Ezra and Nehemiah

On the death of Darius, his son Xerxes took the kingdom. As he inherited his father’s kingdom, so he inherited his piety toward God and his reverence for him; for in everything concerning the worship of God he acted as his father had, and he was extremely friendly to the Jews. About this time a son of Jeshua named Joakim was high priest. There was also in Babylon at this time a righteous man who enjoyed a great reputation among the multitude. He was a chief priest of God, and his name was Ezra. He was very skilled in the laws of Moses and well acquainted with King Xerxes. He had decided to go up to Jerusalem and take with him some of the Jews who were in Babylon, and he asked the king to give him a letter to the governors of Syria, so that they would know who he was. So the king wrote the following letter to those governors: “Xerxes, king of kings, to Ezra the priest and reader of the divine law: greetings. I think it in keeping with the love I bear to mankind to allow those of the Jewish nation who wish it, as well as those of the Levites who are in our kingdom, to go together to Jerusalem. I have given orders to that end. Let everyone who wishes go, as it has seemed good to me and to my seven counselors, so that they may review the affairs of Judea and see whether they agree with the law of God. Let them also carry to the God of the Israelites the gifts that I and my friends have vowed, with all the silver and gold found in the country of the Babylonians that is dedicated to God, and let all this be carried to Jerusalem to God for sacrifices. Let it also be lawful for you and your brothers to make as many vessels of silver and gold as you please. You are also to dedicate the holy vessels that have been given you, and as many more as you wish to make, and take the cost out of the king’s treasury. I have also written to the treasurers of Syria and Phoenicia that they are to look after the business on which Ezra the priest and reader of the laws of God is sent. And so that God may not be angry at all with me or with my children, I grant everything needed for sacrifices to God according to the law, up to six hundred bushels of wheat. And I order you not to lay any deceitful levy or any tribute on their priests or Levites, or temple singers, or gatekeepers, or temple servants, or scribes of the temple. And you, Ezra, appoint judges according to the wisdom of God, to judge all those in Syria and Phoenicia who know your law; and teach it also to those who do not know it, so that if any of your countrymen breaks the law of God or that of the king, he may be punished, not as one who broke it out of ignorance, but as one who knows it well and boldly despises and scorns it. Such people may be punished by death or by fines. Farewell.” [a]

When Ezra received this letter he was overjoyed. He began to worship God, and acknowledged that God had been the cause of the king’s great favor to him, and for that reason he gave all the thanks to God. He read the letter at Babylon to the Jews there; but he kept the letter itself and sent a copy of it to all those of his own nation who were in Media. When these Jews understood the king’s piety toward God and his kindness to Ezra, they were all very pleased; indeed many of them took their belongings and came to Babylon, eager to go down to Jerusalem. But the people of Israel as a whole remained in that country. That is why there are only two tribes in Asia and Europe subject to the Romans, while the ten tribes are beyond the Euphrates to this day, an immense multitude, not to be estimated by numbers. Now a great number of priests and Levites, gatekeepers, temple singers and temple servants came to Ezra. So he gathered those of the captivity together beyond the Euphrates, stayed there three days, and proclaimed a fast for them, so that they might pray to God for their safety and suffer no misfortune on the way, either from their enemies or from any other mishap. For Ezra had told the king beforehand that God would keep them safe, and so he had not thought fit to ask him to send horsemen to escort them. When they had finished their prayers, they set out from the Euphrates on the twelfth day of the first month of the seventh year of Xerxes’ reign, and they came to Jerusalem in the fifth month of the same year. Ezra handed over the sacred money to the treasurers, who were of the priestly family: about 49,000 pounds of silver, silver vessels weighing about 7,500 pounds, gold vessels weighing about 1,500 pounds, and vessels of bronze more precious than gold weighing about 900 pounds. These gifts had been made by the king and his counselors and by all the Israelites who had stayed in Babylon. When Ezra had delivered these things to the priests, he offered to God, as the appointed sacrifices of whole burnt offerings, twelve bulls for the common safety of the people, ninety rams, seventy-two lambs, and twelve young goats for the forgiveness of sins. He also delivered the king’s letter to the king’s officers and to the governors of Coele-Syria and Phoenicia; and since they were obliged to do what it ordered, they honored our nation and helped them in all their needs. [e]

