_FROM THE RETURN FROM BABYLON TO THE BUILDING OF THE TEMPLE_
(536—516 B. C.)
Cyrus the Great took Babylon and the Babylonian Empire in 539. Upon the
eve of his conquest the Second Isaiah had hailed him as the Liberator
of the people of God and the builder of their Temple. The Return of
the Exiles and the Restoration both of Temple and City were predicted
by the Second Isaiah for the immediate future; and a Jewish historian,
the Compiler of the Books of Ezra and Nehemiah, who lived about 300
B.C., has taken up the story of how these events came to pass from
the very first year of Cyrus onward. Before discussing the dates and
proper order of these events, it will be well to have this Chronicler’s
narrative before us. It lies in the first and following chapters of
our Book of Ezra.
According to this, Cyrus, soon after his conquest of Babylon, gave
permission to the Jewish exiles to return to Palestine, and between
forty and fifty thousand[546] did so return, bearing the vessels of
Jehovah’s house which the Chaldeans had taken away in 586. These Cyrus
delivered _to Sheshbazzar, prince of Judah_[547] (who is further
described in an Aramaic document incorporated by the Compiler of the
Book of Ezra as “Peḥah,” or _provincial governor_,[548] and as laying
the foundation of the Temple[549]), and there is also mentioned in
command of the people a Tirshatha, probably the Persian Tarsâta,[550]
which also means _provincial governor_. Upon their arrival at
Jerusalem, the date of which will be immediately discussed, the
people are said to be under Jeshu’a ben Jōṣadak[551] and Zerubbabel
ben She’altî’el,[552] who had already been mentioned as the head of
the returning exiles,[553] and who is called by his contemporary
Haggai Peḥah, or _governor, of Judah_.[554] Are we to understand by
Sheshbazzar and Zerubbabel one and the same person? Most critics have
answered in the affirmative, believing that Sheshbazzar is but the
Babylonian or Persian name by which the Jew Zerubbabel was known at
court;[555] and this view is supported by the facts that Zerubbabel
was of the house of David and is called Peḥah by Haggai, and by the
argument that the command given by the Tirshatha to the Jews to abstain
from _eating the most holy things_[556] could only have been given
by a native Jew.[557] But others, arguing that Ezra v. 1, compared
with vv. 14 and 16, implies that Zerubbabel and Sheshbazzar were two
different persons, take the former to have been the most prominent of
the Jews themselves, but the latter an official, Persian or Babylonian,
appointed by Cyrus to carry out such business in connection with the
Return as could only be discharged by an imperial officer.[558] This
is, on the whole, the more probable theory.
If it is right, Sheshbazzar, who superintended the Return, had
disappeared from Jerusalem by 521, when Haggai commenced to prophesy,
and had been succeeded as Peḥah, or governor, by Zerubbabel. But in
that case the Compiler has been in error in calling Sheshbazzar _a
prince of Judah_.[559]
The next point to fix is what the Compiler considers to have been the
date of the Return. He names no year, but he recounts that the same
people, whom he has just described as receiving the command of Cyrus
to return, did immediately leave Babylon,[560] and he says that they
arrived at Jerusalem in _the seventh month_, but again without stating
a year.[561] In any case, he obviously intends to imply that the Return
followed immediately on reception of the permission to return, and
that this was given by Cyrus very soon after his occupation of Babylon
in 539—8. We may take it that the Compiler understood the year to be
that we know as 537 B.C. He adds that, on the arrival of the caravans
from Babylon, the Jews set up the altar on its old site and restored
the morning and evening sacrifices; that they kept also the Feast of
Tabernacles, and thereafter all the rest of the _feasts of Jehovah_;
and further, that they engaged masons and carpenters for building the
Temple, and Phœnicians to bring them cedar-wood from Lebanon.[562]
Another section from the Compiler’s hand states that the returned Jews
set to work upon the Temple _in the second month of the second year_
of their Return, presumably 536 B.C., laying the foundation-stone with
due pomp, and amid the excitement of the whole people.[563] Whereupon
certain _adversaries_, by whom the Compiler means Samaritans, demanded
a share in the building of the Temple, and when Jeshua and Zerubbabel
refused this, _the people of the land_ frustrated the building of the
Temple even until the reign of Darius, 521 ff.
