Bible Commentaries

The adversaries of the Jews prevent the building of the temple till the reignof Darius (Ezra 4:1, Ezra 4:2). When the adversaries of Judah and Benjamin heardthat the community which had returned from captivity were beginning torebuild the temple, they came to Zerubbabel, and to the chiefs of thepeople, and desired to take part in this work, because they also sacrificedto the God of Israel. These adversaries were, according to Ezra 4:2, the peoplewhom Esarhaddon king of Assyria had settled in the neighbourhood ofBenjamin and Judah. If we compare with this verse the information (2 Kings 17:24) that the kings of Assyria brought men from Cuthah, andfrom Ava, and from Hamath, and from Sepharvaim, and placed them in thecities of Samaria, and that they took possession of the depopulatedkingdom of the ten tribes, and dwelt therein; then these adversaries ofJudah and Benjamin are the inhabitants of the former kingdom of Israel,who were called Samaritans after the central-point of their settlement. הגּולה בּני, sons of the captivity (Ezra 6:19, etc.,Ezra 8:35; Ezra 10:7, Ezra 10:16), also shortly into הגּולה, e.g., Ezra 1:11, are theIsraelites returned from the Babylonian captivity, who composed the newcommunity in Judah and Jerusalem. Those who returned with Zerubbabel,and took possession of the dwelling-places of their ancestors, being,exclusive of priests and Levites, chiefly members of the tribes of Judahand Benjamin, are called, especially when named in distinction from theother inhabitants of the land, Judah and Benjamin. The adversaries give thereason of their request to share in the building of the temple in the words:”For we seek your God as ye do; and we do sacrifice unto Him since thedays of Esarhaddon king of Assyria, which brought us up hither.”The words זבחים אנחנוּ ולא are variouslyexplained. Older expositors take the Chethiv ולא as a negative, andmake זבחים to mean the offering of sacrifices to idols, bothbecause לא is a negative, and also because the assertion that theyhad sacrificed to Jahve would not have pleased the Jews, quia deficiente templo non debuerint sacrificare; and sacrifices not offered in Jerusalemwere regarded as equivalent to sacrifices to idols. They might, moreover,fitly strengthen their case by the remark: “Since the days of Esarhaddonwe offer no sacrifices to idols.” On the other hand, however, it is arbitraryto understand זבח, without any further definition, of sacrificingto idols; and the statement, “We already sacrifice to the God of Israel,”contains undoubtedly a far stronger reason for granting their request thanthe circumstance that they do not sacrifice to idols. Hence we incline, witholder translators (lxx, Syr., Vulg., 1 Esdras), to regard לא as anunusual form of לו, occurring in several places (see on Exodus 21:8),the latter being also substituted in the present instance as Keri. Theposition also of לא before אנחנוּ points the same way,for the negative would certainly have stood with the verb. On Esarhaddon,see remarks on 2 Kings 19:37 and Isaiah 37:38.

