his prominent
place shows that honour was now offered to his priesthood. Still he
comes after the royal prince.
[15] This name is a later form of "Joshua"; the older form of the name
is used for the same person in Hag. i. 1, 14, and Zech. iii. 1.
Then follow nine names without any description.[16] Nehemiah's list
includes another name, which seems to have dropped out of the list in
Ezra. These, together with the two already mentioned, make an exact
dozen. It cannot be an accident that twelve names stand at the head of
the list; they must be meant to represent the twelve tribes--like the
twelve apostles in the Gospels, and the twelve gates of the New
Jerusalem in the Apocalypse. Thus it is indicated that the return is
for all Israel, not exclusively for the Judæan Hebrews. Undoubtedly
the bulk of the pilgrims were descendants of captives from the
Southern Kingdom.[17] The dispersion of the Northern Kingdom had begun
two centuries earlier than Nebuchadnezzar's invasion of Judæa; it had
been carried on by successive removals of the people in successive
wars. Probably most of these early exiles had been driven farther
north than those districts which were assigned to the Judæan captives;
probably, too; they had been scattered far and wide; lastly, we know
that they had been sunken in an idolatrous imitation of the manners
and customs of their heathen neighbours, so that there was little to
differentiate them from the people among whom they were domiciled.
Under all these circumstances, is it remarkable that the ten tribes
have disappeared from the observation of the world? They have
vanished, but only as the Goths have vanished in Italy, as the
Huguenot refugees have vanished in England--by mingling with the
resident population. We have not to search for them in Tartary, or
South America, or any other remote region of the four continents,
because we have no reason to believe that they are now a separate
people.
[16] Of course the Nehemiah and Mordecai in this list are different
persons from those who bear the same names in the Books of Nehemiah
and Esther and belong to later dates.
[17] See Ezra i. 5.
Still a very small "Remnant" was faithful. This "Remnant" was welcome
to find its way back to Palestine with the returning Judæans. As the
immediate object of the expedition was to rebuild the temple at the
rival capital of Jerusalem, it was not to be expected that patriots of
the Northern Kingdom would be very eager to join it. Yet some
descendants of the ten tribes made their way back. Even in New
Testament times the genealogy of the prophetess Anna was reckoned from
the tribe of Asher.[18] It is most improbable that the twelve leaders
were actually descendants of the twelve tribes. But just as in the
case of the apostles, whom we cannot regard as thus descended, they
represented all Israel. Their position at the head of the expedition
proclaimed that the "middle wall of partition" was broken down. Thus
we see that redemption tends to liberalise the redeemed, that those
who are restored to God are also brought back to the love of their
brethren.
[18] Luke ii. 36.
The list that follows the twelve is divisible into two sections.
First, we have a number of families; then there is a change in the
tabulation, and the rest of the people are arranged according to their
cities. The most simple explanation of this double method is that the
families constitute the Jerusalem citizens.
The towns named in the second division are all situated in the
neighbourhood of Jerusalem. The only part of Palestine as yet restored
to the Jews was Jerusalem, with the towns in its vicinity. The
southern half of Judæa remained in the hands of the Edomites, who
begrudged to the Jews even the resumption of the northern portion--and
very naturally, seeing that the Edomites had held it for half a
century, a time which gives some assurance of permanent possession.
This must be borne in mind when we come across the troubles between
the returned exiles and their neighbours in Palestine. We can never
understand a quarrel until we have heard both sides. There is no
Edomite history of the wars of Israel. No doubt such a history would
put another face on the events--just as a Chinese history of the
English wars in the East would do, to the shame of the Christian
nation.
After the leaders and the people generally come the successive orders
of the temple ministry. We begin with the priests, and among these a
front rank is given to the house of Jeshua. The high-priest himself
had been named earlier, next to Zerubbabel, among the leaders of the
nation, so distinct was his position from that of the ordinary
priesthood. Next to the priests we have the Levites, who are now
sharply separated from the first order of the ministry. The very small
number of Levites in comparison with the large number of priests is
startling--over four thousand priests and only seventy-four Levites!
The explanation of this anomaly may be found in what had been
occurring in Chaldæa. Ezekiel declared that the Levites were to be
degraded because of their sinful conduct.[19] We see from the
arrangement in Ezra that the prophet's message was obeyed. The Levites
were now separated from the priests, and set down to a lower function.
This could not have been acceptable to them. Therefore it is not at
all surprising that the majority of them held aloof from the
expedition for rebuilding the temple in sullen resentment, or at best
in cool indifference, refusing to take part in a work the issue of
which would exhibit their humiliation to menial service. But the
seventy-four had grace to accept their lowly lot.
