" As to the carrying away of Manasseh," says Bertheau, u we have no further information in the Old Testament, which is not surprising, seeing that in the books of Kings there is only a very short notice as to the long period embraced by Manasseh's reign and that of Anion." He therefore, with Ew., Mov., Then., and others, does not scruple to recognise this fact as historical, and to place his captivity in the time of the Assyrian king Esarhaddon. He however believes, with Ew. and Mov., that the statements as to the removal of idols and altars from the temple and Jerusalem (ver. 15) is inconsistent with the older account in 2 Kings xxiii. 6 and 12, the clear statements of which, moreover, our historian does not communicate in 2 Chron. xxxiv. 3 f. For even if the Astarte removed by Josiah need not have been the?£?'- of our chapter, yet it is expressly said that only by Josiah were the altars built by Manasseh broken down; yet we would scarcely be justified in supposing that Manasseh removed them, perhaps only laid them aside, that Amon again set them up in the courts, and that Josiah at length destroyed them. It does not thence follow, of course, that the narrative of the repentance and conversion of Manasseh rests upon no historic foundation; rather it is just such a narrative as would be supplemented by accounts of the destruction of the idolatrous altars and the statue of Astarte: for that might be regarded as the necessary result of the conversion, without any definite statement being made.1 Against this we have the following objections to make: Can we well imagine repentance and conversion on Manasseh's part without the removal of the abominations of idolatry, at least from the temple of the Lord? And why should we not suppose that Manasseh removed the idol altars from the temple and Jerusalem, but that Anion, who did evil as did his father Manasseh, and sacrificed to all the images which he had made (2 Kings xxi. 21 f.; 2 Chron. xxxiii. 22), again set them up in the courts of the temple, and placed the statue again in the temple, and that only by Josiah were they destroyed? In 2 Kings xxiii. 6 it is indeed said, Josiah removed the Asherah from the house of Jahve, took it forth from Jerusalem, and burnt it, and ground it to dust in the valley of Kidron; and in ver. 12, that Josiah beat down and brake the altars which Manasseh had made in both courts of the house of Jahve, and threw the dust of them into Kidron. But where do we find it written in the Chronicle that Manasseh, after his return from Babylon, beat down, and brake, and ground to powder the?£D in the house of Jahve, and the altars on the temple mount and in Jerusalem? In 2 Chron. xxxiii. 15 we only find it stated that he cast these things forth from the city (yyb Wffll *J^). Is casting out of the city identical with breaking down and crushing, as Bertheau and others assume? The author of the Chronicle, at least, can distinguish between removing ("T'pn) and breaking down and crushing. Cf. xv. 16, where T'pn is sharply distinguished from H13 and P^n; further, chap. xxxi. 1 and xxxiv. 4, where the verbs 13$, jna, and P^n are used of the breaking in pieces and destroying of images and altars by Hezekiah and Josiah. He uses none of these verbs of the removal of the images and altars by Manasseh, but only IDJ and Tji «W1 rfxh (ver. 15). If we take the words exactly as they stand in the text of the Bible, every appearance of contradiction disappears.1 From what is said in the Chronicle die alttestl. Literatur in einer Reihe von Aufsdtzen dargestellt (1868), S. 59 f., has drawn the conclusion that the accounts given in the Chronicle, not only of Manasseh's conversion, but also of his being led captive to Babylon, are merely fictions, or inventions — poetical popular myths. On the other hand, E. Gerlach, in the Theol. Stud. u. Krit. 1861, iii. S. 503 ff., has shown the superficiality of Graf's essay, and defended effectively the historical character of both narratives.
1 In this matter Movers too has gone very superficially to work, remarking in support of the contradiction (hibl. Chron. S. 328): "If Manasseh was so zealous a penitent, it may be asked, Would he not have destroyed all of Manasseh's deeds, we cannot conclude that he was fully converted to the Lord. That Manasseh prayed to Jahve in his imprisonment, and by his deliverance from it and his restoration to Jerusalem came to see that Jahve was God (D\"6xn), who must be worshipped in His temple at Jerusalem, and that he consequently removed the images and the idolatrous altars from th- temple and the city, and cast them forth, — these facts do not prove a thorough conversion, much less " that he made amends for his sin by repentance and improvement" (Mow), but merely attest the restoration of the Jahve-worship in the temple, which had previously been completely suspended. But the idolatry in Jerusalem and Judah was not thereby extirpated; it was only in so far repressed that it could not longer be publicly practised in the temple. Still less was idolatry rooted out of the hearts of the people by the command that the people were to worship Jahve, the God of Israel. There is not a single word of Manasseh's conversion to Jahve, the God of the fathers, with all his heart (p?& i?r). Can it then surprise us, that after Manasseh's death, under his son Amon7 walking as he did in the sins of his father, these external barriers fell straightway, and idolatry again publicly appeared in all its proportions and extent, and that the images and altars of the idols which had been cast out of Jerusalem were again set up in the temple and its courts? If even the pious Josiah, with all his efforts for the extirpation of idolatry and the revivification of the legal worship, could not accomplish more than the restoration, during his reign, of the temple service according to the law, while after his death idolatry again prevailed under Jehoiakim, what could Manasseh's halfmeasures effect? If this be the true state of the case in regard idolatrous images, according to the Mosaic law, as the Chronicle itself, xxxiii. 15 (cf. 2 Chron. xxix. 17, xv. 16; 2 Kings xxiii. 12), sufficiently shows? Had idolatry ceased in all Judah in the last year of Manasseh's reign, as is stated in 2 Chron. xxxiii. 17, could it, during the two years' reign of his son Anion, have spread abroad in a manner hitherto unheard of in Jewish history, as it is portrayed under Josiah, 2 Kings xxiii. 4 ff.?" But where is it stated in the Chronicle that Manasseh was so zealous a penitent as to have destroyed the images according to the Mosaic law? Not even the restoration of the Jahve-worship according to the provisions of the law is once spoken of, as it is in the case of Hezekiah and of Josiah (cf. 2 Chron. xxx. 5 and 16, xxxiv. 21, xxxv. 26); and does it follow from the fact that Judah. in consequence of Manasseh's command to serve Jahve, still sacrificed in the high places, yet to Jahve, that under Manasseh idolatry ceased throughout Judah?
to Manasseh's conversion, the passages 2 Kings xxiv. 3, xxiii. 26, Jer. xv. 4, where it is said that the Lord had cast out Judah from His presence because of the sins of Manasseh, cease to give any support to the opposite view. Manasseh is here named as the person who by his godlessness made the punishment of Judah and Jerusalem unavoidable, because he so corrupted Judah by his sins, that it could not now thoroughly turn to the Lord, but always fell back into the sins of Manasseh. Similarly, in 2 Kings xvii. 21 and 22, it is said of the ten tribes that the Lord cast them out from His presence because they walked in all the sins of Jeroboam, and departed not from them.
With the removal of the supposed inconsistency between the statement in the Chronicle as to Manasseh's change of sentiment, and the account of his godlessness in 2 Kings xxi., every reason for suspecting the account of Manasseh's removal to Babylon as a prisoner disappears; for even Graf admits that the mere silence of the book of Kings can prove nothing, since the books of Kings do not record many other events which are recorded in the Chronicle and are proved to be historical. This statement, however, is thoroughly confirmed, both by its own contents and by its connection with other well-attested historical facts. According to ver. 14, Manasseh fortified Jerusalem still more strongly after his return to the throne by building a new wall. This statement, which has as yet been called in question by no judicious critic, is so intimately connected with the statements in the Chronicle as to his being taken prisoner, and the removal of the images from the temple, that by it these latter are attested as historical. From this we learn that the author of the Chronicle had at his command authorities which contained more information as to Manasseh's reign than is to be found in our books of Kings, and so the references to these special authorities which follow in vers. 18 and 19 are corroborated. Moreover, the fortifying of Jerusalem after his return from his imprisonment presupposes that he had had such an experience as impelled him to take measures to secure himself against a repetition of hostile surprises. To this we must add the statement that Manasseh was led away by the generals of the Assyrian king to Babylon. The Assyrian kings Tiglath-pileser and Shalmaneser (or Sargon) did not carry away the Israelites to Babylon, but to Assyria; and the arrival of ambassadors from the Babylonian king Merodach-Baladan in Jerusalem, in the time of Hezekiah (2 Kings xx. 12; Isa. xxxix. 1), shows that at that time Babylon was independent of Assyria. The poetic popular legend would without doubt have made Manasseh also to be carried away to Assyria by the troops of the Assyrian king, not to Babylon. The statement that lie was carried away to Babylon by Assyrian warriors rests upon the certainty that- Baby Ion was then a province of the Assyrian empire; and this is corroborated by history. According to the accounts of Abydenus and Alexander Polyhistor, borrowed from Berosus, which have been preserved in Euseb. Chron. arm. i. p. 42 f., Sennacherib brought Babylon, the government of which had been usurped by Belibus, again into subjection, and made his son Esarhaddon king over it, as his representative. The subjection of the Babylonians is confirmed by the Assyrian monuments, which state that Sennacherib had to march against the rebels in Babvlon at the very be^innino; of his rei<ni; and then again, in the fourth year of it, that he subdued them, and set over them a new viceroy (see M. Duncker, Gesch. des Alterth. i. S. 697 f. and 707 f. and ii. S. 592 f., der 3 AufL). Afterwards, when Sennacherib met his death at the hand of his sons (2 Kings xix. 37; Isa. xxxvii. 38), his oldest son Esarhaddon, the viceroy of Babylon, advanced with his army, pursued the flying parricides, and after slaying them ascended the throne of Assyria, 680 B.C.1 Of Esarhaddon, who reigned thirteen years (from 680 to 667), we learn from Ezra iv. 2, col. with 2 Kings xxiv. 17, that he brought colonists to Samaria from Babylon, Cutha, and other districts of his kingdom; and Abydenus relates of him, according to Berosus (in Euseb. Citron, i. p. 54), that Axerdis (i.e. without doubt Esarhaddon) subdued Lower Syria, i.e. the districts of Syria bordering on the sea, to himself anew. From these we
1 So Jul. Oppert, "die biblische Chronologie f estgestellt nach den Assyrischen Keilschriften," in d. Ztschr. der deutsch. morgenl. Gesellsch. (xxiii. S. 134), 18G9, S. 144; while Duncker, loc. cit. i. S. 709, on the ground of the divergent statement of Berosus as to the reign of Esarhaddon, and according to other chronological combinations, gives the year 693 B.C., — a date which harmonizes neither with Sennacherib's inscriptions, so far as these have yet been deciphered, nor with the statements of the Kanon PtoL, nor with biblical chronology. It, moreover, makes it necessary to shorten the fifty-five years of Manasseh's reign to thirty-five, which is all the more arbitrary as the chronological data of the Kanon Ptol. harmonize with the biblical chronology and establish their accuracy, as I have already pointed out in my apolog. Vers, uber die Chron. S. 429 f.
may, I think, conclude that not only the transporting of the colonists into the depopulated kingdom of the ten tribes is connected with this expedition against Syria, but that on this occasion also Assyrian generals took King Manasseh prisoner, and carried him away to Babylon, as Ewald (Gesch. iii. S. 678), and Duncker, S. 715, with older chronologists and expositors (Usher, des Vignoles, Calmet, Ramb., J. D. Mich., and others), suppose. The transport of Babylonian colonists to Samaria is said in Seder Olam rah. p. 67, ed. Meyer, and by D. Kimchi, according to Talmudic tradition, to have taken place in the twenty-second year of Manasseh's reign; and this statement gains confirmation from the fact — as was remarked by Jac. Cappell. and Usher — that the period of sixty-five years after which, according to the prophecy in Isa. vii. 8, Ephraim was to be destroyed so that it should no more be a people, came to an end with the twenty-second year of Manasseh, and Ephraim, i.e. Israel of the ten tribes, did indeed cease to be a people only with the immigration of heathen colonists into its land (cf. Del. on Isa. vii. 8). But the twenty-second year of Manasseh corresponds to the year 776 B.C. and the fourth year of Esarh addon.
