The complete resettlement of Palestine took place under the direction
of Ezra, or, as the Scriptures sometimes call him, Malachi. (33) He had
not been present at the earlier attempts (34) to restore the sanctuary,
because he could not leave his old teacher Baruch, who was too advanced
in years to venture upon the difficult journey to the Holy Land. (35)
In spite of Ezra's persuasive efforts, it was but a comparatively small
portion of the people that joined the procession winding its way
westward to Palestine. For this reason the prophetical spirit did not
show itself during the existence of the Second Temple. Haggai,
Zechariah, and Malachi were the last representatives of prophecy. (36)
Nothing was more surprising than the apathy of the Levites. They
manifested no desire to return to Palestine. Their punishment was the
loss of the tithes, which were later given to the priest, though the
Levites had the first claim upon them. (37)
In restoring the Jewish state in Palestine, Ezra cherished two hopes,
to preserve the purity of the Jewish race, and to spread the study of
the Torah until it should become the common property of the people at
large. To help on his first purpose, he inveighed against marriages
between the Jews and the nations round about. (38) He himself had
carefully worked out his own pedigree before he consented to leave
Babylonia, (39) and in order to perpetuate the purity of the families
and groups remaining in the East, he took all the "unfit" (40) with him
to Palestine.
In the realization of his second hope, the spread of the Torah, Ezra
was so zealous and efficient that it was justly said of him: "If Moses
had not anticipated him, Ezra would have received the Torah." (41) In a
sense he was, indeed, a second Moses. The Torah had fallen into neglect
and oblivion in his day, and he restored and re-established it in the
minds of his people. (42) It is due to him chiefly that it was divided
up into portions, to be read annually, Sabbath after Sabbath, in the
synagogues, (43) and he it was, likewise, who originated the idea of
re-writing the Pentateuch in "Assyrian" characters. (44) To further his
purpose still more, he ordered additional schools for children to be
established everywhere, though the old ones sufficed to satisfy the
demand. He thought the rivalry between the old and the new institutions
would redound to the benefit of the pupils. (45)
Ezra is the originator of institutions known as "the ten regulations of
Ezra." They are the following: 1. Readings from the Torah on Sabbath
afternoons. 2. Readings from the Torah on Mondays and Thursdays. 3.
Sessions of the court on Mondays and Thursdays. 4. To do laundry work
on Thursdays, not Fridays. 5. To eat garlic on Friday on account of its
salutary action. (46) 6. To bake bread early in the morning that it may
be ready for the poor whenever they ask for some. 7. Women are to cover
the lower parts of their bodies with a garment called Sinar. (47) 8.
Before taking a ritual bath, the hair is to be combed. 9. The ritual
bath prescribed for the unclean is to cover the case of one who desires
to offer prayer or study the law. (48) 10. Permission to peddlers to
sell cosmetics to women in the towns. (49)
Ezra was not only a great teacher of his people and their wise leader,
he was also their advocate with the celestials, to whom his relation
was of a peculiarly intimate character. Once he addressed a prayer to
God, in which he complained of the misfortune of Israel and the
prosperity of the heathen nations. Thereupon the angel Uriel appeared
to him, and instructed him how that evil has its appointed time in
which to run its course, as the dead have their appointed time to
sojourn in the nether world. Ezra could not rest satisfied with this
explanation, and in response to his further question, seven prophetic
visions were vouchsafed him, and interpreted by the angel for him. They
typified the whole course of history up to his day, and disclosed the
future to his eyes. In the seventh vision he heard a voice from a
thorn-bush, like Moses aforetimes, and it admonished him to guard in
his heart the secrets revealed to him. The same voice had given Moses a
similar injunction: "These words shalt thou publish, those shalt thou
keep secret." Then his early translation from earth was announced to
him. He besought God to let the holy spirit descend upon him before he
died, so that he might record all that had happened since the creation
of the world as it was set down in the Torah, and guide men upon the
path that leads to God.
Hereupon God bade him take the five experienced scribes, Sarga, Dabria,
Seleucia, Ethan, and Aziel, with him into retirement, and dictate to
them for forty days. After one day spent with these writers in
isolation, remote from the city and from men, a voice admonished him:
"Ezra, open thy mouth, and drink whereof I give thee to drink." He
opened his mouth, and a chalice was handed to him, filled to the brim
with a liquid that flowed like water, but in color resembled fire. His
mouth opened to drink, and for forty days it was not closed. During all
that time, the five scribes put down, "in signs they did not
understand," they were the newly adopted Hebrew characters, all
that Ezra dictated to them, and it made ninety-four books. At the end
of the forty days' period, God spoke to Ezra thus: "The twenty-four
books of the Holy Scriptures thou shalt publish, for the worthy and the
unworthy alike to read; but the last seventy books thou shalt withhold
from the populace, for the perusal of the wise of thy people." On
account of his literary activity, he is called "the Scribe of the
science of the Supreme Being unto all eternity." (50)
Having finished his task, Ezra was removed from this mundane world, and
he entered the life everlasting. But his death did not occur in the
Holy Land. It overtook him at Khuzistan, in Persia, on his journey to
King Artachshashta. (51)
At Raccia, in Mesopotamia, there stood, as late as the twelfth century,
the synagogue founded by Ezra when he was journeying from Babylonia to
Palestine. (52)
At his grave, over which columns of fire are often seen to hover at
night, (53) a miracle once happened. A shepherd fell asleep by the side
of it. Ezra appeared to him and bade him tell the Jews that they were
to transport his bier to another spot. If the master of the new place
refused assent, he was to be warned to yield permission, else all the
inhabitants of his place would perish. At first the master refused to
allow the necessary excavations to be made. Only after a large number
of the non-Jewish inhabitants of the place had been stricken down
suddenly, he consented to have the corpse transported thither. As soon
as the grave was opened, the plague ceased.
Shortly before the death of Ezra, the city of Babylon was totally
destroyed by the Persians. There remained but a portion of the wall
which was impregnable by human strength. (54) All the prophecies hurled
against the city by the prophets were accomplished. To this day there
is a spot on its site which no animal can pass unless some of the earth
of the place is strewn upon it. (55)