Zerubbabel and the other chiefs of Israel answer, “It is not for you and forus to build a house to our God;” i.e., You and we cannot together build ahouse to the God who is our God; “but we alone will build it to Jahve theGod of Israel, as King Cyrus commanded us.” יחד אנחנוּ, we together, i.e., we alone (without your assistance). By theemphasis placed upon “our God” and “Jahve the God of Israel,” theassertion of the adversaries, “We seek your God as ye do,” is indirectlyrefuted. If Jahve is the God of Israel, He is not the God of those whomEsarhaddon brought into the land. The appeal to the decree of Cyrus (Ezra 1:3, comp. Ezra 3:6, etc.) forms a strong argument for the sole agency of Jewsin building the temple, inasmuch as Cyrus had invited those only whowere of His (Jahve's) people (Ezra 1:3). Hence the leaders of the newcommunity were legally justified in rejecting the proposal of the colonistsbrought in by Esarhaddon. For the latter were neither members of thepeople of Jahve, nor Israelites, nor genuine worshippers of Jahve. Theywere non-Israelites, and designated themselves as those whom the king ofAssyria had brought into the land. According to 2 Kings 17:24, the king of Assyria brought colonists fromBabylon, Cuthah, and other places, and placed them in the cities ofSamaria instead of the children of Israel. Now we cannot suppose thatevery Israelite, to the very last man, was carried away by the Assyrians;such a deportation of a conquered people being unusual, and indeedimpossible. Apart, then, from the passage, 2 Chronicles 30:6, etc., which manyexpositors refer to the time of the destruction of the kingdom of the tentribes, we find that in the time of King Josiah (2 Chronicles 34:9), when theforeign colonists had been for a considerable period in the country, therewere still remnants of Manasseh, of Ephraim, and of all Israel, who gavecontributions for the house of God at Jerusalem; and also that in 2 Kings 23:15-20 and 2 Chronicles 34:6, a remnant of the Israelite inhabitants stillexisted in the former territory of the ten tribes. The eighty men, too, who (Jeremiah 41:5, etc.) came, after the destruction of thetemple, from Shechem, Shiloh, and Samaria, mourning, and bringingofferings and incense to Jerusalem, to the place of the house of God, whichwas still a holy place to them, were certainly Israelites of the ten tribesstill left in the land, and who had probably from the days of Josiahadhered to the temple worship. These remnants, however, of the Israelitesinhabitants in the territories of the former kingdom of the ten tribes, arenot taken into account in the present discussion concerning the erection ofthe temple; because, however considerable their numbers might be, theyformed no community independent of the colonists, but were dispersedamong them, and without political influence. It is not indeed impossible”that the colonists were induced through the influence exercised upon themby the Israelites living in their midst to prefer to the Jews the request, 'Letus build with you;' still those who made the proposal were not Israelites,but the foreign colonists” (Bertheau). These were neither members of the chosen people nor worshippers of theGod of Israel. At their first settlement (2 Kings 17:24, etc.) they evidentlyfeared not the Lord, nor did they learn to do so till the king of Assyria, attheir request, sent them one of the priests who had been carried away toteach them the manner of worshipping the God of the land. This priest,being a priest of the Israelitish calf-worship, took up his abode at Bethel,and taught them to worship Jahve under the image of a golden calf. Hencearose a worship which is thus described, 2 Kings 17:29-33: Every nationmade gods of their own, and put them in the houses of the high placeswhich the Samaritans, i.e., the former inhabitants of the kingdom of the tentribes, had made, every nation in their cities wherein they dwelt. Andbesides their idols Nergal, Asima, Nibhaz, Tartak, they feared Jahve; theysacrificed to all these gods as well as to Him. A mixed worship which theprophet-historian (2 Kings 17:34) thus condemns: “They fear not theLord, and do after their statutes and ordinances, not after the law andcommandment which the Lord commanded to the sons of Jacob.” And so,it is finally said (2 Kings 17:41), do also their children and children's children untothis day, i.e., about the middle of the Babylonian captivity; nor was it willa subsequent period that the Samaritans renounced gross idolatry. The rulers and heads of Judah could not acknowledge that Jahve whom thecolonists worshipped as a local god, together with other gods, in thehouses of the high places at Bethel and elsewhere, to be the God of Israel,to whom they were building a temple at Jerusalem. For the question wasnot whether they would permit Israelites who earnestly sought Jahve toparticipate in His worship at Jerusalem-a permission which they certainlywould have refused to none who sincerely desired to turn to the LordGod-but whether they would acknowledge a mixed population of Gentilesand Israelites, whose worship was more heathen than Israelite, and whonevertheless claimed on its account to belong to the people of God.

(Note: The opinion of Knobel, that those who preferred the requestwere not the heathen colonists placed in the cities of Samaria by theAssyrian king (2 Kings 17:24), but the priests sent by the Assyrianking to Samaria (2 Kings 17:27), has been rejected as utterlyunfounded by Bertheau, who at the same time demonstrates, againstFritzsche on 1 Esdr. 5:65, the identity of the unnamed king ofAssyria (2 Kings 17:24) with Esarhaddon.)

To such, the rulers of Judah could not, without unfaithfulness to the Lordtheir God, permit a participation in the building of the Lord's house.