By this agreement with extra-biblical narratives in its statement of facts and in its chronology, the narrative in the Chronicle of Manasseh's captivity in Babylon is raised above every doubt, and is corroborated even by the Assyrian monuments. " We now know," remarks Duncker (ii. S. 92) in this connection, a that Esarhaddon says in his inscriptions that twenty-two kings of Syria hearkened to him: he numbers among them Minasi (Manasseh of Judah) and the kings of Cyprus." As to the details both of his capture and his liberation, we cannot make even probable conjectures, since we have only a few bare notices of Esarhaddon's reign; and even his building works, which might have given us some further information, were under the influence of a peculiarly unlucky star, for the palace built by him at Kalah or Nimrod remained unfinished, and was then destroyed by a great fire (cf. Spiegel in Herz.'s RealencyU. xx. S. 225). Yet, from the fact that in 2 Chron. xxxiii. 1, as in 2 Kings xxi. 1, the duration of Manasseh's reign is stated to have been fifty-five years, without any mention being made of an interruption, we may probably draw this conclusion at least, that the captivity did not last long, and that he received his liberty upon a promise to pay tribute, although he appears not to have kept this promise, or only for a short period. For that, in the period between Hezekiah and Josiah, Judah must have come into a certain position of dependence upon Assyria, cannot be concluded from 2 Kings xxiii. 19 (cf. ver. 15 with xvii. 28) and chap, xxiii. 29, as E. Gerlach thinks.
Vers. 18-20. Conclusion of Manasseh's history. His other acts, his prayer, and words of the prophets of the Lord against him, were recorded in the history of the kings of Israel; while special accounts of his prayer, and how it was heard (i?""1*??'!?? the letting Himself be entreated, i.e. how God heard him), of his sons, and the high places, altars, and images which he erected before his humiliation, were contained in the sayings of Hozai (see the Introduction, p. 30 f.). — Ver. 20. Manasseh was buried in his house, or, according to the more exact statement in 2 Kings xxi. 18, in the garden of his house — in the garden of Uzza; see on that passage.
Vers. 21-25. The reign of Amon. Cf. 2 Kings xxi. 19-26. — Both accounts agree; only in the Chronicle, as is also the case with Manasseh and Ahaz, the name of his mother is omitted, and the description of his godless deeds is somewhat more brief than in Kings, while the remark is added that he did not humble himself like Manasseh, but increased the guilt. In the account of his death there is nothing said of his funeral, nor is there any reference to the sources of his history. See the commentary on 2 Kings xxi. 19 ff.
The account of Josiah in the Chronicle agrees in all essential points with the representation in 2 Kings xxii. and xxiii., but is chronologically more exact, and in many parts more complete than that. In the second book of Kings, the whole reform of the cultus carried out by Josiah is viewed in its connection with the discovery of the book of the law, on the occasion of the temple being repaired; and the narrative comprehends not only the repair of the temple, the discovery, the reading of the book of the law before the assembled people, and the renewal of the covenant, but also the extirpation of idolatry in Jerusalem and Judah and in all the cities of Israel, and the celebration of the passover in the eighteenth year of Josiah's reign; see the intro-
(factory remarks to 2 Kings xxii. In the Chronicle, on the itraiy, the its arc more kept apart, and described according to their order in time. As early as in the eighth year of his reign, Josiah, still a youth, began to seek the God of his ancestor David, and in his twelfth year to purge Jerusalem and Judah of idolatry (xxxiv. 3). In the eighteenth year the book of the law was discovered in the temple, brought to the king, and read before him (vers. 8-18); whereupon he, deeply moved by the contents of the book which had been read, and by the answer of the prophetess Iluldah when inquired of concerning it (vers. 19-28), went into the temple with the elders of the people, caused the law to be read to the whole people, and made a covenant before the Lord to obey the law (vers. 29-32). He then caused all the idolatrous abominations which were still to be found in the land of Israel to be removed (ver. 33), and prepared to hold the passover, as it had not been held since the days of Solomon (chap. xxxv. 1-19). In other respects the main difference between the two accounts is, that in 2 Kings the suppression of idolatry is narrated with greater minuteness; the passover, on the contrary, being only briefly noticed; — while in the Chronicle the purification of Jerusalem, Judah, and the kingdom of Israel is shortly summarized (xxxiv. 3—7), but the celebration of the passover is minutely described on its ceremonial side (xxxv. 1—19).
Chap, xxxiv. — Vers. 1 and 2. Duration and spirit of Josiah' s reign; agreeing with 2 Kings xxii. 1 and 2, only the note as to Josiah's mother being here omitted. — Vers. 3-7. Extirpation of idolatry. In the eighth year of his reign, while he was yet a youth, being then only sixteen years old, Josiah began to seek the God of his ancestor David, and in the twelfth year of his reign he commenced to purify Judah and Jerusalem from the high places, Asherim, etc. The cleansing of the land of Judah from the numerous objects of idolatry is summarily described in vers. 4 and 5; and thereupon there follows (vers. 6 and 7) the destruction of the idolatrous altars and images in the land of Israel, — all that it seemed necessary to say on that subject being thus mentioned at once. For that all this was not accomplished in the twelfth year is clear from the VHW?nn> " he commenced to cleanse," and is moreover attested by ver. 33. The description of this destruction of the various objects of idolatry is rhetorically expressed, only carved and cast images being mentioned, besides the altars of the high places and the Asherim, without the enumeration of the different kinds of idolatry which we find in 2 Kings xxiii. 4—20. — On ver. 4, cf. xxxi. 1. $&?# they pulled down before him, i.e. under his eye, or his oversight, the altars of the Baals (these are the ni&?, ver. 3); and the sun-pillars (cf. xiv. 4) which stood upwards, i.e. above, upon the altars, he caused to be hewn away from them (DiTPJflD); the Asherim (pillars and trees of Asherah) and the carved and molten images to be broken and ground (P15, cf. xv. 16), and (the dust of them) to be strewn upon the graves (of those) who had sacrificed to them. ^rn:in is connected directly with D'napn so that the actions of those buried in them are poetically attributed to the graves. In 2 Kings xxiii. 6 this is said only of the ashes of the Asherah statue which was burnt, while here it is rhetorically generalized. — Ver. 5. And he burnt the bones of the priests upon their altars, i.e. he caused the bones of the idolatrous priests to be taken from their graves and burnt on the spot where the destroyed altars had stood, that he might defile the place with the ashes of the dead. In these words is summarized what is stated in 2 Kings xxiii. 13 and 14 as to the defilement of the places of sacrifice built upon the Mount of Olives by the bones of the dead, and in vers. 16-20 as to the burning of the bones of the high priests of Bethel, after they had been taken from their graves, upon their own altars. DViirQTD is an orthographical error for DrriniiTD. — Vers. 6 and 7 form a connected sentence: And in the cities of Manasseh...., in their ruins round about, there he pulled down the altars, etc. The tribe of Simeon is here, as in xv. 9, reckoned among the tribes of the kingdom of Israel, because the Simeonites, although they belonged geographically to the kingdom of Judah, yet in religion remained attached to the worship on the high places practised by the ten tribes; see on xv. 9. " And unto Naphtali" is added, to designate the kingdom of Israel in its whole extent to the northern frontier of Canaan. The form BiTJp iri2 (in the Keth. divided into two words) gives no suitable sense. R. Sal. explains, iimentes in planitie habitare^ sed fixerunt in monte domicilia, rendering it " in their mountain-dwellings." This the words cannot mean.1 The Keri DHTiirra, " with their swords," is suggested by Ezek. xxvi. 9, and is accepted by D. Kimchi, Abu Melech, and
1 The LXX. translate lv rolg to~oi; uvtZv, expressing merely the DiTrD. The Targ. has jiniWW JV22, in domo (s. loco) desolationis eorum.
others, and understood to denote instruments with which the altars, groves, and images were cut down. But this interpretation also is certainly incorrect. The word is rather to be pointed DiTnbTinsij m their wastes (ruins) (cf. Vs. cix. 10), and to be taken as an explanatory apposition to *||J3: in the cities of Manasseh..., namely, in their ruins round about; for the land had been deserted since the times of Shalmaneser, and its cities were in great part in ruins. The statement as to the locality precedes in the form of an absolute sentence, and that which is predicated of it follows in the form of an apodosis with 1 consec. (Y^T.1)- Pl\!f fi?!?j he dashed to pieces to crush; the form p~i\} is not a perfect after!?, but an infinitive which has retained the vowel of the perfect; cf. Ew. § 238, d.