This—the second year of Darius—is the point to which contemporary
documents, the prophecies of Haggai and Zechariah, assign the
beginning of new measures to build the Temple. Of these the Compiler
of the Book of Ezra says in the meantime nothing, but after barely
mentioning the reign of Darius leaps at once[564] to further Samaritan
obstructions—though not of the building of the Temple (be it noted),
but of the building of the city walls—in the reigns of Ahasuerus, that
is Xerxes, presumably Xerxes I., the successor of Darius, 485—464,
and of his successor Artaxerxes I., 464—424;[565] the account of the
latter of which he gives not in his own language but in that of an
Aramaic document, Ezra iv. 8 ff. And this document, after recounting
how Artaxerxes empowered the Samaritans to stop the building of the
walls of Jerusalem, records[566] that the building ceased _till the
second year of the reign of Darius_, when the prophets Haggai and
Zechariah stirred up Zerubbabel and Jeshua to rebuild, not the city
walls, be it observed, but the Temple, and with the permission of
Darius this building was at last completed in his sixth year.[567] That
is to say, this Aramaic document brings us back, with _the frustrated
building of the walls_ under Xerxes I. and Artaxerxes I. (485—424),
to the same date under their predecessor Darius I., viz. 520, to
which the Compiler had brought down _the frustrated building of the
Temple_! The most reasonable explanation of this confusion, not only of
chronology, but of two distinct processes—the erection of the Temple
and the fortification of the city—is that the Compiler was misled by
his desire to give as strong an impression as possible of the Samaritan
obstructions by placing them all together. Attempts to harmonise the
order of his narrative with the ascertained sequence of the Persian
reigns have failed.[568]
Such then is the character of the compilation known to us as the Book
of Ezra. If we add that in its present form it cannot be of earlier
date than 300 B.C., or two hundred and thirty-six years after the
Return, and that the Aramaic document which it incorporates is probably
not earlier than 430, or one hundred years after the Return, while the
List of Exiles which it gives (in chap. ii.) also contains elements
that cannot be earlier than 430, we shall not wonder that grave doubts
should have been raised concerning its trustworthiness as a narrative.
These doubts affect, with one exception, all the great facts which
it professes to record. The exception is the building of the Temple
between the second and sixth years of Darius I., 520—516, which we
have already seen to be past doubt.[569] But all that the Book of
Ezra relates before this has been called in question, and it has been
successively alleged: (1) that there was no such attempt as the book
describes to build the Temple before 520, (2) that there was no Return
of Exiles at all under Cyrus, and that the Temple was not built by Jews
who had come from Babylon, but by Jews who had never left Judah.
These conclusions, if justified, would have the most important bearing
upon our interpretation of Haggai and Zechariah. It is therefore
necessary to examine them with care. They were reached by critics in
the order just stated, but as the second is the more sweeping and to
some extent involves the other, we may take it first.
1. Is the Book of Ezra, then, right or wrong in asserting that there
was a great return of Jews, headed by Zerubbabel and Jeshua, about the
year 536, and that it was they who in 520—516 rebuilt the Temple?
The argument that in recounting these events the Book of Ezra is
unhistorical has been fully stated by Professor Kosters of Leiden.[570]
He reaches his conclusion along three lines of evidence: the Books of
Haggai and Zechariah, the sources from which he believes the Aramaic
narrative Ezra v. 1—vi. 18 to have been compiled, and the list of names
in Ezra ii. In the Books of Haggai and Zechariah, he points out that
the inhabitants of Jerusalem whom the prophets summon to build the
Temple are not called by any name which implies that they are returned
exiles; that nothing in the description of them would lead us to
suppose this; that God’s anger against Israel is represented as still
unbroken; that neither prophet speaks of a Return as past, but that
Zechariah seems to look for it as still to come.[571] The second line
of evidence is an analysis of the Aramaic document, Ezra v. 6 ff., into
two sources, neither of which implies a Return under Cyrus. But these
two lines of proof cannot avail against the List of Returned Exiles
offered us in Ezra ii. and Nehemiah vii., if the latter be genuine.
On his third line of evidence, Dr. Kosters, therefore, disputes the
genuineness of this List, and further denies that it even gives itself
out as a List of Exiles returned under Cyrus. So he arrives at the
conclusion that there was no Return from Babylon under Cyrus, nor any
before the Temple was built in 520 ff., but that the builders were
_people of the land_, Jews who had never gone into exile.
The evidence which Dr. Kosters draws from the Book of Ezra least
concerns us. Both because of this and because it is the weakest part of
his case, we may take it first.
Dr. Kosters analyses the bulk of the Aramaic document, Ezra v.—vi. 18,
into two constituents. His arguments for this are very precarious.[572]
The first document, which he takes to consist of chap. v. 1-5 and 10,
with perhaps vi. 6-15 (except a few phrases), relates that Thathnai,
Satrap of the West of the Euphrates, asked Darius whether he might
allow the Jews to proceed with the building of the Temple, and received
command not only to allow but to help them, on the ground that Cyrus
had already given them permission. The second, chap. v. 11-17, vi.
1-3, affirms that the building had actually begun under Cyrus, who
had sent Sheshbazzar, the Satrap, to see it carried out. Neither of
these documents says a word about any order from Cyrus to the Jews to
return; and the implication of the second, that the building had gone
on uninterruptedly from the time of Cyrus’ order to the second year
of Darius,[573] is not in harmony with the evidence of the Compiler
of the Book of Ezra, who, as we have seen,[574] states that Samaritan
obstruction stayed the building till the second year of Darius.
But suppose we accept Kosters’ premisses and agree that these two
documents really exist within Ezra v.—vi. 18. Their evidence is not
irreconcilable. Both imply that Cyrus gave command to rebuild the
Temple: if they were originally independent that would but strengthen
the tradition of such a command, and render a little weaker Dr.