In consequence of this refusal, the adversaries of Judah sought to weakenthe hands of the people, and to deter them from building. הארץ עם, the people of the land, i.e., the inhabitants of the country, thecolonists dwelling in the land, the same who in Ezra 4:1 are called theadversaries of Judah and Benjamin. ויהי followed by theparticiple expresses the continuance of the inimical attempts. To weakenthe hands of any one, means to deprive him of strength and courage foraction; comp. Jeremiah 38:4. יהוּדה עם are the inhabitants ofthe realm of Judah, who, including the Benjamites, had returned fromcaptivity, Judah being now used to designate the whole territory of thenew community, as before the captivity the entire southern kingdom;comp. Ezra 4:6. Instead of the Chethiv מבלּהים, the Keri offer מבהלים,from בהל, Piel, to terrify, to alarm, 2 Chronicles 32:18; Job 21:6, because theverb בלה nowhere else occurs; but the noun בּלּהה, fear, beingnot uncommon, and presupposing the existence of a verb בּלהּ,the correctness of the Chethiv cannot be impugned.

And they hired counsellors against them, to frustrate their purpose (ofbuilding the temple). וסכרים still depends on the ויהי of Ezra 4:4. סכר is a later orthography of שׂכר, tohire, to bribe. Whether by the hiring of יועציט we are to understandthe corruption of royal counsellors or ministers, or the appointment oflegal agents to act against the Jewish community at the Persian court, andto endeavour to obtain an inhibition against the erection of the temple,does not appear. Thus much only is evident from the text, that theadversaries succeeded in frustrating the continuance of the building “all thedays of Koresh,” i.e., the yet remaining five years of Cyrus, who was forthe space of seven years sole ruler of Babylon; while the machinationsagainst the building, begun immediately after the laying of its foundationsin the second year of the return, had the effect, in the beginning of the thirdyear of Cyrus (judging from Daniel 10:2), of putting a stop to the work untilthe reign of Darius, - in all, fourteen years, viz., five years of Cyrus, sevenand a half of Cambyses, seven months of the Pseudo-Smerdis, and oneyear of Darius (till the second year of his reign).

Complaints against the Jews to Kings Ahashverosh and Artachshasta. - Theright understanding of this section depends upon the question, What kingsof Persia are meant by Ahashverosh and Artachshasta? while the answerto this question is, in part at least, determined by the contents of theletter, Ezra 4:8-16, sent by the enemies of the Jews to the latter monarch.

Ezra 4:6-7

And in the reign of Ahashverosh, in the beginning of his reign,they wrote an accusation against the inhabitants of Judah and Jerusalem. שׂטנה, not to mention the name of the well, Genesis 26:21, occurshere only, and means, according to its derivation from שׂטן, tobear enmity, the enmity; hence here, the accusation. ישׁבי על belongs to שׂטנה, not to כּתבוּ; the letter wassent, not to the inhabitants of Judah, but to the king against the Jews. Thecontents of this letter are not given, but may be inferred from thedesignation שׂטנה. The letter to Artachshasta then follows, Ezra 4:7-16. In his days, i.e., during his reign, wrote Bishlam, Mithredath, Tabeel, andthe rest of their companions. כּנותו, for which the Keri offers theordinary form כּנותיו mrof yra, occurs only here in the Hebrewsections, but more frequently in the Chaldee (comp. Ezra 4:9, Ezra 4:17, Ezra 4:23; Ezra 5:3,and elsewhere), in the sense of companions or fellow-citizens; according toGesenius, it means those who bear the same surname (Kunje) togetherwith another, though Ewald is of a different opinion; see §117, b, note. The singular would be written כּנת (Ewald, §187, d). And thewriting of the letter was written in Aramaean (i.e., with Aramaeancharacters), and interpreted in (i.e., translated into) Aramaean. נשׁתּון is of Aryan origin, and connected with the modern Persian(nuwishten), to write together; it signifies in Hebrew and Chaldee a letter:comp. Ezra 4:18, where נשׁתּונא is used for אגּרתּא of Ezra 4:11. Bertheau translates הנּשׁתּון כּתב, copy of theletter, and regards it as quite identical with the Chaldee אגּרתּא פּרשׁגן, Ezra 4:11; he can hardly, however, be in the right. כּתב does not mean a transcript or copy, but only a writing (comp. Esther 4:8). This, too, does away with the inference “that the writer of thisstatement had before him only an Aramaean translation of the lettercontained in the state-papers or chronicles which he made use of.”It is not כּתב, the copy or writing, but הנּשׁתּון, theletter, that is the subject of ארמית מתרגּם, interpretedin Aramaean. This was translated into the Aramaean or Syrian tongue. Thepassage is not to be understood as stating that the letter was drawn up inthe Hebrew or Samaritan tongue, and then translated into Aramaean, butsimply that the letter was not composed in the native language of thewriters, but in Aramaean. Thus Gesenius rightly asserts, in his Thes. p. 1264, et lingua aramaea scripta erat; in saying which תרגם does not receivethe meaning concepit, expressit, but retains its own signification, tointerpret, to translate into another language. The writers of the letter wereSamaritans, who, having sprung from the intermingling of the Babyloniansettlers brought in by Esarhaddon and the remnants of the Israelitishpopulation, spoke a language more nearly akin to Hebrew than toAramaean, which was spoken at the Babylonian court, and was the officiallanguage of the Persian kings and the Persian authorities in Western Asia. This Aramaean tongue had also its own characters, differing from those ofthe Hebrew and Samaritan. This is stated by the words ארמית כּתוּב, whence Bertheau erroneously infers that this Aramaeanwriting was written in other than the ordinary Aramaean, and perhaps inHebrew characters.