Vers. 8-18. The cleansing and repairing of the temple^ and the finding of the book of the law. Cf. 2 Kings xxii. 3-10. — In the eighteenth year of his reign, when he wras purging the land and the house (of God), he sent. 1$B? does not indeed signify " after the purging" (De Wette, with the older expositors), but still less is it a statement of the object, u to purge" (Berth.); for that is decisively disposed of both by its position at the beginning of the sentence, where no statement of the object would stand, but still more by the fact that a statement of the object follows, 'til PVJ>,? used of time denotes u about," and so with the in/., e.g. Jer. xlvi. 13: at (his) coming = when he came. Shaphan was ">?iD, state secretary, according to 2 Kings xxii. 3. With him the king sent the governor of the city Maaseiah, and the chancellor Joah. These two are not mentioned in 2 Kings xxii. 3, but have not been arbitrarily added by the chronicler, or invented by him, as Then, groundlessly supposes. u To repair the house of Jahve." What these high royal officials had to do with it we learn from what follows. — Ver. 9 f. They, together with the high priest, gave the money which had been received for the repair of the temple to the overseers of the building, who then gave it to workmen to procure building materials and for wages, just as was done when the temple was repaired by Joash, chap, xxiv. 11-13. The Keri tt$*t is a correction resulting from a misinterpretation of the Keth. *3&*t, u and of the dwellers in Jerusalem." The enumeration, " from the hand of Manasseh, Ephraim," etc., is rhetorical. In HJWj ver. 10, the verb of ver. 9 is again taken up: they handed it to the overseers of the building, and they to the workmen. 'EH n'^y is a rare form of the plur. ^V; see on 1 Chron. xxiii. 24. The overseers of the building (DHpaon — ^V) are the subject of the second *3J?5; and before the following W, f, which stands in 2 Kings, is to be supplied. pi*n is a denom. from P^3, and signifies to repair what has been damaged. The statement of ver. 10 is made more definite by ver. 11: they gave it, namely, to the workers in stone and wrood, and to the builders to buy hewn stones and timber for couplings, and for the beams of the houses (fl^ij?, to provide with beams; Man are the various buildings of the temple and its courts), which the kings of Judah had allowed to decay (WWftj not of designed destroying, but of ruining by neglect). — In ver. 12 we have still the remark that the people did the work with fidelity, and the money could consequently be given to them without reckoning, cf. 2 Kings xxii. 7; and then the names of the building inspectors follow. Two Levites of the family of Merari, and two of the family of Kohath, wTere overseers; nsu7? i.e. to lead in the building, to preside over it as upper overseers; and besides them, the Levites, all who were skilled in instruments of song (cf. 1 Chron. xxv. 6 ff.). As men who by their office and their art occupied a conspicuous place among the Levites, the oversight of the workmen in the temple was committed to them, not " that they might incite and cheer the workmen by music and song" (Berth.). — Ver. 13a is probably to be taken, along with ver. 126, in the signification, " All the Levites who were skilled in music were over the bearers of burdens, and were overseers of all the workmen in reference to every work." The «, before 'on by appears certainly to go against this interpretation, and Berth, would consequently erase it to connect DvaBn by with the preceding verse, and begin a new sentence with D*n2l30}: u and they led all the workmen." But if we separate D*na»tM from DyaDn byy this mention of the bearers of burdens (D^ao) comes awkwardly in between the subject and the predicate, or the statement as to the subject. We hold the text to be correct, and make the 1 before 'on by correspond to the 1 before DN1VJD, in the signification, et — et. The Levites, all who were skilled in instruments of song, were both over the bearers of burdens, and overseeing the workmen, or leading the workmen. Besides, of the Levites were, i.e. still other Levites were, scribes and officers and porters, i.e. were busied about the temple in the discharge of these functions. — Ver. 14. In bringing out the money that had been brought into the house of the Lord, the high priest found the book of Moses' law. It is not clearly implied in the words, that he found it in the place where the money was laid up. The book of the law which was found is merely characterized as the book of the Mosaic law by the words nB7D~T3, not necessarily as Moses' autograph. The communication of this discovery by the high priest to the state secretary Shaphan, and by him to the king, is narrated in vers. 15-18, just as in 2 Kings xxii. 8-10. The statement, ver. 16, " and Shaphan brought the book to the king," instead of the words, " and Shaphan the "">SD came (went) to the king," involves no difference as to the facts; it rather makes the matter clear. For since in 2 Kings xxii. 10, immediately after the statement that Hilkiah gave him the book, it is said that Shaphan read from it to the king, he must have brought it to the king. With this elucidation, both the omission of 'in&Op^ (2 Kings xxii. 8), and the insertion of niy after 35?J}, ver. 16, is connected. The main thing, that which it concerned the author of the Chronicle to notice, was the fact that the book of the law which had been discovered was immediately brought and read to the king; while the circumstance that Shaphan, when the book was given him, also opened it and read in it, is omitted, as it had no further results. But since Shaphan did not go to the king merely to bring him the book, but rather, in the first place, to report upon the performance of the commission entrusted to him in respect of the money, this report required to be brought prominently forward by the liy: He brought the book to the king, and besides, made his report to the king. All that has been committed to thy servants (T3 10J), that they do; they have poured out the money, etc. The b^V are not Shaphan and the others mentioned in ver. 8, but in general those who were entrusted with the oversight of the repair of the temple, among whom, indeed, the chief royal officials were not included. After this report there follows in ver. 18 an account of the book which Shaphan had brought, and which, as we were informed in ver. 16, in anticipation of the event, he gave to the king.
Vers. 19-28. The dismay of the king at the contents of the booh which was read to him, and his inquiry of the prophetess Huldah as to the judgments threatened in the law. — Compare with this the parallel account in 2 Kings xxii. 11-20, with the commentary there given, as both accounts agree with the exception of some unimportant variations in expression. Instead of Abdon ben Micah (ver. 20) we find in 2 Kings Achbor ben Micayahu, perhaps the correct reading. In ver. 21, the expression, "and for those that are left in Israel and Judah," i.e. for the remainder of the people who were left in Israel after the destruction of the kingdom, and in Judah after the divine chastisements inflicted, mainly by the Assyrians under Hezekiah and Manasseh, is clearer and more significant than that in 2 Kings xxii. 13, "and for the people, and for all Judah." n?^, to pour itself forth (of anger), is quite as suitable as nria?3, inflame, kindle itself, in Kings, ver. 13. In ver. 22, those sent with the high priest Hilkiah are briefly designated by the words?jtan "J^W, and whom the king, scil. had sent; in 2 Kings xxii. 14, on the contrary, the individual names are recorded (Ewald, Gramm. § 292, Z>, would supply TOK, after the LXX.). The names of the ancestors of the prophetess Huldah also are somewhat different. ntfD, as the king had said to him, is omitted in 2 Kings. — In ver. 24, TOKPT?3j all the curses, is more significant than *3T23, 2 Kings xxii. 16.?p™ (ver. 25) is a statement of the result of the WW: Because they have forsaken me, my anger pours itself forth. In ver. 27, the rhetorical expansion of the words which God had spoken of Jerusalem in the law, 'til HBKy ^'7?? inserted in 2 Kings xxii. 19 as an elucidation, are omitted. After the preceding designation of these words as "the curses written in the law," any further elucidation was superfluous. On the contents of the saying of the prophetess Huldah, see the commentary on 2 Kings xxii. 16 ff. Vers. 29-33. The reading of the book of the law in the temple, and the solemn renewal of the covenant, to which the king assembled the elders of Judah and Jerusalem, with all the people, after the saying of the prophetess, Huldah had been reported to him, are recorded in 2 Kings xxiii. 1-3 as they are in the Chronicle, and have been commented upon at the former passage. Only ver. 32, the contents of which correspond to the words, " And the whole people entered into the covenant " (2 Kings xxiii. 3), will need explanation. 1W] is usually translated, " he caused the people to enter into the covenant" (after 2 Kings). This is in substance correct, but exegetically cannot be defended, since ft^St? does not precede, so as to allow of its here being supplied from the context. TDJW only signifies, he caused all who were in Jerusalem and Benjamin to stand, and they did according to the cover ant of God; whence we can easily supply in the first clause, "and to do according to the covenant." The collocation, " in Jerusalem and in Benjamin," is an abbre- fiation of the complete formula, u in Jerusalem and Judali and Benjamin;" then in the following clause only the inhabitants of Jerusalem are named as representatives of the inhabitants of the whole kingdom. — Ver. 33. But not only his own subjects did Josiah induce to act towards God in accordance with the covenant; in all the districts of the sons of Israel he removed the idolatrous abominations, and compelled every one in Israel to serve Jahve. The " sons of Israel," as distinguished from the inhabitants of Jerusalem and Benjamin (ver. 32), are the remnant of the ten tribes in their land, where Josiah, according to ver. 6 f., had also destroyed the idolatrous places of worship and the images. The statement in our verse, with which the account of Josiah' s cultus reform is concluded, refers to that. ity? 1?V?5, he made to serve, compelled them to serve. By the abolition of idolatry lie compelled them to worship Jahve. The last words of the verse are accordingly to be interpreted as signifying that Josiah, so long as he lived, allowed no open idolatry, but externally maintained the worship of Jahve. These measures could not effect a real, heartfelt conversion to God, and so the people fell again into open idolatry immediately after Josiah's death; and Jeremiah continually complains of the defection and corruption of Judali and Israel: cf. chap, xi., xiii., xxv., etc.