Kosters’ contention that the tradition arose merely from a desire to
find a fulfilment of the Second Isaiah’s predictions[575] that Cyrus
would be the Temple’s builder. That neither of the supposed documents
mentions the Return itself is very natural, because both are concerned
with the building of the Temple. For the Compiler of the Book of Ezra,
who on Kosters’ argument put them together, the interest of the Return
is over; he has already sufficiently dealt with it. But more—Kosters’
second document, which ascribes the building of the Temple to Cyrus,
surely by that very statement implies a Return of Exiles during his
reign. For is it at all probable that Cyrus would have committed the
rebuilding of the Temple to a Persian magnate like Sheshbazzar, without
sending with him a large number of those Babylonian Jews who must have
instigated the king to give his order for rebuilding? We may conclude
then that Ezra v.—vi. 18, whatever be its value and its date, contains
no evidence, positive or negative, against a Return of the Jews under
Cyrus, but, on the contrary, takes this for granted.
We turn now to Dr. Kosters’ treatment of the so-called List of the
Returned Exiles. He holds this List to have been, not only borrowed for
its place in Ezra ii. from Nehemiah vii.,[576] but even interpolated in
the latter. His reasons for this latter conclusion are very improbable,
as will be seen from the appended note, and really weaken his otherwise
strong case.[577] As to the contents of the List, there are, it is
true, many elements which date from Nehemiah’s own time and even later.
But these are not sufficient to prove that the List was not originally
a List of Exiles returned under Cyrus. The verses in which this is
asserted—Ezra ii. 1, 2; Nehemiah vii. 6, 7—plainly intimate that those
Jews who came up out of the Exile were the same who built the Temple
under Darius. Dr. Kosters endeavours to destroy the force of this
statement (if true so destructive of his theory) by pointing to the
number of the leaders which the List assigns to the returning exiles.
In fixing this number as twelve, the author, Kosters maintains,
intended to make the leaders representative of the twelve tribes and
the body of returned exiles as equivalent to All-Israel. But, he
argues, neither Haggai nor Zechariah considers the builders of the
Temple to be equivalent to All-Israel, nor was this conception realised
in Judah till after the arrival of Ezra with his bands. The force of
this argument is greatly weakened by remembering how natural it would
have been for men, who felt the Return under Cyrus, however small, to
be the fulfilment of the Second Isaiah’s glorious predictions of a
restoration of All-Israel, to appoint twelve leaders, and so make them
representative of the nation as a whole. Kosters’ argument against the
naturalness of such an appointment in 537, and therefore against the
truth of the statement of the List about it, falls to the ground.
But in the Books of Haggai and Zechariah Dr. Kosters finds much more
formidable witnesses for his thesis that there was no Return of exiles
from Babylon before the building of the Temple under Darius. These
books nowhere speak of a Return under Cyrus, nor do they call the
community who built the Temple by the names of Gôlah or B’ne ha-Gôlah,
_Captivity_ or _Sons of the Captivity_, which are given after the
Return of Ezra’s bands; but they simply name them _this people_[578] or
_remnant of the people_,[579] _people of the land_,[580] _Judah_ or
_House of Judah_,[581] names perfectly suitable to Jews who had never
left the neighbourhood of Jerusalem. Even if we except from this list
the phrase _the remnant of the people_, as intended by Haggai and
Zechariah in the numerical sense of _the rest_ or _all the
others_,[582] we have still to deal with the other titles, with the
absence from them of any symptom descriptive of return from exile, and
with the whole silence of our two prophets concerning such a return.
These are very striking phenomena, and they undoubtedly afford
considerable evidence for Dr. Kosters’ thesis.[583] But it cannot
escape notice that the evidence they afford is mainly negative, and
this raises two questions: (1) Can the phenomena in Haggai and
Zechariah be accounted for? and (2) whether accounted for or not, can
they be held to prevail against the mass of positive evidence in favour
of a Return under Cyrus?
An explanation of the absence of all allusion in Haggai and Zechariah
to the Return is certainly possible.
No one can fail to be struck with the spirituality of the teaching of
Haggai and Zechariah. Their one ambition is to put courage from God
into the poor hearts before them, that these out of their own resources
may rebuild their Temple. As Zechariah puts it, _Not by might, nor by
power, but by My Spirit, saith Jehovah of Hosts_.[584] It is obvious
why men of this temper should refrain from appealing to the Return, or
to the royal power of Persia by which it had been achieved. We can
understand why, while the annals employed in the Book of Ezra record
the appeal of the political leaders of the Jews to Darius upon the
strength of the edict of Cyrus, the prophets, in their effort to
encourage the people to make the most of what they themselves were and
to enforce the omnipotence of God’s Spirit apart from all human aids,
should be silent about the latter. We must also remember that Haggai
and Zechariah were addressing a people to whom (whatever view we take
of the transactions under Cyrus) the favour of Cyrus had been one vast
disillusion in the light of the predictions of Second Isaiah.[585] The
Persian magnate Sheshbazzar himself, invested with full power, had been
unable to build the Temple for them, and had apparently disappeared
from Judah, leaving his powers as Peḥah, or governor, to Zerubbabel.
Was it not, then, as suitable to these circumstances, as it was
essential to the prophets’ own religious temper, that Haggai and
Zechariah should refrain from alluding to any of the political
advantages, to which their countrymen had hitherto trusted in
vain?[586]
Another fact should be marked. If Haggai is silent about any return
from exile in the past, he is equally silent about any in the future.