These were Ezra’s own plans, and they succeeded because God, I think, judged him worthy of success in what he had planned, on account of his goodness and righteousness. But some time later certain people came to him and brought an accusation against some of the multitude, and of the priests and Levites, who had violated their settled order and broken the laws of their country by marrying foreign wives, and had brought confusion into the priestly line. They begged him to uphold the laws, so that God would not take up a general anger against them all and bring them back into misery. At this he immediately tore his garment in grief, pulled out the hair of his head and beard, and threw himself on the ground, because this crime had reached the leading men of the people. And considering that if he ordered them to send away their wives and the children they had by them, he would not be listened to, he went on lying on the ground. However, all the better sort came running to him, and they too wept and shared his grief over what had been done. So Ezra got up from the ground, stretched out his hands toward heaven, and said that he was ashamed to look toward it because of the sins the people had committed, since they had put out of their memory what their fathers had suffered for their wickedness. And he begged God, who had saved a seed and a remnant out of the disaster and captivity they had been in, had restored them to Jerusalem and to their own land, and had moved the kings of Persia to have compassion on them, to forgive them also the sins they had now committed; for though these deserved death, it was in keeping with the mercy of God to remit the punishment due even to them. [h]

When Ezra had said this, he stopped praying. And while all those who had come to him with their wives and children were lamenting, a man named Jeconiah, a leading man in Jerusalem, came to him and said that they had sinned in marrying foreign wives. He urged him to put them all under oath to send those wives away, with the children born of them, and to have those punished who would not obey the law. Ezra followed this advice and made the heads of the priests, the Levites and the Israelites swear that they would put away those wives and children, as Jeconiah had advised. When he had received their oaths, he went quickly out of the temple into the chamber of Johanan son of Eliashib; and since he had so far tasted nothing at all for grief, he stayed there that day. Then a proclamation was made that all those of the captivity should gather at Jerusalem, and that any who did not appear there within two or three days should be banished from the community and their property given over to the uses of the temple, by the sentence of the elders. Those of the tribes of Judah and Benjamin came together within three days, that is, on the twentieth day of the ninth month, which the Hebrews call Tebeth and the Macedonians Apellaeus. As they were sitting in the open court of the temple, where the elders were also present, uncomfortable because of the cold, Ezra stood up and accused them. He told them that they had sinned in marrying wives who were not of their own nation, but that they would now do something both pleasing to God and to their own advantage if they put those wives away. They all cried out that they would do so; but the multitude was great, they said, and the season was winter, and this work would take more than one or two days. “So let their rulers,” they said, “and those who have married foreign wives, come here at a set time, and let the elders of every place, who are to reckon together the number of those who have married in this way, be there as well.” This was agreed on, and they began the inquiry into those who had married foreign wives on the first day of the tenth month and continued it to the first day of the next month. They found a great many of the descendants of Jeshua the high priest, and of the priests and Levites and Israelites, who cared more for keeping the law than for their natural affection, and who at once sent away their wives and the children born of them. To appease God they offered sacrifices and killed rams as offerings to him; but it does not seem necessary to me to set down the names of these men. So when Ezra had corrected this sin in the marriages of the persons mentioned, he brought that practice back to purity, so that it remained in that state for the time to come. [i]

When they kept the Feast of Tabernacles in the seventh month, and almost all the people had gathered for it, they went up to the open part of the temple, to the gate that faced east, and asked Ezra to read the laws of Moses to them. So he stood in the middle of the multitude and read them, from morning until noon. By hearing the laws read they were taught to be righteous men, for the present and for the future; but as for their past offenses, they were displeased with themselves and began to shed tears over them, reflecting that if they had kept the law they would have suffered none of the miseries they had experienced. But when Ezra saw them in that state, he told them to go home and not weep, for it was a festival, and they ought not to weep on it, since that was not lawful. He urged them instead to turn at once to feasting and to do what suited a feast and a day of joy, but to let their repentance and sorrow for their former sins be a safeguard and a protection to them, so that they would not fall into such offenses again. So at Ezra’s urging they began to feast; and when they had done so for eight days in their booths, they went off to their own homes singing hymns to God and thanking Ezra for reforming the corruptions that had crept into their settled order. So it came about that, after he had won this reputation among the people, he died an old man and was buried with great splendor at Jerusalem. About the same time Joakim the high priest also died, and his son Eliashib succeeded to the high priesthood. [l]