Chap. xxxv. — Vers. 1-19. The solemnization of the passover. — To ratify the renewal of the covenant, and to confirm the people in the communion with the Lord into wdiich it had entered by the making of the covenant, Josiah, immediately after the finding of the book of the law and the renewal of the covenant, appointed a solemn passover to be held at the legal time, which is only briefly mentioned in 2 Kings xxiii. 21-23, but in the Chronicle is minutely described. — Ver. 1 contains the superscription-1 ike statement, that Josiah held a passover to the Lord; and they held the passover in the 14th day of the first month, consequently at the time fixed in the law. It happened otherwise under Hezekiah (xxx. 2, 13, and 15). With ver. 2 commences the description of the festival: and first we have the preparations, the appointment of the priests and Levites to perform the various services connected with the festival (vers. 2-6), and the procuring of the necessary beasts for sacrifice (vers. 10-15); then the offering of the sacrifices and the preparation of the meals (vers. 10-15); and finally the characterization of the whole festival (vers. 16-19). — Ver. 2. He appointed the priests according to their guards or posts, i.e. according to the service incumbent upon each division, and " he strengthened them for the service of the house of Jahve," namely, by encouraging speech, and by teaching as to the duties devolving upon them, according to the provisions of the law. Cf. the summons of Hezekiah, xxix. 5 ff.; and as to the jWP, Neh. ii. 18. — Ver. 3. The Levites are designated "those teaching all Israel, those holy to the Lord," in reference to what is commanded them in the succeeding verses. The Keth. D^iSp does not elsewhere occur, and must be regarded as a substantive: the teachers; but it is probably only an orthographical error for D^ap (Neh. viii. 7), as the Keri demands here also. As to the fact, cf. xvii. 8 f. The Levites had to teach the people in the law. Josiah said to them, " Set the ark in the house which Solomon did build; not is to you to bear upon the shoulder;" ue., ye have not any longer to bear it on your shoulders, as formerly on the journey through the wilderness, and indeed till the building of the temple, when the ark and the tabernacle had not yet any fixed resting-place (1 Chron. xvii. 5). The summons W 'Wl |i"iN"J"iK is variously interpreted. Several Rabbins regard it as a command to remove the ark from its place in the most holy place into some subterranean chamber of the temple, so as to secure its safety in the event of the threatened destruction of the temple taking place. But this hypothesis needs no refutation, since it in no way corresponds to the words used. Most ancient and modern commentators, on the other hand, suppose that the holy ark had, during the reigns of the godless Manasseh and Amon, either been removed by them from its place, or taken away from the most holy place, from a desire to protect it from profanation, and hidden somewhere; and that Josiah calls upon the Levites to bring it back again to its place. Certainly this idea is favoured by the circumstance that, just as the book of the law, which should have been preserved in the ark of the covenant, had been lost, and was only recovered when the temple wTas being repaired, so the ark also may have been removed from its place. But even in that case the sacred ark would have been brought back to its place, according to the law, at the completion of the purification of the temple, before the king and people made the covenant with Jahve, after the law had been read to them in the temple, and could not have remained in its hiding-place until the passover. Still less probable is Bertheau's conjecture, " that the Levites bore the just reconsecrated ark upon their shoulders at the celebration of the passover, under the idea that they were bound by the law to do so; but Josiah taught them that the temple built by Solomon had caused an alteration in that respect. They were no longer bearers of the ark; they might set it in its place, and undertake other duties." For the idea that the Levites bore the ark at the celebration of the passover is utterly inconsistent with the context, since vers. 3-6 do not treat of what was done at the passover, but merely of that which was to be done. But even if we were to alter " they bare " into a they wished to bear," yet there is no historic ground for the idea attributed by Bertheau to the Levites, that at the celebration of the passover the ark was to be brought forth from the most holy place, and carried in procession in the temple courts or elsewhere. Finally, the reasons stated for the call, 'til tin, cannot be made to harmonize with the two views above mentioned. If it was only the bringing back of the ark to its ancient place in the most holy place which is here spoken of, why are the words " which Solomon built " added after TV2Q; and why is the command based upon the statement, u Ye have not to carry it any more upon your shoulders, but are to serve the Lord your God and His people in another way"? Both the additional clause and these reasons for the command show clearly that Josiah, in the words 'til wn, did not command something which they were to do at the approaching passover, but merely introduces therewith the summons: " Serve now the Lord," etc. R. Sal. saw this, and has given the sense of the verse thus: quum non occupemini amplius ullo labore vasa sacra portandi, Deo servite et populo ejus mactando et excoriando agnos paschales ver. 4 sqq. It therefore only remains to ascertain how this signification is consistent with the words rP33 'pn ftlfcTflK tin. The exhortation, " Set the ark in the house," must certainly not be understood to mean, " Leave it in the place where it has hitherto stood," nor, u Bring the sacred ark back into the house;" for |HJ with 3 does not mean to bring back, but only to place anywhere, set; and is here used not of material placing, but of mental. " Set the ark in the house " is equivalent to, u Overlook, leave it in the temple; you have not any longer, since Solomon built a house for it, to bear it upon your shoulders;" i.e., Think not on that which formerly, before the building of the temple, belonged to your service, but serve the Lord and His people now in the manner described in ver. 4 ff. The interpretation of the words as denoting a material setting or removing of the ark, is completely excluded by the facts, (1) that in the description of what the Levites did at the passover, " according to the command of the king," which follows (vers. 10-15), not a word is said of the ark; and (2) that the bearing of the ark into the most holy place was not the duty of the Levites, but of the priests. The duty of the Levites was merely to bear the ark when it had to be transported for great distances, after the priests had previously wrapped it up in the prescribed manner. In vers. 4-6 the matters in which they are to serve the Lord in the preparation of the passover are more fully stated. The Keth. UDil is imper. Niphal, ttterij Make yourselves ready according to your fathers' - houses, in your divisions, according to the writing of David. 3 in nri33? as in!">!!?*??, xxix. 25; but srQ does not = A}?*?, but is to be understood of writings, in which the arrangements made by David and Solomon in reference to the service of the Levites were recorded. — Ver. 5. " Stand in the sanctuary for the divisions of the fathers'-houses of your brethren, the people of the nation, and indeed a part of a father' s-house of the Levites;" z.e., Serve your brethren the laymen, according to their fathers'- houses, in the court of the temple, in such fashion that a division of the Levites shall fall to each father' s-house of the laymen; cf. 12. So Bertheau correctly; but he would erase the \ before nppn without sufficient reason. Older commentators have supplied the preposition? before ri^n: Stand, according to the divisions of the fathers'-houses, and according to the division of a father's-house of the Levites; which gives the same sense, but can hardly be justified grammatically. — Ver. 6. Kill the passover, and sanctify yourselves, and prepare it (the passover) for your brethren (the laymen), doing according to the word of the Lord by Moses (i.e. according to the law of Moses). The sanctification mentioned between the killing and the preparation of the passover probably consisted only in this, that the Levites, after they had slain the lamb, had to wash themselves before they gave the blood to the priest to sprinkle upon the altar (cf. ver. 11 and xxx. 16). As to the slaying of the lamb by the Levites, cf. the remarks on xxx. 16.
Vers. 7-9. The bestowal of beasts for sacrifice on the part of the king and his princes. — Ver. 7. The king gave (D"|J as in xxx. 24) to the sons of the people small cattle, viz. lambs and young goats, all for the passover-offerings, for all that were present, to the number of 30,000 (head), and 3000 bullocks from the possession of the king (cf. xxxi. 3, xxxii. 29). MRttrrTS is all the people who were present, who had come to the feast from Jerusalem and the rest of Judah without having brought lambs for sacrifice. — Ver. 8. And his princes (the king's princes, i.e. the princes of the kingdom) presented for a free-will offering to the people, the priests, and the Levites. n?^- *s not to be taken adverbially, as Berth, thinks: according to goodwill, but corresponds to the D'TOB?, i6t for free-will offerings, Lev. vii. 16. The number of these gifts is not stated. From the princes of the king we must distinguish the prefects of the house of God and the princes of the Levites, who are mentioned by name in vers. 8b and 9. Of these the first presented sheep and cattle for passover-sacrifices to the priests, the latter to the Levites. Of the three E^T?? of the house of God named in ver. 8b, Hilkiah is the high priest (xxxiv. 9), Zechariah perhaps the next to him (natW? |nb, 2 Kings xxv. 18, Jer. lii. 24), and Jehiel is probably, as Berth, conjectures, the chief of the line of Ithamar, which continued to exist even after the exile (Ezra viii. 2). Of the Levite princes (ver. 9) six names are mentioned, three of which, Conaniah, Shemaiah, and Jozabad, are met with under Hezekiah in xxxi. 12-15, since in the priestly and Levitic families the same names recur in different generations. The Conaniah in Hezekiah's time was chief overseer of the temple revenues; the two others were under overseers. Besides the DsriD3 for which the king and the princes of the priests and of the Levites gave |K¥, i.e. lambs and young goats, 1|J3, oxen, in considerable numbers, are mentioned as presents; 3000 from the king, 300 from the princes of the priests, and 500 from the princes of the Levites. Nothing is said as to the purpose of these, but from ver. 13 we learn that the flesh of them was cooked in pots and caldrons, and consequently that they wrere intended for the sacrificial meals during the seven days of the Mazzoth-feast; see on vers. 12 and 13.
Vers. 10-15. The preparation of the paschal sacrifice and the paschal meals. — Ver. 10 leads on to the carrying out of the arrangements. "So the service was prepared;" the preparation for the festival mentioned in vers. 3-9 was carried out. The priests stood at their posts (cf. xxx. 16), and the Levites according to their courses, according to the command of the king (in vers. 4 and 5). — Ver. 11. And they (the Levites, cf. ver. 6)
slew the passover (the lambs and young goats presented for the passover meal), and the priests sprinkled (the blood of the paschal lambs) from their hand {i.e. which the Levites gave them), while the Levites flayed them; as also under Hezekiah, xxx. 17. — Ver. 12. " And they took away the burnt-offerings, to give them to the divisions of the fathers' -houses of the sons of the people, to offer unto the Lord, as it is written in the book of Moses; and so also in regard to the oxen." "Vpfl signifies the taking off or separating of the pieces intended to be burnt upon the altar from the beasts slain for sacrifice, as in Lev. iii. 9 f., iv. 31. npyn, in this connection, can only signify the parts of the paschal lamb which were to be burnt upon the altar, viz. the same parts which were separated from sheep and goats when they were brought as thank-offerings and burnt upon the altar (Lev. iii. 6-16). These pieces are here called *&&}9 because they not only were wholly burnt like the burnt-offering, but also were burnt upon the flesh of the evening burnt-offering to God, for a savour of good pleasure; cf. Lev. iii. 11, 16, with Lev. i. 13. They cannot have been special burnt-offerings, which were burnt along with or at the same time with the fat of the paschal lambs; for there were no special festal burnt-offerings, besides the daily evening sacrifice, prescribed for the passover on the evening of the 14th Nisan; and the oxen given by the king and the princes for the passover are specially mentioned in the concluding clause of the verse, "ljJSy 151, so that they cannot have been included in njyn. The suffix in Dnrp might be referred to npQn: to give the paschal lambs, after the n?y had been separated from them, to the divisions of the people. But the following nirv? 2"nprip does not harmonize with that interpretation; and the statement in ver. 13, that the Levites gave the roasted and boiled flesh to the sons of the people, is still more inconsistent with it. We must consequently refer Dfirp to the immediately preceding noun, rpyn: to give the parts separated from the paschal lambs to be burnt upon the altar to the divisions of the people, that they might offer them to the Lord. This can only mean that each division of the fathers'-houses of the people approached the altar in turn to give the portions set apart for the njy to the priests, who then offered them on the fire of the altar to the Lord. On '02 3VI33 Gusset, has already rightly remarked: Lex Mosis Mc allegatur non quasi omnia ilia quce prcecedunt, exprimerentur in ipsa, sed respective seu respectu eorum puce mandata erant; quibus salvis adjungi potucrunt quidam modi agendi innocui et commodl ad legis jussa exsequenda. ljJ2? \y\, and so was it done also with the oxen, which consequently were not offered as burnt-offerings, but as thank-offerings, only the fat being burnt upon the altar, and the flesh being used for sacrificial meals. — Ver. 13. The passover, i.e. the flesh of the paschal lamb, they roasted (^? ^3, to make ready upon the fire, i.e. roast; see on Ex. xii. 9), according to the ordinance (as the law appointed); and "the sanctified (as they called the slaughtered oxen, cf. xxix. 33) they sod (w?, sc. D"!^?j cf. Ex. xii. 9) in pots, caldrons, and pans, and brought it speedily to the sons of the people," i.e. the laymen. From this Bertheau draws the conclusion, u that with the paschal lambs the oxen were also offered as thank-offerings; and the sacrificial meal consisted not merely of the paschal lamb, but also of the flesh of the thank-offerings: for these must have been consumed on the same day as they were offered, though the eating of them on the following day was not strictly forbidden, Lev. vii. 15-18." But this conclusion is shown to be incorrect even by this fact, that there is no word to hint that the roasting of the paschal lambs and the cooking of the flesh of the oxen which were offered as thank-offerings took place simultaneously on the evening of the 14th Nisan. This is implied neither in the ")iJ3? \?\ nor in the statement in ver. 14, that the priests were busied until night in offering the n?'y and the O^pn. According to ver. 17, the Israelites held on that day, not only the passover, but also the Mazzoth-feast, seven days. The description of the offering and preparation of the sacrifices, partly for the altar and partly for the meal, vers. 13-15, refers, therefore, not only to the passover in its more restricted sense, but also to the seven days' Mazzoth festival, without its being expressly stated; because both from the law and from the practice it was sufficiently well known that at the nps meal only |N¥ (lambs or goats) were roasted and eaten; while on the seven following days of the Mazzoth, besides the daily burnt-offering, thank-offerings were brought and sacrificial meals were held; see on Deut. xvi. 1-8. The connecting, or rather the mingling, of the sacrificial meal prepared from the roasted lambs with the eating of the sodden flesh of oxen, would have been too great an offence against the legal prescriptions for the paschal meal, to be attributed either to King Josiah, to the priesthood, or to the author of the Chronicle, since the latter expressly remarks that the celebration was carried out according to the prescription of the law of Moses, and according to the " right." — Ver. 14. And afterwards ("tf?K, posted, after the passover had been prepared for the laymen in the waydescribed) the Levites prepared it for themselves and for the priests; for the latter, however, only because they were busied with the offering of the «"py and the D^rpn till night. Most expositors understand by ^'V the fat of the paschal lambs, which was burnt upon the altar, as in ver. 12; and B^jn, the fat of oxen, which was likewise burnt upon the altar, u but was not, as it seems, designated by the expression T\7$n" (Berth.). This interpretation certainly at first sight seems likely; only one cannot see why only the fat of the oxen, and not that of the paschal lambs also, should be called D^?n, since in the law the parts of all thank-offerings (oxen, sheep, and goats) which were burnt upon the altar are called D^?n. We will therefore be more correct if we take D^nm to be a more exact definition of >vyn:
the burnt-offering, viz. the fat which was offered as a burntoffering; or we may take njjn here to denote the evening burntoffering, and Mjnn the fat of the paschal lambs. But even if the first-mentioned interpretation were the only correct one, yet it could not thence be concluded that on the passover evening (the 14th Nisan) the fat not only of the 37,600 lambs and goats, but also of the 3800 oxen, were offered upon the altar; the words, that the priests were busied until night with the offering of the rbv and the wJ?n, are rather used of the sacrificing generally during the whole of the seven days' festival. For the compressed character of the description appears in ver. 15, where it is remarked that neither the singers nor the porters needed to leave their posts, because their brethren the Levites prepared (the meal) for them. With the words, u according to the command of David," etc., cf. 1 Chron. xxv. 1 and 6.