If for him no return had yet taken place, would he not have been likely
to predict it as certain to happen?[587] At least his silence on the
subject proves how absolutely he confined his thoughts to the
circumstances before him, and to the needs of his people at the moment
he addressed them. Kosters, indeed, alleges that Zechariah describes
the Return from Exile as still future—viz. in the lyric piece appended
to his Third Vision.[588] But, as we shall see when we come to it, this
lyric piece is most probably an intrusion among the Visions, and is not
to be assigned to Zechariah himself. Even, however, if it were from the
same date and author as the Visions, it would not prove that no return
from Babylon had taken place, but only that numbers of Jews still
remained in Babylon.
But we may now take a further step. If there were these natural reasons
for the silence of Haggai and Zechariah about a return of exiles under
Cyrus, can that silence be allowed to prevail against the mass of
testimony which we have that such a return took place? It is true that,
while the Books of Haggai and Zechariah are contemporary with the
period in question, some of the evidence for the Return, Ezra i. and
iii.—iv. 7, is at least two centuries later, and upon the date of the
rest, the List in Ezra ii. and the Aramaic document in Ezra iv. 8 ff.,
we have no certain information. But that the List is from a date very
soon after Cyrus is allowed by a large number of the most advanced
critics,[589] and even if we ignore it, we still have the Aramaic
document, which agrees with Haggai and Zechariah in assigning the real,
effectual beginning of the Temple-building to the second year of Darius
and to the leadership of Zerubbabel and Jeshua at the instigation of
the two prophets. May we not trust the same document in its relation of
the main facts concerning Cyrus? Again, in his memoirs Ezra[590] speaks
of the transgressions of the Gôlah or B’ne ha-Gôlah in effecting
marriages with the mixed people of the land, in a way which shows that
he means by the name, not the Jews who had just come up with himself
from Babylon, but the older community whom he found in Judah, and who
had had time, as his own bands had not, to scatter over the land and
enter into social relations with the heathen.
But, as Kuenen points out,[591] we have yet further evidence for the
probability of a Return under Cyrus, in the explicit predictions of the
Second Isaiah that Cyrus would be the builder of Jerusalem and the
Temple. “If they express the expectation, nourished by the prophet and
his contemporaries, then it is clear from their preservation for future
generations that Cyrus did not disappoint the hope of the exiles, from
whose midst this voice pealed forth to him.” And this leads to other
considerations. Whether was it more probable for the poverty-stricken
_people of the land_, the dregs which Nebuchadrezzar had left behind,
or for the body and flower of Israel in Babylon, to rebuild the Temple?
Surely for the latter.[592] Among them had risen, as Cyrus drew near to
Babylon, the hopes and the motives, nay, the glorious assurance of the
Return and the Rebuilding; and with them was all the material for the
latter. Is it credible that they took no advantage of their opportunity
under Cyrus? Is it credible that they waited nearly a century before
seeking to return to Jerusalem, and that the building of the Temple was
left to people who were half-heathen, and, in the eyes of the exiles,
despicable and unholy? This would be credible only upon one condition,
that Cyrus and his immediate successors disappointed the predictions of
the Second Isaiah and refused to allow the exiles to leave Babylon. But
the little we know of these Persian monarchs points all the other way:
nothing is more probable, for nothing is more in harmony with Persian
policy, than that Cyrus should permit the captives of the Babylon which
he conquered to return to their own lands.[593]
Moreover, we have another, and to the mind of the present writer an
almost conclusive argument, that the Jews addressed by Haggai and
Zechariah were Jews returned from Babylon. Neither prophet ever charges
his people with idolatry; neither prophet so much as mentions idols.
This is natural if the congregation addressed was composed of such
pious and ardent adherents of Jehovah, as His word had brought back
to Judah, when His servant Cyrus opened the way. But had Haggai and
Zechariah been addressing _the people of the land_, who had never left
the land, they could not have helped speaking of idolatry.
Such considerations may very justly be used against an argument which
seeks to prove that the narratives of a Return under Cyrus were due to
the pious invention of a Jewish writer who wished to record that the
predictions of the Second Isaiah were fulfilled by Cyrus, their
designated trustee.[594] They certainly possess a far higher degree of
probability than that argument does.
Finally there is this consideration. If there was no return from
Babylon under Cyrus, and the Temple, as Dr. Kosters alleges, was built
by the poor people of the land, is it likely that the latter should
have been regarded with such contempt as they were by the exiles who
returned under Ezra and Nehemiah? Theirs would then have been the glory
of reconstituting Israel, and their position very different from what
we find it.
On all these grounds, therefore, we must hold that the attempt to
discredit the tradition of an important return of exiles under Cyrus
has not been successful; that such a return remains the more probable
solution of an obscure and difficult problem; and that therefore the
Jews who with Zerubbabel and Jeshua are represented in Haggai and
Zechariah as building the Temple in the second year of Darius, 520,
had come up from Babylon about 537.[595] Such a conclusion, of course,
need not commit us to the various data offered by the Chronicler in
his story of the Return, such as the Edict of Cyrus, nor to all of his
details.