[19] Ezek. xliv. 9-16.
The Levites are not set in the lowest place. They are distinguished
from several succeeding orders. The singers, the children of Asaph,
were really Levites; but they form a separate and important class, for
the temple service was to be choral--rich and gladsome. The
door-keepers are a distinct order, lowly but honourable, for they are
devoted to the service of God, for whom all work is glorious.
"They also serve who only stand and wait."
Next come the Nethinims, or temple-helots. These seem to have been
aborigines of Canaan who had been pressed into the service of the old
Jerusalem temple, like the Gibeonites, the hewers of wood and drawers
of water. After the Nethinims come "the children of Solomon's
servants," another order of slaves, apparently the descendants of the
war captives whom Solomon had assigned to the work of building the
temple. It shows what thorough organisation was preserved among the
captives that these bondsmen were retained in their original position
and brought back to Jerusalem. To us this is not altogether admirable.
We may be grieved to see slavery thus enlisted in the worship of God.
But we must recollect that even with the Christian gospel in her hand,
for centuries, the Church had her slaves, the monasteries their serfs.
No idea is of slower growth than the idea of the brotherhood of man.
So far all was in order; but there were exceptional cases. Some of the
people could not prove their Israelite descent, and accordingly they
were set aside from their brethren. Some of the priests even could not
trace their genealogy. Their condition was regarded as more serious,
for the right of office was purely hereditary. The dilemma brought to
light a sad sense of loss. If only there were a priest with the Urim
and Thummim, this antique augury of flashing gems might settle the
difficulty! But such a man was not to be found. The Urim and Thummim,
together with the Ark and the Shekinah, are named by the rabbis among
the precious things that were never recovered. The Jews looked back
with regret to the wonderful time when the privilege of consulting an
oracle had been within the reach of their ancestors. Thus they shared
the universal instinct of mankind that turns fondly to the past for
memories of a golden age, the glories of which have faded and left us
only the dingy scenes of every-day life. In this instinct we may
detect a transference to the race of the vaguely perceived personal
loss of each man as he reflects on those far-off, dream-like
child-days, when even he was a "mighty prophet," a "seer blest," one
who had come into the world "trailing clouds of glory." Alas! he
perceives that the mystic splendours have faded into the light of
common day, if they have not even given place to the gloom of doubt,
or the black night of sin. Then, taking himself as a microcosm, he
ascribes a similar fate to the race.
Nothing is more inspiriting in the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ
than its complete reversal of this dismal process of reflection, and
its promise of the Golden Age in the future. The most exalted Hebrew
prophecy anticipated something of the kind; here and there it lit up
its sombre pages with the hope of a brilliant future. The attitude of
the Jews in the present instance, when they simply set a question on
one side, waiting till a priest with Urim and Thummim should appear,
suggests too faint a belief in the future to be prophetic. But like
Socrates' hint at the possibility of one arising who should solve the
problems which were inscrutable to the Athenians of his day, it points
to a sense of need. When at length Christ came as "the Light of the
World," it was to supply a widely felt want. It is true He brought no
Urim and Thummim. The supreme motive for thankfulness in this
connection is that His revelation is so much more ample than the
wizard guidance men had formerly clung to, as to be like the broad
sunshine in comparison with the shifting lights of magic gems. Though
He gave no formal answers to petty questions such as those for which
the Jews would resort to a priest, as their heathen neighbours
resorted to a soothsayer, He shed a wholesome radiance on the path of
life, so that His followers have come to regard the providing of a
priest with Urim and Thummim as at best an expedient adapted to the
requirements of an age of superstition.
If the caravan lacked the privilege of an oracle, care was taken to
equip it as well as the available means would allow. These were not
abundant. There were servants, it is true. There were beasts of burden
too--camels, horses, asses; but these were few in comparison to the
numbers of the host--only at the rate of one animal to a family of
four persons. Yet the expedition set out in a semi-royal character,
for it was protected by a guard of a thousand horsemen sent by Cyrus.
Better than this, it possessed a spirit of enthusiasm which triumphed
over poverty and hardship, and spread a great gladness through the
people. Now at length it was possible to take down the harps from the
willows. Besides the temple choristers, two hundred singing men and
women accompanied the pilgrims to help to give expression to the
exuberant joyousness of the host. The spirit of the whole company was
expressed in a noble lyric that has become familiar to us:--
"When the Lord turned again the captivity of Zion,
We were like unto them that dream.
Then was our mouth filled with laughter,
And our tongue with singing:
Then said they among the nations,
The Lord hath done great things for them.
The Lord hath done great things for us;
Whereof we are glad."[20]
[20] Psalm cxxvi. 1-3.