Vers. 16-19. The character of the passover and Mazzoth festivals. — Ver. 16. "So all the service of the Lord was prepared the same day, in regard to the preparing of the passover, and the offering of the burnt-offerings upon the altar, according to the command of the king." This statement, like that in ver. 10, summarizes all that precedes, and forms the transition to the concluding remarks on the whole festival. wnr\ Disn is not to be limited to the one afternoon and evening of the fourteenth day of the month, but refers to the whole time of the festival, just as DV1 in Gen. ii. 4 embraces the seven days of creation. "rri^'y are the r6'y and the D^q (ver. 14)" (Berth.); but it by no means follows from that, that u at the passover, besides the regular burnt-offering (Num. xxviii. 4), no burnt-offering would seem to have been offered," but rather that the words have a more general signification, and denote the sacrifices at the passover and Mazzoth festivals. — Ver. 17. The duration of the festival. The Israelites who had come kept the passover " at that time (that is, according to ver. 1, on the fourteenth day of the first month), and the Mazzoth seven days," i.e. from the 15th to the 21st of the same month. — Ver. 18 contains the remark that the Israelites had not held such a passover since the days of the prophet Samuel and all the kings; cf. 2 Kings xxiii. 22, where, instead of the days of Samuel, the days of the judges are mentioned. On the points which distinguished this passover above others, see the remarks on 2 Kings xxiii. 22. In the concluding clause we have a rhetorical enumeration of those who participated in the festival, beginning with the king and ending with the inhabitants of Jerusalem. K¥ft3n 7^"i^ are the remnant of the kingdom of the ten tribes who had come to the festival; cf. xxxiv. 33. — In ver. 19 the year of this passover is mentioned in conclusion. The statement, a in the eighteenth year of the reign of Josiah," refers back to the same date at the beginning of the account of the cultus reform (xxxiv. 8 and 2 Kings xxii. 3), and indicates that Josiah's cultus reform culminated in this passover. Now since the passover fell in the middle of the first month of the year, and, according to chap, xxxiv. and 2 Kings xxii., the book of the law was also found in the eighteenth year of Josiah's reign, many commentators have imagined that the eighteenth year of the king is dated from the autumn; so that all that is narrated in 2 Chronicles, from xxxiv. 8-xxxv. 19, happened within a period of six months and a half. This might possibly be the case; since the purification and repair of the temple may have been near their completion when the book of the law was found, so that they might hold the passover six months afterwards. But our passage does not require that the years of the king's reign should be dated from the autumn, and there are not sufficient grounds for believing that such was the case. Neither in our narrative, nor in 2 Kings xxii. and xxiii., is it said that the passover was resolved upon or arranged in consequence of the finding of the book of the law. Josiah may therefore have thought of closing and ratifying the restoration of the Jahve-worship by a solemn passover festival, even before the finding of the book; and the two events need not be widely separated from each other. But from the way in which the account in 2 Kings xxii. and xxiii. is arranged, it is not improbable that the finding of the book of the law may have occurred before the beginning of the eighteenth year of Josiah's reign, and that date may have been placed at the beginning and end of the narrative, because the cultus reform was completed with the celebration of the passover in his eighteenth year.1
Vers. 20-27. The end of Josialis reign; his death in battle against Pharaoh Necho. Cf. 2 Kings xxiii. 25-30. — The catastrophe in which the pious king found his death is in 2 Kings introduced by the remark, that although Josiah returned unto the Led with all his heart and all his soul and all his strength, and walked altogether according to the law, so that there was no king before him, and none arose after him, who was like him, yet the Lord did not turn away from the fierceness of His great wrath against Judah, and resolved to remove Judah also out of His sight, because of the sins of Manasseh. This didactic connecting of the tragical end of the pious king with the task of his reign, which he followed out so zealously, viz. to lead his people back to the Lord, and so turn away the threatened destruction, is not found in the Chronicle. Here the war with Necho, in which Josiah fell, is introduced by the simple formula: After all this, that Josiah had prepared the house, i.e. had restored and ordered the temple worship, Necho the king of Egypt came up to fight at Carchemish on the Euphrates, and Josiah went out against him. For further information as to Necho and his campaign, see on 2 Kings xxiii. 29. — Ver. 21. Then he (Pharaoh Necho) sent messengers to him, saying, u What have I to do with thee, thou king of Judah? Not against thee, thee, (do I come) to-day (now), but against my hereditary enemy; and God has said that I must make haste: cease from God, who is with me, that I destroy thee not." Tj?j ^"T]Dy see Judg. xi. 12, 2 Sam. xvi. 10.
1 The addition of the LXX. to 2 Kings xxii. 3, "in the eighth month," to which Thenius and Berth, attach some weight, as a proof that the years of Josiah's reign are dated from autumn, is utterly useless for that purpose. For even were that addition more than a worthless gloss, it would only prove the contrary, since the eighth month of the civil year, which is reckon ed from autumn, corresponds to the second month of the ecclesiastical year, and would consequently carry us beyond the time of the passover.
nriK is an emphatic repetition of the pronominal suffix; cf. Gesen. Gr. § 121. 3. Dfrl, this day, that is, at present. *fi»™ ^ does not signify, my warlike house, but, the house of my war, i.e. the family with which I wage war, equivalent to i( my natural enemy in war, my hereditary enemy." This signification is clear from 1 Chron. xviii. 10 and 2 Sam. viii. 10, where u man of the war of Tou" denotes, the man who waged war with Tou.1 The God who had commanded Pharaoh to make haste, and whom Josiah was not to go against, is not an Egyptian god, as the Targ. and many commentators think, referring to Herod, ii. 158, but the true God, as is clear from ver. 22. Yet we need not suppose, with the older commentators, that God had sive per somnium sive per prophetam aliquem ad ipsum e Judcea missum spoken to Pharaoh, and commanded him to advance quickly to the Euphrates. For even had Pharaoh said so in so many words, we could not here think of a divine message made known to him by a prophet, because God is neither called ITUY1 nor DwNn, but merely ^»v£, and so it is only the Godhead in general which is spoken of; and Pharaoh only characterizes his resolution as coming from God, or only says: It was God's will that Josiah should not hinder him, and strive against him. This Pharaoh might say without having received any special divine revelation, and after the warning had been confirmed by the unfortunate result for Josiah of his war against Necho; the biblical historian also might represent Necho's words as come from God, or " from the mouth of God." — Ver. 22. But Josiah turned not his face from him, i.e. did not abandon his design, "but to make war against him he disguised himself." ^nnn denotes elsewhere to disguise by clothing, to clothe oneself falsely (xviii. 29; 1 Kings xx. 38, xxii. 30),
1 When Bertheau, on the contrary, denies this signification, referring to 1 Chron. xviii. 10 for support, he would seem not to have looked narrowly at the passage cited; and the conjecture, based upon 3 Esr. i. 25, which he, following O. F. Fritzsche, brings forward, "•fljprtft mST^N, " on the Euphrates is my war," gains no support from the passage quoted. For the author of this apocryphal book, which was written on the model of the LXX., has not translated the text he uses, but only paraphrased it: ov^i npog as i^ocKkorxKf&xt, V7r6 xvpiov tov Oiov, £7Ti yelp tou JLvCPpuTOV 6 i7ro7<Sf/,o; ptov soti, Kdl Kvpiog pcsr Ipcov z7ritx7T£voau kariv. Neither the LXX. nor Vulg. have read and translated ma in their original text; for they run as follows: ovx W\ as yixco pee. Vulg.: Non adversus te hodie voiio, sed contra aliam pugno domum, ad quam me Deus festinato ire prxcepit.
and to disfigure oneself (Job xxx. 18). This signification is suitable here also, where the word is transferred to the mental domain: to disfigure oneself, i.e. to undertake anything which contradicts one's character. During his whole reign, Josiah had endeavoured to carry out the will of God; while in his action against Pharaoh, on the contrary, he had acted in a different way, going into battle against the will of God.1 As to the motive which induced Josiah, notwithstanding Necho's warning, to oppose him by force of arms, see the remark on 2 Kings xxiii. 29 f. The author of the Chronicle judges the matter from the religious point of view, from which the undertaking is seen to have been against the will of God, and therefore to have ended in Josiah's destruction, and does not further reflect on the working of divine providence, exhibited in the fact that the pious king was taken away before the judgment, the destruction of the kingdom of Judah, broke over the sinful people. For further information as to the Valley of Megiddo, the place where the battle was fought, and on the death of Josiah, see 2 Kings xxiii. 29 f. The WftjyHj bring me forth (ver. 23), is explained in ver. 24: his servants took him, mortally wounded by an arrow, from the war-chariot, and placed him in a second chariot which belonged to him, and probably was more comfortable for a wounded man. — Ver. 25. The death of the pious king was deeply lamented by his people. The prophet Jeremiah composed a lamentation for Josiah; u and all the singing-men and singing-women spake in their lamentations of Josiah unto this day; " i.e.} in the lamentation which they were wont to sing on certain fixed days, they sung also the lamentation for Josiah. "And they made them (these lamentations) an ordinance (a standing custom) in Israel, and they are written in the lamentations," i.e. in a collection of lamentations, in which, among others, that composed by Jeremiah on the death of Josiah was contained. This collection is, however, not to be identified with the Lamenta-
1 Bertheau would alter C^Dnnn into ptflftH, because the LXX., and probably also the Vulg., Syr., 3 Esr. i. 16, and perhaps also Josephus, have so read. But only the LXX. have Upocrottcod/i, Vulg. pr¶vit, 3 Esr. eirs%e!pst; so that for ptnnn only the LXX. remain, whose translation gives no sufficient ground for an alteration of the text, p-tnnn, to show oneself strong, or courageous, is not at all suitable; for the author of the Chronicle is not wont to regard enterprises undertaken against God's will, and unfortunate in their results, as proofs of physical or spiritual strength.
tions of Jeremiah over the destruction of Jerusalem and the kingdom of Judah, contained in our canon. — On ver. 26 f. cf. 2 Kings xxiii. 28. VHDn as in xxxii. 32. 'rn M133, according to that which is written in the law of Moses, cf. xxxi. 3. V"i:m is the continuation of *W W (ver. 26).