2. Many, however, who grant the correctness of the tradition that a
large number of Jewish exiles returned under Cyrus to Jerusalem, deny
the statement of the Compiler of the Book of Ezra that the returned
exiles immediately prepared to build the Temple and laid the
foundation-stone with solemn festival, but were hindered from
proceeding with the building till the second year of Darius.[596] They
maintain that this late narrative is contradicted by the contemporary
statements of Haggai and Zechariah, who, according to them, imply that
no foundation-stone was laid till 520 B.C.[597] For the interpretation
of our prophets this is not a question of cardinal importance. But for
clearness’ sake we do well to lay it open.
We may at once concede that in Haggai and Zechariah there is nothing
which necessarily implies that the Jews had made any beginning to build
the Temple before the start recorded by Haggai in the year 520. The one
passage, Haggai ii. 18, which is cited to prove this[598] is at the
best ambiguous, and many scholars claim it as a fixture of that date
for the twenty-fourth day of the ninth month of 520.[599] At the same
time, and even granting that the latter interpretation of Haggai ii. 18
is correct, there is nothing in either Haggai or Zechariah to make it
impossible that a foundation-stone had been laid some years before, but
abandoned in consequence of the Samaritan obstruction, as alleged in
Ezra iii. 8-11. If we keep in mind Haggai’s and Zechariah’s silence
about the Return from Babylon, and their very natural concentration
upon their own circumstances,[600] we shall not be able to reckon their
silence about previous attempts to build the Temple as a conclusive
proof that these attempts never took place. Moreover the Aramaic
document, which agrees with our two prophets in assigning the only
effective start of the work on the Temple to 520,[601] does not deem it
inconsistent with this to record that the Persian Satrap of the West of
the Euphrates[602] reported to Darius that, when he asked the Jews why
they were rebuilding the Temple, they replied not only that a decree of
Cyrus had granted them permission,[603] but that his legate Sheshbazzar
had actually laid the foundation-stone upon his arrival at Jerusalem,
and that the building had gone on without interruption from that time
to 520.[604] This last assertion, which of course was false, may have
been due either to a misunderstanding of the Jewish elders by the
reporting Satrap, or else to the Jews themselves, anxious to make their
case as strong as possible. The latter is the more probable
alternative. As even Stade admits, it was a very natural assertion for
the Jews to make, and so conceal that their effort of 520 was due to
the instigation of their own prophets. But in any case the Aramaic
document corroborates the statement of the Compiler that there was a
foundation-stone laid in the early years of Cyrus, and does not
conceive this to be inconsistent with its own narrative of a stone
being laid in 520, and an effective start at last made upon the Temple
works. So much does Stade feel the force of this, that he concedes not
only that Sheshbazzar may have started some preparation for building
the Temple, but that he may even have laid the stone with
ceremony.[605]
And indeed, is it not in itself very probable that some early attempt
was made by the exiles returned under Cyrus to rebuild the house of
Jehovah? Cyrus had been predicted by the Second Isaiah not only as the
redeemer of God’s people, but with equal explicitness as the builder
of the Temple; and all the argument which Kuenen draws from the Second
Isaiah for the fact of the Return from Babylon[606] tells with almost
equal force for the fact of some efforts to raise the fallen sanctuary
of Israel immediately after the Return. Among the returned were many
priests, and many no doubt of the most sanguine spirits in Israel.
They came straight from the heart of Jewry, though that heart was
in Babylon; they came with the impetus and obligation of the great
Deliverance upon them; they were the representatives of a community
which we know to have been comparatively wealthy. Is it credible that
they should not have begun the Temple at the earliest possible moment?
Nor is the story of their frustration by the Samaritans any less
natural.[607] It is true that there were not any adversaries likely to
dispute with the colonists the land in the immediate neighbourhood of
Jerusalem. The Edomites had overrun the fruitful country about Hebron,
and part of the Shephelah. The Samaritans held the rich valleys of
Ephraim, and probably the plain of Ajalon. But if any peasants
struggled with the stony plateaus of Benjamin and Northern Judah, such
must have been of the remnants of the Jewish population who were left
behind by Nebuchadrezzar, and who clung to the sacred soil from habit
or from motives of religion. Jerusalem was never a site to attract men,
either for agriculture, or, now that its shrine was desolate and its
population scattered, for the command of trade.[608] The returned
exiles must have been at first undisturbed by the envy of their
neighbours. The tale is, therefore, probable which attributes the
hostility of the latter to purely religious causes—the refusal of the
Jews to allow the half-heathen Samaritans to share in the construction
of the Temple.[609] Now the Samaritans could prevent the building.