Now one of the Jews who had been carried captive was cupbearer to King Xerxes; his name was Nehemiah. As he was walking outside Susa, the capital of the Persians, he heard some strangers who were entering the city after a long journey speaking to one another in the Hebrew language. So he went up to them and asked where they came from. When they answered that they came from Judea, he began to ask them further how the people were faring and what condition Jerusalem was in. They replied that things were in a bad state: their walls had been thrown down to the ground, and the neighboring nations were doing the Jews a great deal of harm, overrunning the country by day and plundering it and doing them mischief by night, so that not a few had been carried off captive from the country and from Jerusalem itself, and by day the roads were found full of dead men. At this Nehemiah shed tears in pity for the calamities of his countrymen, and looking up to heaven he said, “How long, O Master, will you overlook our nation, while it suffers such great miseries and while we are made the prey and spoil of all men?” While he was lingering at the gate and lamenting in this way, someone told him that the king was about to sit down to supper. So he hurried off, just as he was, without washing, to serve the king in his office of cupbearer. Now the king was very pleasant after supper and more cheerful than usual, and when he cast his eyes on Nehemiah and saw that he looked sad, he asked him why he was sad. Nehemiah prayed to God to give him favor and to grant him the power of persuading by his words, and said, “How can I look any other way than this, O king, and not be troubled, when I hear that the walls of Jerusalem, the city where my fathers’ tombs are, have been thrown down to the ground, and that its gates have been burned with fire? But grant me the favor of going to build its wall and to finish the building of the temple.” The king gave him a sign that he freely granted what he asked, and told him that he would carry a letter to the governors, so that they would pay him due honor and give him whatever help he needed and wished. “So put away your sorrow,” said the king, “and be cheerful in carrying out your duties from now on.” Nehemiah worshiped God and thanked the king for his promise, and his sad and clouded face cleared with the pleasure the king’s promises gave him. The next day the king called for him and gave him a letter to carry to Adeus, the governor of Syria and Phoenicia and Samaria, in which he told him to pay due honor to Nehemiah and to supply him with what he needed for his building. [m]

When he had come to Babylon and taken with him many of his countrymen, who followed him of their own accord, he arrived at Jerusalem in the twenty-fifth year of Xerxes’ reign. When he had shown the letters to God, he gave them to Adeus and to the other governors. He also called all the people together to Jerusalem, stood in the middle of the temple, and made them the following speech: “You know, Jews, that God has kept our fathers Abraham, Isaac and Jacob continually in mind, and for the sake of their righteousness has not stopped caring for you. Indeed, he has helped me to gain this authority from the king to raise up our wall and to finish what is lacking in the temple. You know well the ill will our neighboring nations bear us, and that once they see we are in earnest about building, they will come against us and devise many ways of obstructing our work. So I ask you, first of all, to put your trust in God, as the one who will help us against their hatred; and not to stop building night or day, but to use all diligence and hurry the work on, now that we have this special opportunity for it.” When he had said this, he ordered the rulers to measure the wall and divide the work of it among the people, by villages and cities, as each one’s ability allowed. And when he had added the promise that he himself and his servants would help them, he dismissed the assembly. So the Jews set about the work. That is the name they have been called by from the day they came up from Babylon; it is taken from the tribe of Judah, which came first to these places, and from it both they and the country got that name. [p]

But when the Ammonites, the Moabites, the Samaritans and all who lived in Coele-Syria heard that the building was going ahead quickly, they took it badly and began to lay traps for them and to thwart their plans. They killed many of the Jews, and looked for ways to destroy Nehemiah himself by hiring some of the foreigners to kill him. They also frightened and unsettled the Jews and spread rumors that many nations were ready to march against them, so that they were harassed and had almost given up the building. But none of these things could deter Nehemiah from his diligence in the work. He only set a number of men around him as a bodyguard, and so persevered tirelessly, feeling no hardship in his desire to complete the work. In this way he took care of his own safety attentively and with great foresight, not because he feared death, but because he was convinced that if he died, the walls would never be raised for his fellow citizens. He also ordered the builders to keep their ranks and to have their armor on while they built; so the mason wore his sword, and so did the man who carried the building materials. He also arranged that their shields should lie very close to them, and he stationed trumpeters every five hundred feet, with orders that if the enemy appeared they should warn the people, so that they could fight in their armor and the enemy could not fall on them unarmed. He also went around the city by night, never discouraged either about the work itself or about his own food and sleep, for he made use of those not for pleasure but out of necessity. He endured this hardship for two years and four months, for that is how long the wall took to build; it was finished in the twenty-eighth year of Xerxes’ reign, in the ninth month. When the walls were finished, Nehemiah and the multitude offered sacrifices to God for their building and went on feasting for eight days. But when the nations living in Syria heard that the building of the wall was finished, they were indignant. When Nehemiah saw that the city was thinly peopled, he urged the priests and Levites to leave the countryside and move into the city and stay there, and he built them houses at his own expense. He also ordered the part of the people who worked the land to bring the tithes of their produce to Jerusalem, so that the priests and Levites, having something to live on permanently, would not abandon the divine worship. They willingly obeyed Nehemiah’s regulations, and in this way the city of Jerusalem came to be more populous than it had been before. So when Nehemiah had done many other excellent and praiseworthy things in a glorious manner, he reached a great age and then died. He was a man of a good and righteous character, and very eager to make his own nation happy; and he has left the walls of Jerusalem as an everlasting monument to himself. All this was done in the days of Xerxes. [q]