CHAP. XXXVI. — THE LAST KINGS OF JUDAH; THE DESTRUC- TION OF JERUSALEM J JUDAH LED AWAY CAPTIVE; AND THE BABYLONIAN EXILE.
As the kingdom of Judah after Josiah's death advanced with swift steps to its destruction by the Chaldeans, so the author of the Chronicle goes quickly over the reigns of the last kings of Judah, who by their godless conduct hastened the ruin of the kingdom. As to the four kings who reigned between Josiah's death and the destruction of Jerusalem, he gives, besides their ages at their respective accessions, only a short characterization of their conduct towards God, and a statement of the main events which step by step brought about the ruin of the king and the burning of Jerusalem and the temple.
Vers. 1-4. The reign of Jehoahaz. Cf. 2 Kings xxiii. 306-35. — After Josiah's death, the people of the land raised his son Jehoahaz (Joahaz), who was then twenty-three years old, to the throne; but he had been king in Jerusalem only three months when the Egyptian king (Necho) deposed him, imposed upon the land a fine of 100 talents of silver and one talent of gold, made his brother Eliakim king under the name Jehoiakim, and carried Jehoahaz, who had been taken prisoner, away captive to Egypt. For further information as to the capture and carrying away of Jehoahaz, and the appointment of Eliakim to be king, see on 2 Kings xxiii. 31-35.
Vers. 5-8. The reign of Jehoiakim. Cf. 2 Kings xxiii. 36- xxiv. 7. — Jehoiakim was at his accession twenty-five years of age, reigned eleven years, and did that which wTas evil in the eves of Jahve his God. — Ver. 6 f. u Against him came Nebuchadnezzar (in inscriptions, Nabucudurriusur, i.e. Nebo coronam servat; see on Dan. S. 56) the king of Babylon, and bound him with brazen double fetters to carry him to Babylon." This campaign, Nebuchadnezzar's first against Judah, is spoken of also in 2 Kings xxiv. and Dan. i. 1, 2. The capture of Jerusalem, at which Jehoiakim was put in fetters, occurred, as we learn from Dan. i. 1, col, c. Jer. xlvi. 2 and xxxvi. 7, in the fourth year of Jehoiakim's reign, i.e. in the year 606 B.C.; and with it commence the seventy years of the Chaldean servitude of Judah. Nebuchadnezzar did not carry out his purpose of deporting the captured king Jehoiakim to Babylon, but allowed him to continue to reign at Jerusalem as his servant (vassal). To alter the infin. tayin? into the perf., or to translate as the perf., is quite arbitrary, as is also the supplying of the words, " and he carried him away to Babylon." That the author of the Chronicle does not mention the actual carrying away, but rather assumes the contrary, namely, that Jehoiakim continued to reign in Jerusalem until his death, as well known, is manifest from the way in which, in ver. 8, he records his son's accession to the throne. He uses the same formula which he has used in the case of all the kings whom at their death their sons succeeded, according to established custom. Had Nebuchadnezzar dethroned Jehoiakim, as Necho deposed Jehoahaz, the author of the Chronicle would not have left the installation of Jehoiachin by the Chaldean king unmentioned. For the defence of this view against opposing opinions, see the commentary on 2 Kings xxiv. 1 and Dan. i. 1; and in regard to ver. 7, see on Dan. i. 2. The Chronicle narrates nothing further as to Jehoiakim's reign, but refers, ver. 8, for his other deeds, and especially his abominations, to the book of the kings of Israel and Judah, whence the most important things have been excerpted and incorporated in 2 Kings xxiv. 1-4. T)fV IBfc Wrtajpn Bertheau interprets of images which he caused to be prepared, and r?V NSBjin of his evil deeds; but in both he is incorrect. The passages which Bertheau cites for his interpretation of the first words, Jer. vii. 9 f. and Ezek. viii. 17, prove the contrary; for Jeremiah mentions as ntovin of the people, murder, adultery, false swearing, offering incense to Baal, and going after other gods; and Ezekiel, loc. cit.y uses nujJifl rriKW of the idolatry of the people indeed, but not of the making of images — only of the worship of idols, the practice of idol-worship. The abominations, consequently, which Jehoiakim committed are both his evil deeds and crimes, e.g. the shedding of innocent blood (2 Kings xxiv. 4), as well as the idolatry which he had practised. v?V N^l1, a what was found upon him," is a comprehensive designation of his whole moral and religious conduct and attitude; cf. xix. 3. Jehoiakim's revolt from Nebuchadnezzar after three years' servitude (2 Kings xxiv. 1) is passed over by the author of the Chronicle, because the punishment of this crime influenced the fate of the kingdom of Judah only after his death. The punishment fell upon Jehoiachin; for the detachments of Arameans, Moabites, and Ammonites, which were sent by Nebuchadnezzar to punish the rebels, did not accomplish much.
Vers. 9 and 10. The reign of Jehoiachin. Cf. 2 Kings xxiv. 8-17. — Jehoiachin's age at his accession is here given as eight years, while in 2 Kings xxiv. 8 it is eighteen. It is so also in the LXX. and Vulg.; but a few Hebr. codd., Syr., and Arab., and many manuscripts of the LXX., have eighteen years in the Chronicle also. The number eight is clearly an orthographical error, as Thenius also acknowledges. Bertheau, on the contrary, regards the eight of our text as the original, and the number eighteen in 2 Kings as an alteration occasioned by the idea that eighteen years appeared a more fitting age for a king than eight years, and gives as his reason, " that the king's mother is named along with him, and manifestly with design, 2 Kings xxiv. 12, 15, and Jer. xxii. 26, whence we must conclude that she had the guardianship of the young king." A perfectly worthless reason. In the books of Kings the name of the mother is given in the case of all the kings after their accession has been mentioned, without any reference to the age of the kings, because the queen-mother occupied a conspicuous position in the kingdom. It is so in the case of Jehoiakim and Jehoiachin, 2 Kings xxiii. 36 and xxiv. 8. On account of her high position, the queenmother is mentioned in 2 Kings xxiv. 12 and 15, and in Jeremiah, among those who submitted to Nebuchadnezzar and were carried away to Babylon. The correctness of the number eighteen is, however, placed beyond doubt by Ezek. xix. 5-9, where the prophet portrays Jehoiachin as a young lion, which devoured men, and knew widows, and wasted cities. The knowing of widows cannot apply to a boy of eight, but might well be said of a young man of eighteen. Jehoiachin ruled only three months and ten days in Jerusalem, and did evil in the eyes of Jahve. At the turn of the year, i.e. in spring, when campaigns were usually opened (cf. 1 Kings xx. 22; 2 Sam. xi. 1), Nebuchadnezzar sent his generals (2 Kings xxiv. 10), and brought him to Babylon, with the goodly vessels of the house of Jahve, and made his (father's) brother Zedekiah king in Judah. In these few words the end of Jehoiachin's short reign is recorded.
From 2 Kings xxiv. 10-16 we learn more as to this second campaign of Nebuchadnezzar against Jerusalem, and its issues for Juclah; see the commentary on that passage. Zidkiyah (Zedekiah) was, according to 2 Kings xxiv. 17, not a brother, but in, uncle or father's brother, of Jehoiachin, and was called Mattaniah, a son of Josiah and Hamutal, like Jehoahaz (2 Kings xxiv. 18, cf. xxiii. 31), and is consequently his full brother, and a step-brother of Jehoiakim. At his appointment to the kingdom by Nebuchadnezzar he received the name Zidkiyah (Zedekiah). VriK, in ver. 10, is accordingly to be taken in its wider signification of blood-relation.
Vers. 11-21. The reign of Zedekiah; the destruction of Jerusalemj and Judah carried away into exile* Cf. 2 Kings xxiv. 18- xxv. 21. — Zedekiah, made king at the age of twenty-one years, reigned eleven years, and filled up the measure of sins, so that the Lord was compelled to give the kingdom of Judah* up to destruction by the Chaldeans. To that Zedekiah brought it by the two main sins of his evil reign, — namely, by not humbling himself before the prophet Jeremiah, from the mouth of Jahve (ver. 12); and by rebelling against King Nebuchadnezzar, who had caused him to swear by God, and by so hardening his neck (being stiff-necked), and making stout his heart, that he did not return to Jahve the God of Israel. Zedekiah's stiffness of neck and hardness of heart showed itself in his refusing to hearken to the words which Jeremiah spoke to him from the mouth of God, and his breaking the oath he had sworn to Nebuchadnezzar by God. The words, u he humbled himself not before Jeremiah," recall Jer. xxxvii. 2, and the events narrated in Jer. xxxvii. and xxxviii., and xxi. 4-xxii. 9, which show how the chief of the people ill-treated the prophet because of his prophecies, while Zedekiah was too weak and languid to protect him against them. The rebellion against Nebuchadnezzar, to whom he had sworn a vassal's oath of fidelity, is mentioned in 2 Kings xxiv. 30, and Ezek. xvii. 13 ff. also, as a great crime on the part of Zedekiah and the chief of the people; see the commentary on both passages. In consequence of this rebellion, Nebuchadnezzar marched against Judah with a powerful army; and after the capture of the fenced cities of the land, he advanced to the siege of Jerusalem, which ended in its capture and destruction, 2 Kinsjs xxv. 1—10. Without further noticing these results of this breach of faith, the author of the Chronicle proceeds to depict the sins of the king and of the people. In the first place, he again brings forward, in ver. 136, the stiffness of neck and obduracy of the king, which manifested itself in the acts just mentioned: he made hard his neck, etc. Bertheau would interpret the words 'W1 tfjjjlj according to Deut. ii. 30, thus: " Then did God make him stiff-necked and hardened his heart; so that he did not return to Jahve the God of Israel, notwithstanding the exhortations of the prophets." But although hardening is not seldom represented as inflicted by God, there is here no ground for supposing that with £>p*l the subject is changed, while the bringing forward of the hardening as an act of God does not at all suit the context. And, moreover, *!"$ ftWip), making hard the neck, is nowhere ascribed to God, it is only said of men; cf. 2 Kings xvii. 14, Deut. x. 16, Jer. xix. 15, etc. To God only n^-fix nvpn or nrrriK is attributed, Ex. vii. 3, Deut. ii. 30. — Ver. 14. " And all princes of the priests and the people increased faithless transgressions, like to all the abominations of the heathen, and defiled the house of the Lord which He had consecrated in Jerusalem." Bertheau would refer this censure of their idolatry and the profanation of the temple to the guilt incurred by the whole people, especially in the time of Manasseh, because, from all wre know from the book of Jeremiah, the reproach of idolatry did not at all, or at least did not specially, attach to the princes of the priests and the people in the time of Zedekiah. But this reason is neither tenable nor correct; for from Ezek. viii. it is perfectly manifest that under Zedekiah, not only the people, but also the priesthood, were deeply sunk in idolatry, and that even the courts of the temple were defiled by it. And even though that idolatry did not take its rise under Zedekiah, but had been much practised under Jehoiakim, and ■was merely a revival and continuation of the idolatrous conduct of Manasseh and Anion, yet the reference of our verse to the time of Manasseh is excluded by the context; for here only that which was done under Zedekiah is spoken of, without any reference to earlier times.