While stones were to be had by the builders in profusion from the ruins
of the city and the great quarry to the north of it, ordinary timber
did not grow in their neighbourhood, and though the story be true that
a contract was already made with Phœnicians to bring cedar to Joppa, it
had to be carried thence for thirty-six miles. Here, then, was the
opportunity of the Samaritans. They could obstruct the carriage both of
the ordinary timber and of the cedar. To this state of affairs the
present writer found an analogy in 1891 among the Circassian colonies
settled by the Turkish Government a few years earlier in the vicinity
of Gerasa and Rabbath-Ammon. The colonists had built their houses from
the numerous ruins of these cities, but at Rabbath-Ammon they said
their great difficulty had been about timber. And we could well
understand how the Beduin, who resented the settlement of Circassians
on lands they had used for ages, and with whom the Circassians were
nearly always at variance,[610] did what they could to make the
carriage of timber impossible. Similarly with the Jews and their
Samaritan adversaries. The site might be cleared and the stone of the
Temple laid, but if the timber was stopped there was little use in
raising the walls, and the Jews, further discouraged by the failure of
their impetuous hopes of what the Return would bring them, found cause
for desisting from their efforts. Bad seasons followed, the labours for
their own sustenance exhausted their strength, and in the sordid toil
their hearts grew hard to higher interests. Cyrus died in 529, and his
legate Sheshbazzar, having done nothing but lay the stone, appears to
have left Judæa.[611] Cambyses marched more than once through
Palestine, and his army garrisoned Gaza, but he was not a monarch to
have any consideration for Jewish ambitions. Therefore—although
Samaritan opposition ceased on the stoppage of the Temple works and the
Jews procured timber enough for their private dwellings[612]—is it
wonderful that the site of the Temple should be neglected and the stone
laid by Sheshbazzar forgotten, or that the disappointed Jews should
seek to explain the disillusions of the Return, by arguing that God’s
time for the restoration of His house had not yet come?
The death of a cruel monarch is always in the East an occasion for
the revival of shattered hopes, and the events which accompanied
the suicide of Cambyses in 522 were particularly fraught with the
possibilities of political change. Cambyses’ throne had been usurped by
one Gaumata, who pretended to be Smerdis or Barada, a son of Cyrus. In
a few months Gaumata was slain by a conspiracy of seven Persian nobles,
of whom Darius, the son of Hystaspes, both by virtue of his royal
descent and by his own great ability, was raised to the throne in 521.
The empire had been too profoundly shocked by the revolt of Gaumata to
settle at once under the new king, and Darius found himself engaged by
insurrections in all his provinces except Syria and Asia Minor.[613]
The colonists in Jerusalem, like all their Syrian neighbours, remained
loyal to the new king; so loyal that their Peḥah or Satrap was allowed
to be one of themselves—Zerubbabel, son of She’altî’el,[614] a son of
their royal house. Yet though they were quiet, the nations were rising
against each other and the world was shaken. It was just such a crisis
as had often before in Israel rewakened prophecy. Nor did it fail
now; and when prophecy was roused what duty lay more clamant for its
inspiration than the duty of building the Temple?
We are in touch with the first of our post-exilic prophets, Haggai and
Zechariah.
FOOTNOTES:
[546] 42,360, _besides their servants_, is the total sum given in Ezra
ii. 64; but the detailed figures in Ezra amount only to 29,818, those
in Nehemiah to 31,089, and those in 1 Esdras to 30,143 (other MSS.
30,678). See Ryle on Ezra ii. 64.
[547] Ezra i. 8.
[548] Ezra v. 14.
[549] _Ib._ 16.
[550] Ezra ii. 63.
[551] יֵשׁוּעַ בֶּן־יוֹצָדק: Ezra iii. 2, like Ezra i. 1-8, from the
Compiler of Ezra-Nehemiah.
[552] זְרֻבָּבֶל בֶּן־שְׁאַלְתִּיאֵל.
[553] Ezra ii. 2.
[554] Hag. i. 14, ii. 2, 21, and perhaps by Nehemiah (vii. 65-70).
Nehemiah himself is styled both Peḥah (xiv. 20) and Tirshatha (viii. 9,
x. 1).
[555] As Daniel and his three friends had also Babylonian names.
[556] Ezra ii. 63.
[557] Cf. Ryle, xxxi ff.; and on Ezra i. 8, ii. 63.
[558] Stade, _Gesch. des Volkes Israel_, II. 98 ff.: cf. Kuenen,
_Gesammelte Abhandl._, 220.
[559] Ezra i. 8.
[560] Ezra i. compared with ii. 1.
[561] Some think to find this in 1 Esdras v. 1-6, where it is said that
Darius, a name they take to be an error for that of Cyrus, brought up
the exiles with an escort of a thousand cavalry, starting in the first
month of the second year of the king’s reign. This passage, however,
is not beyond suspicion as a gloss (see Ryle on Ezra i. 11), and even
if genuine may be intended to describe a second contingent of exiles
despatched by Darius I. in his second year, 520. The names given
include that of Jesua, son of Josedec, and instead of Zerubbabel’s,
that of his son Joacim.
[562] Ezra iii. 3-7.
[563] _Ib._ 8-13.
[564] Ezra iv. 7.
[565] See above, p. 193.
[566] iv. 24.
[567] Ezra iv. 24—vi. 15.
[568] There are in the main two classes of such attempts. (_a_) Some
have suggested that the Ahasuerus (Xerxes) and Artaxerxes mentioned in
Ezra iv. 6 and 7 ff. are not the successors of Darius I. who bore these
names, but titles of his predecessors Cambyses and the Pseudo-Smerdis
(see above, p. 190). This view has been disposed of by Kuenen, _Ges.