This letter, too, of Bishlam and his companions seems to be omitted. There follows, indeed, in Ezra 4:8, etc., a letter to King Artachshasta, of whicha copy is given in Ezra 4:11-16; but the names of the writers are differentfrom those mentioned in Ezra 4:7. The three names, Bishlam, Mithredath, andTabeel (Ezra 4:7), cannot be identified with the two names Rehum andShimshai (Ezra 4:8). When we consider, however, that the writers named in Ezra 4:8 were high officials of the Persian king, sending to the monarch a writtenaccusation against the Jews in their own and their associates' names, itrequires but little stretch of the imagination to suppose that thesepersonages were acting at the instance of the adversaries named in Ezra 4:7, theSamaritans Bishlam, Mithredath, and Tabeel, and merely inditing thecomplaints raised by these opponents against the Jews. This view, whichis not opposed by the כּתב of Ezra 4:7, - this word not necessarilyimplying an autograph, - commends itself to our acceptance, first, becausethe notion that the contents of this letter are not given finds no analogy inEzra 4:6, where the contents of the letter to Ahashverosh are sufficientlyhinted at by the word שׂטנה; while, with regard to the letter of Ezra 4:7, we should have not a notion of its purport in case it were not the samewhich is given in Ezra 4:8, etc.

(Note: The weight of this argument is indirectly admitted by Ewald(Gesch. iv. p. 119) and Bertheau, inasmuch as both suppose that thereis a long gap in the narrative, and regard the Aramaean lettermentioned in Ezra 4:7 to have been a petition, on the part of persons ofconsideration in the community at Jerusalem, to the new king, - twonotions which immediately betray themselves to be the expedients ofperplexity. The supposed “long gaps, which the chronicler might wellleave even in transcribing from his documents” (Ew.), do not explainthe abrupt commencement of Ezra 4:8. If a petition from the Jewishcommunity to the king were spoken of in Ezra 4:7, the accusation againstthe Jews in Ezra 4:8 would certainly have been alluded to by at least a ו adversative, or some other adversative particle.)

Besides, the statement concerning the Aramaean composition of this letterwould have been utterly purposeless if the Aramaean letter following in Ezra 4:8 had been an entirely different one. The information concerning thelanguage in which the letter was written has obviously no other motivethan to introduce its transcription in the original Aramaean. Thisconjecture becomes a certainty through the fact that the Aramaean letterfollows in Ezra 4:8 without a copula of any kind. If any other had beenintended, the ו copulative would not more have been omitted here than inEzra 4:7. The letter itself, indeed, does not begin till Ezra 4:9, while Ezra 4:8 containsyet another announcement of it. This circumstance, however, is explainedby the fact that the writers of the letters are other individuals than thosenamed in Ezra 4:7, but chiefly by the consideration that the letter, togetherwith the king's answer, being derived from an Aramaean account of thebuilding of the temple, the introduction to the letter found therein was alsotranscribed.

Ezra 4:8