Meanwhile God did not leave them without exhortation, warning, and threatening. — Ver. 15 f. Jahve sent to them by His messengers, from early morning onwards continually, for lie spared His people and His dwelling-place; but they mocked the messengers of God, despised His words, and scoffed at His prophets. T3 fw, to send a message by any one, to make a sending. The object is to be supplied from the verb, nw"! aa^n exactly as in Jer. xxvi. 5, xxix. 19. For He spared His people, etc., viz. by this, that He, in long-suffering, again and again called upon the people by prophets to repent and return, and was not willing at once to destroy His people and His holy place. D'avro is air. \e<y., in Syr. it signifies subsannavit; the Hithp. also, D\j;nyfiD (from VVT\), occurs only here as an intensive: to launch out in mockery. The distinction drawn between B^K?*? (messengers) and E^rn (prophets) is rhetorical, for by the messengers of God it is chiefly prophets who are meant; but the expression is not to be confined to prophets in the narrower sense of the word, for it embraces all the men of God who, by word and deed, censured and punished the godless conduct of the idolaters. The statement in these two verses is certainly so very general, that it may apply to all the times of gradually increasing defection of the people from the Lord their God; but the author of the Chronicle had primarily in view only the time of Zedekiah, in which the defection reached its highest point. It should scarcely be objected that in the time of Zedekiah only Jeremiah is known as a prophet of the Lord, since Ezekiel lived and wrought among the exiles. For, in the first place, it does not hence certainly follow that Jeremiah and Ezekiel were the only prophets of that time; then, secondly, Jeremiah does not speak as an individual prophet, but holds up to the people the witness of all the earlier prophets (cf. e.g. xxvi. 4, 5), so that by him all the former prophets of God spoke to the people; and consequently the plural, His messengers, His prophets, is perfectly true even for the time of Zedekiah, if we always keep in mind the rhetorical character of the style. 'U1 T\VV IP, until the anger of Jahve rose upon His people, so that there was no healing (deliverance) more.
Ver. 17 ff. When the moral corruption had reached this height, judgment broke upon the incorrigible race. As in vers. 12-16 the transgressions of the king and people are not described according to their historical progression, but are portrayed in rhetorical gradation; so, too, in vers. 17-21 the judgment upon the sinful people and kingdom is not represented in its historical details, but only rhetorically in its great general outlines. "Then brought He upon them the king of the Chaldeans, who slew their young men with the sword in their sanctuary, and spared not the youth and the maiden, the old man and the grey-headed; he gave everything into his hand." Prophetic utterances form the basis of this description of the fearful judgment, e.g. Jer. xv. 1-9, xxxii. 3 f., Ezek. ix. 6; and these, again, rest upon Deut. xxxii. 25. The subject in the first and last clause of the verse is Jahve. Bertheau therefore assumes that He is also the subject of the intermediate sentence: " and God slew their young men in the sanctuary;" but this can hardly be correct. As in the expansion of the last clause, a he gave everything into his hand," which follows in ver. 18, not Jahve but the king of Babylon is the subject; so also in the expansion of the first clause, which 'W JVj9 introduces, the king of the Chaldeans is the subject, as most commentators have rightly recognised. By B^i?>? 1^321 the judgment is brought into definite relationship to the crime: because they had profaned the sanctuary by idolatry (ver. 14), they themselves were slain in the sanctuary. On '3 }n: 73H, cf. Jer. xxvii. 6, xxxii. 3, 4. bbn includes things and persons, and is specialized in vers. 18-20. — Ver. 18. All the vessels of the house of God, the treasures of the temple, and of the palace of the king and of the princes, all he brought to Babylon. — Ver. 19. They burnt the house of God; they pulled down the walls of Jerusalem, and burnt all the palaces of the city with fire, and all the costly vessels were devoted to destruction. On JWriBTO, cf. xii. 12. — Ver. 20. He who remained from the sword, i.e. who had not been slain by the sword, had not fallen and died in war, Nebuchadnezzar carried away to Babylon into captivity; so that they became servants to him and to his sons, as Jeremiah (xxvii. 7) prophesied, until the rise of the kingdom of the Persians. These last words also are an historical interpretation of the prophecy, Jer. xxvii. 7. All this was done (ver. 21) to fulfil (rifc^D instead of tffc, as in 1 Chron. xxix. 5), that the word of the Lord by the mouth of Jeremiah might be fulfilled, he having prophesied (xxv. 11 f., xxix. 10) the seventy years' duration of Judah's desolation and the Babylonian captivity, while the king and people had not regarded his words (ver. 12). This period, which according to ver. 20 came to an end with the rise of the kingdom of the Persians, is characterized by the clause 'til n^V?T ^V as a time of expiation of the wrong which had been done the land by the non-observance of the sabbath-years, upon the basis of the threatening (Lev. xxvi. 34), in which the wasting of the land during the dispersion of the unrepentant people among the heathen was represented as a compensation for the neglected sabbaths. From this passage in the law the words are taken, to show how the Lord had inflicted the punishment with which the disobedient people had been threatened as early as in the time of Moses. ^V^ ^V is not to be translated, " until the land had made up its years of rest;" that signification nyj has not; but, u until the land had enjoyed its sabbath-years," i.e. until it had enjoyed the rest of which it had been deprived by the non-observance of the sabbaths and the sabbath-years, contrary to the will of its Creator; see on Lev. xxvi. 34. That this is the thought is placed beyond doubt by the succeeding circumstantial clause, taken word for word from Lev. xxvi. 34: " all days (i.e. the whole time) of its desolation did it hold it" (nnn^? it kept sabbath). "To make full the seventy years;" which Jeremiah, 11. cc, had prophesied.
This connecting of Jeremiah's prophecy with the declaration in Lev. xxvi. 34 does not justify us in supposing that the celebration of the sabbath-year had been neglected seventy times, or that for a period of 490 years the sabbath-year had not been observed. Bertheau, holding this view, fixes upon 1000 B.C., i.e. the time of Solomon, or, as we cannot expect any very great chronological exactitude, the beginning of the kingly government in Israel, as the period after which the rest-years ceased to be regarded. He is further of opinion that chap. xxxv. 18 harmonizes with this view; according to which passage the passover was not celebrated in accordance with the prescription of the law until the end of the period of the judges. According to this chronological calculation, the beginning of this neglect of the observance of the sabbath-year would fall in the beginning of the judgeship of Samuel.1 But this is itself unlikely; and still more unlikely is it, that in the time of the judges the sabbath-year had been regularly observed until Samuel; and that during the reigns of the kings David, Solomon, Jehoshaphat, Hezekiah, and Josiah, this celebration remained wholly in abeyance. But even apart from that, the words, that the land, to make full the seventy years prophesied by Jeremiah, kept the
1 The seventy years' exile began in the fourth year of Jehoiakim, i.e. in the year 606 B.C., or 369 years after the division of the kingdom; see the Chronol. Tables at 1 Kings xii. (ii. 3, S. 141), to which the eighty years of the reigns of David and Solomon, and the times of Saul and Samuel, must be added to make up the 490 years (see the comment, on Judges).
whole time of the desolation holy, or enjoyed a sabbath rest such as Moses had proclaimed in Lev. xxvi. 34, do not necessarily involve that the land had been deprived of its sabbath rest seventy times in succession, or during a period of 490 years, by the sin of the people. The connection between the prophecy of Jeremiah and the provision of the law is to be understood theologically, and does not purport to be calculated chronologically. The thought is this: By the infliction of the punishment threatened against the transgressors of the law by the carrying of the people away captive into Babylon, the land will obtain the rest which the sinful people had deprived it of by their neglect of the sabbath observance commanded them. By causing it to remain uncultivated for seventy years, God gave to the land a time of rest and refreshment, which its inhabitants, so long as they possessed it, had not given it. But that does not mean that the time for which this rest was granted corresponded to the number of the sabbath-years which had not been observed. From these theological reflections we cannot calculate how often in the course of the centuries, from the time of Joshua onwards till the exile, the sabbath-year had not been observed; and still less the time after which the observation of the sabbath-year was continuously neglected. The passage xxxv. 8 has no bearing on this question, because it neither states that the passover had been held according to the precepts of the law till towards the end of the time of the judges, nor that it was no longer celebrated in accordance with the precept from that time until Josiah; it only contains the thought that such a passover as that in Josiah's reign had not been held since the time of the judges: see on the passage.
Vers. 22 and 23. To point out still further how exactly God had fulfilled His word by the mouth of the prophet Jeremiah, it is in conclusion briefly mentioned that God, in the first year of Coresh king of Persia, stirred up the spirit of this king to cause a command to go forth in all his kingdom, that Jahve, the God of heaven, who had given him all the kingdoms of the earth, had commanded him to build again His temple in Jerusalem, and that whoever belonged to the people of God might go up to Jerusalem. With this comforting prospect for the future, the author of the Chronicle closes his consideration of the prse-exilic history of the people of God without completely communicating the contents of the royal edict of Cyrus, since he purposed to narrate the history of the restoration of Judah to their own land in a separate work. This we have in the book of Ezra, which commences by giving us the whole of the edict of Cyrus the king of the Persians (Ezra i. 1-3), and then narrates the return of a great part of the people to Jerusalem and Judah, the rebuilding of the temple, and the re-settlement in the land of their fathers of those who had returned.