Abhandl._, pp. 224 ff., and by Ryle, pp. 65 ff. (_b_) The attempt to
prove that the Darius under whom the Temple was built was not Darius I.
(521—485), the predecessor of Xerxes I. and Artaxerxes I. (485—424),
but their successor once removed, Darius II., Nothus (423—404). So, in
defence of the Book of Ezra, Imbert. For his theory and the answer to
it see above, pp. 191 f.
[569] See above, pp. 192 ff.
[570] For his work see above, p. 192, n. 531. I regret that neither
Wellhausen’s answer to it, nor Kosters’ reply to Wellhausen, was
accessible to me in preparing this chapter. Nor did I read Mr. Torrey’s
_resume_ of Wellhausen’s answer, or Wellhausen’s notes to the second
edition of his _Isr. u. Jüd. Geschichte_, till the chapter was written.
Previous to Kosters, the Return under Cyrus had been called in question
only by the very arbitrary French scholar M. Vernes in 1889-90.
[571] ii. 6 ff. Eng., 10 ff. Heb.
[572] His chief grounds for this analysis are (1) that in v. 1-5 the
Jews are said to have _begun_ to build the Temple in the second year
of Darius, while in v. 16 the foundation-stone is said to have been
laid under Cyrus; (2) the frequent want of connection throughout the
passage; (3) an alleged doublet: in v. 17—vi. 1 search is said to have
been made for the edict of Cyrus _in Babylon_, while in vi. 2 the edict
is said to have been found _in Ecbatana_. But (1) and (3) are capable
of very obvious explanations, and (2) is far from conclusive.—The
remainder of the Aramaic text, iv. 8-24, Kosters seeks to prove is by
the Chronicler or Compiler himself. As Torrey (_op. cit._, p. 11) has
shown, this “is as unlikely as possible.” At the most he may have made
additions to the Aramaic document.
[573] Ezra v. 16.
[574] Above, pp. 201 f.
[575] Isa. xliv. 28, xlv. 1. According to Kosters, the statement of
the Aramaic document about the rebuilding of the Temple is therefore a
pious invention of a literal fulfilment of prophecy. To this opinion
Cheyne adheres (_Introd. to the Book of Isaiah_, 1895, p. xxxviii),
and adds the further assumption that the Chronicler, being “shocked at
the ascription to Cyrus (for the Judæan builders have no credit given
them) of what must, he thought, have been at least equally due to the
zeal of the exiles,” invented his story in the earlier chapters of Ezra
as to the part the exiles themselves took in the rebuilding. It will
be noticed that these assumptions have precisely the value of such.
They are merely the imputation of motives, more or less probable to
the writers of certain statements, and may therefore be fairly met by
probabilities from the other side. But of this more later on.
[576] This is the usual opinion of critics, who yet hold it to be
genuine—_e.g._ Ryle.
[577] He seeks to argue that a List of Exiles returned under Cyrus
in 536 could be of no use for Nehemiah’s purpose to obtain in 445 a
census of the inhabitants of Jerusalem; but surely, if in his efforts
to make a census Nehemiah discovered the existence of such a List, it
was natural for him to give it as the basis of his inquiry, or (because
the List—see above, p. 203—contains elements from Nehemiah’s own
time) to enlarge it and bring it down to date. But Dr. Kosters thinks
also that, as Nehemiah would never have broken the connection of his
memoirs with such a List, the latter must have been inserted by the
Compiler, who at this point grew weary of the discursiveness of the
memoirs, broke from them, and then—inserted this lengthy List! This is
simply incredible—that he should seek to atone for the diffuseness of
Nehemiah’s memoirs by the intrusion of a very long catalogue which had
no relevance to the point at which he broke them off.
[578] Hag. i. 2, 12; ii. 14.
[579] Hag. i. 12, 14; ii. 2; Zech. viii. 6, 11, 12.
[580] Hag. ii. 4; Zech. vii. 5.
[581] Zech. ii. 16; viii. 13, 15.
[582] It is used in Hag. i. 12, 14, ii. 2, only after the mention of
the leaders; see, however, Pusey’s note 9 to Hag. i. 12; while in Zech.
viii. 6, 11, 18, it might be argued that it was employed in such a way
as to cover not only Jews who had never left their land, but all Jews
as well who were left of ancient Israel.
[583] Compare Cheyne, _Introduction to the Book of Isaiah_, 1895, xxxv.
ff., who says that in the main points Kosters’ conclusions “appear
so inevitable” that he has “constantly presupposed them” in dealing
with chaps. lvi.—lxvi. of Isaiah; and Torrey, _op. cit._, 1896, p. 53:
“Kosters has demonstrated, from the testimony of Haggai and Zechariah,
that Zerubbabel and Jeshua were not returned exiles; and furthermore,
that the prophets Haggai and Zechariah knew nothing of an important
return of exiles from Babylonia.” Cf. also Wildeboer, _Litteratur des
A. T._, pp. 291 ff.
[584] iv. 4.
[585] Of course it is always possible that, if there had been no great
Return from Babylon under Cyrus, the community at Jerusalem in 520 had
not heard of the prophecies of the Second Isaiah.
[586] This argument, it is true, does not fully account for the curious
fact that Haggai and Zechariah never call the Jewish community at
Jerusalem by a name significant of their return from exile. But in
reference to this it ought to be noted that even the Aramaic document
in the Book of Ezra which records the Return under Cyrus does not call
the builders of the Temple by any name which implies that they have
come up from exile, but styles them simply _the Jews who were in Judah
and Jerusalem_ (Ezra v. 1), in contrast to the Jews who were in foreign
lands.
[587] Indeed, why does he ignore the whole Exile itself if no return
from it has taken place?
[588] Zech. ii. 10-17 Heb., 6-13 Eng.
[589] _E.g._ Stade, Kuenen (_op. cit._, p. 216). So, too, Klostermann,
_Gesch. des Volkes Israel_, München, 1896. Wellhausen, in the second
edition of his _Gesch._, does not admit that the List is one of exiles
returned under Cyrus (p. 155, n.).
[590] ix. 4; x. 6, 7.
[591] _Op. cit._, p. 216, where he also quotes the testimony of the
Book of Daniel (ix. 25).
[592] Since writing the above I have seen the relevant notes to
the second edition of Wellhausen’s _Gesch._, pp. 155 and 160. “The
refounding of Jerusalem and the Temple cannot have started from the
Jews left behind in Palestine.” “The remnant left in the land would
have restored the old popular cultus of the high places. Instead of
that we find even before Ezra the legitimate cultus and the hierocracy
in Jerusalem: in the Temple-service proper Ezra discovers nothing to
reform. Without the leaven of the Gôlah the Judaism of Palestine is in
its origin incomprehensible.”
[593] The inscription of Cyrus is sometimes quoted to this effect:
cf. P. Hay Hunter, _op. cit._, I. 35. But it would seem that the
statement of Cyrus is limited to the restoration of Assyrian idols and
their worshippers to Assur and Akkad. Still, what he did in this case
furnishes a strong argument for the probability of his having done the
same in the case of the Jews.
[594] See above, p. 206, and especially n. 575.
[595] Even Cheyne, after accepting Kosters’ conclusions as in the main
points inevitable (_op. cit._, p. xxxv), considers (p. xxxviii) that
“the earnestness of Haggai and Zechariah (who cannot have stood alone)
implies the existence of a higher religious element at Jerusalem long
before 432 B.C. Whence came this higher element but from its natural
home among the more cultured Jews in Babylonia?”
[596] Ezra iii. 8-13.
[597] Schrader, “Ueber die Dauer des Tempelbaues,” in _Stud. u. Krit._,
1879, 460 ff.; Stade, _Gesch. des Volkes Israel_, II. 115 ff.; Kuenen,
_op. cit._, p. 222; Kosters, _op. cit._, Chap. I., § 1. To this
opinion others have adhered: König (_Einleit. in das A. T._), Ryssel
(_op. cit._) and Marti (2nd edition of Kayser’s _Theol. des A. T._,
p. 200). Schrader (p. 563) argues that Ezra iii. 8-13 was not founded
on a historical document, but is an imitation of Neh. vii. 73—viii.;
and Stade that the Aramaic document in Ezra which ascribes the laying
of the foundation-stone to Sheshbazzar, the legate of Cyrus, was not
earlier than 430.
[598] Ryle, _op. cit._, p. xxx.
[599] Stade, Wellhausen, etc. See below, Chap. XVIII. on Hag. ii. 18.
[600] See above, pp. 210 f.
[601] Ezra iv. 24, v. 1.
[602] Ezra v. 6.
[603] _Ib._ 13.
[604] _Ib._ 16.
[605] _Gesch._, II., p. 123.
[606] See above, p. 213.
[607] Ezra iv. 1-4. “That the relation of Ezra iv. 1-4 is historical
seems to be established against objections which have been taken to it
by the reference to Esarhaddon, which A. v. Gutschmid has vindicated
by an ingenious historical combination with the aid of the Assyrian
monuments (_Neue Beiträge_, p. 145).”—Robertson Smith, art. “Haggai,”
_Encyc. Brit._
[608] Cf. _Hist. Geog._, pp. 317 ff.
[609] Ezra iv.
[610] There was a sharp skirmish at Rabbath-Ammon the night we spent
there, and at least one Circassian was shot.
[611] “Sheshbazzar presumably having taken up his task with the
usual conscientiousness of an Oriental governor, that is having done
nothing though the work was nominally in hand all along (Ezra v.
16).”—Robertson Smith, art. “Haggai,” _Encyc. Brit._
[612] See below, Chap. XVIII.
[613] Herod., I. 130, III. 127.
[614] 1 Chron. iii. 19 makes him a son of Pedaiah, brother of
She’altî’el, son of Jehoiachin, the king who was carried away by
Nebuchadrezzar in 597 and remained captive till 561, when King
Evil-Merodach set him in honour. It has been supposed that, She’altî’el
dying childless, Pedaiah by levirate marriage with his widow became
father of Zerubbabel.
_HAGGAI_
_Go up into the mountain, and fetch wood, and build the House._