HE book of Ezra derives its name of fcOTJJ in the
Hebrew Bible, of "EaSpas in the Septuagint, and of Liber JEsdrce in the Vulgate, from Ezra, K"V#, the priest and scribe who, in chap, vii.-x., narrates his return from captivity in Babylon to Jerusalem, and the particulars of his ministry in the latter city. For the sake of making the number of the books contained in their canon of Scripture correspond with the number of letters in the Hebrew alphabet, the Jews had from of old reckoned the books of Ezra and Nehemiah as one; whilst an apocryphal book of Ezra, composed of passages from the second book of Chronicles, the books of Ezra and Nehemiah, and certain popular legends, had long been current among the Hellenistic Jews together with the canonical book of Ezra. Hence our book of Ezra is called, in the catalogues of the Old Testament writings handed down to us by the Fathers (see the statements of Origen, of the Council of Laodicea, Can. 60, of Cyril, Jerome, and others, in the Lehrbuch der JEinleitung, § 216, Not. 11, 13), "EaSpas 7rpcoTo<; (a), and the book of Nehemiah "Ea&pas Bevrepos (/3), and consequently separated as I. Ezra from the book of Nehemiah as II. Ezra; while the Greek book of Ezra is called in. Ezra, to which ivas subsequently added the falsely so-called book of Ezra as
IV. Ezra. In the Septuagint, the Vet. Itala, and the Svriac, on the contrary (comp. Lihri V. T. apocryphi syriace e recogn. de Lagarde), we find the Greek book of Ezra placed as "EaSpas irpwrov before the canonical book, and the latter designated "Ecrhpas Sevrepov.
The book of Ezra consists of two parts. The first part, comprising a period anterior to Ezra, begins with the edict of Coresh (Cyrus), king of Persia, permitting the return to their native land of such Jews as were exiles in Babylon, and prescribing the rebuilding of the temple at Jerusalem (i. 1-4); and relates that when the heads of the nation, the priests and Levites, and many of the people, made preparations for returning, Cvrus had the sacred vessels which Nebuchadnezzar had carried away from Jerusalem brought forth and delivered to Sheshbazzar (Zerubbabel), prince of Judah (i. 5-11). Next follows a list of the names of those who returned from captivity (chap, ii.), and the account of the building of the altar of burnt-offerings, the restoration of divine worship, and the laying of the foundation of the temple (chap. iii.). Then the manner in which the rebuilding of the temple was hindered by the Samaritans is narrated; and mention made of the written accusation sent by the adversaries of the Jews to the kings Ahashverosh and Artachshasta (iv. 1-7): the letter sent to the latter monarch, and his answer thereto, in consequence of which the rebuilding of the temple ceased till the second year of Darius, being inserted in the Chaldee original (iv. 24). It is then related (also in Chaldee) that Zerubbabel and Joshua, undertaking, in consequence of the prophecies of Haggai and Zechariah, the rebuilding of the temple, were immediately interrogated by Tatnai the Persian governor and his companions as to wTho had commanded such rebuilding; that the reply of the Jewish rulers was reported in writing to the king, whereupon the latter caused search to be made for the edict of Cyrus, and gave command for the continuance and furtherance of the building in compliance therewith (v. 1-vi. 13); that hence the Jews were enabled to complete the work, solemnly to dedicate their now finished temple (vi. 14-18), and (as further related, vers. 19-22, in the Hebrew tongue) to celebrate their passover with rejoicing. Iu the second part (vii.-x.), the return of Ezra the priest and scribe, in the seventh year of Artaxerxes, from Babylon to Jerusalem, with a number of priests, Levites, and Israelites, is related; and (vii. 1-10) a copy of the royal decree, in virtue of which Ezra was entrusted with the ordering of divine worship, and of the administration of justice as prescribed in the law, given in the Chaldee original (vii. 11-26), with a postscript by Ezra (ver. 27 sq.). Then follows a list of those who went up with Ezra (viii. 1-14); and particulars given by Ezra himself concerning his journey, his arrival at Jerusalem (viii. 14—36), and the energetic proceedings by which he effected the separation of the heathen women from the congregation (ix. 1— x. 17); the book concluding with a list of those who were forced to put away their heathen wives (x. 18—44).
The first year of the rule of Cyrus king of Persia corresponding with the year 536 B.C., and the seventh year of Artaxerxes (Longimanus) with 458 B.C., it follows that this book comprises a period of at least eighty years. An interval of fifty-six years, extending from the seventh year of Darius Hystaspis, in which the passover was celebrated after the dedication of the new temple (vi. 19-22), to the seventh of Artaxerxes, in which Ezra went up from Babylon (vii. 6), separates the events of the first part from those of the second. The narrative of the return of Ezra from Babylon in vii. 1 is nevertheless connected with the celebration of the passover under Darius by the usual formula of transition, " Now after these things," without further comment, because nothing had occurred in the intervening period which the author of the book felt it necessary, in conformity with the plan of his work, to communicate.
Even this cursory notice of its contents shows that the object of Ezra was not to give a history of the re-settlement in Judah and Jerusalem of the Jews liberated by Cyrus from the Babylonian captivity, nor to relate all the memorable events which took place from the departure and the arrival in Judah of those who returned with Zerubbabel and Joshua, until his own return and his ministry in Jerusalem. For he tells us nothing at all of the journey of the first band of returning exiles, and so little concerning their arrival in Jerusalem and Judah, that this has merely a passing notice in the superscription of the list of their names; while at the close of this list he only mentions the voluntary gifts which they brought with them for the temple service, and then just remarks that they — the priests, Levites, people, etc. — dwelt in their cities (ii. 70). The following chapters (iii.-vi.), moreover, treat exclusively of the building of the altar of burnt-offering and the temple, the hindrances by which this building was delayed for years, and of the final removal of these hindrances, the continuation and completion of the building, and the dedication of the new temple, by means of which the tribe of Judah was enabled to carry on the worship of God according to the law, and to celebrate the festivals in the house of the Lord. In the second part, indeed, after giving the decree he had obtained from Artaxerxes, he speaks in a comparatively circumstantial manner of the preparations he made for his journey, of the journey itself, and of his arrival at Jerusalem; while he relates but a single incident of his proceedings there, — an incident, indeed, of the utmost importance with respect to the preservation of the returned community as a covenant people, viz. the dissolution of the marriages with Canaanites and other Gentile women, forbidden by the law, but contracted in the period immediately following his arrival at Jerusalem. Of his subsequent proceedings there we learn nothing further from his own writings, although the king had given him authority, " after the wisdom of his God, to set magistrates and judges" (vii. 25); while the book of Nehemiah testifies that he continued his ministry there for some years in conjunction with Nehemiah, who did not arrive till thirteen years later: comp. Neh. viii.-x. and xii. 30, 38.
Such being the nature of the contents of this book, it is evident that the object and plan of its author must have been to collect only such facts and documents as might show the manner in which the Lord God, after the lapse of the seventy years of exile, fulfilled His promise announced by the prophets, by the deliverance of His people from Babylon, the building of the temple at Jerusalem, and the restoration of the temple worship according to the law, and preserved the re-assembled community from fresh relapses into heathen customs and idolatrous worship by the dissolution of the marriages with Gentile women. Moreover, the restoration of the temple and of the legal temple worship, and the separation of the heathen from the newly settled community, were necessary and indispensable conditions for the gathering out of the people of God from among the heathen, and for the maintenance and continued existence of the nation of Israel, to which and through which God might at His own time fulfil and realize His promises made to their forefathers, to make their seed a blessing to all the families of the earth, in a manner consistent both with His dealings with this people hitherto, and with the further development of His promises made through the prophets. The significance of the book of Ezra in sacred history lies in the fact that it enables us to perceive how the Lord, on the one hand, so disposed the hearts of the kings of Persia, the then rulers of the world, that in spite of all the machinations of the enemies of God's people, they promoted the building of His temple in Jerusalem, and the maintenance of His worship therein; and on the other, raised up for His people, when delivered from Babylon, men like Zerubbabel their governor, Joshua the high priest, and Ezra the scribe, who, supported by the prophets Haggai and Zechariah, undertook the work to which they were called, with hearty resolution, and carried it out with a powerful hand.
Several modern critics (Zunz, Ewald, Bertheau, and others) have raised objections both to the single authorship and to the independent character of this book, and declared it to be but a fragment of a larger work, comprising not only the book of Nehemiah, but that of Chronicles also. The section of this work which forms our canonical book of Ezra is said to have been composed and edited by some unknown author about 200 years after Ezra, partly from an older Chaldee history of the building of the temple and of the walls of Jerusalem, partly from a record drawn up by Ezra himself of his agency in Jerusalem, and from certain other public documents. The evidence in favour of this hypothesis is derived, first, from the fact that not only the official letters to the Persian kings, and their decrees (iv. 8-22, v. 6-17, vi. 6-12, vii. 12-26), but also a still longer section on the building of the temple (v. 23-vi. 18), are written in the Chaldee, and the remaining portions in the Hebrew language; next, from the diversity of its style, its lack of internal unity, and its want of finish; and, finally, from the circumstance that the book of Ezra had from of old been combined with that of Nehemiah as one book. These reasons, however, upon closer consideration, prove too weak to confirm this view. For, to begin with the historical testimony, Niigelsbach, in Herzogs RealencycL iv. p. 166, justly finds it "incomprehensible" that Bertheau should appeal to the testimony of the Talmud, the Masora, the most ancient catalogues of Old Testament books in the Christian church, the Cod. Alexandr., the Cod. Friderico Aug., and the LXX., because the comprehension of the two books in one in these authorities is entirely owing to the Jewish mode of computing the books of the Old Testament. Even Josephus (c. Ap. i. 8) reckons twenty-two books, which he arranges, in a manner peculiar to himself, into five books of Moses, thirteen of the prophets, and four containing hymns to God and moral precepts for man; and Jerome says, in ProL Gal.) that the Hebrews reckon twenty-two canonical books, whose names he cites, after the number of the letters of their alphabet, but then adds that some reckoned Ruth and Lamentations separately, thus making twenty-four, because the Rabbis distinguished between V and b>, and received a double Jod (") into the alphabet for the sake of including in it the name HIIT, which when abbreviated is written *\ The number twenty-four is also found in Baba batlir. fob 14. Hence we also find these numbers and computations in the Fathers and in the resolutions of the councils, but with the express distinction of I. and II. Ezra. This distinction is not indeed mentioned in the Talmud; and Baba batlir., I.e., says: Esra scripsit librum suurn et genealogias librorum C/iron. usque ad sua tempora. But what authority can there be in such testimony, which also declares Moses to have been the author not only of the Pentateuch, but also of the book of Job, and Samuel the author of the books of Judges, Ruth, and Samuel? The authority, too, of Cod. Alex, and Cod. Frid. Aug. is opposed to that of Cod. Vatic, and of the LXX., in which the books Ezra and Nehemiah are separated, as they likewise are in the Masoretic text, although the Masoretes regarded and reckoned both as forming but one book.1 This mode of computation, however, affords no ground for the supposition that the books of Ezra and Nehemiah originally formed one work. For in this case we should be obliged to regard the books of the twelve minor prophets as the work of one author. If the number of books was to be reduced to twenty-two or twenty-four, it was necessary to combine smaller works of similar character. The single authorship of the books of Ezra and Nehemiah is most decidedly negatived, not only by the superscription of the latter book, rr^rrfa iT»m nm there being in the entire Old Testament no other instance of a single portion or section of a longer work being distinguished from its other portions by a similar superscription, with the name of the author; but also by the fact already brought forward in the introduction to Chronicles, p. 23, that no reason or motive whatever can