1

A. M. 3175. A. C. 529; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M. 4947. A. C. 464. EZRA iv. 7-end, EST. NEH. PART OF HAG. ZECH. MAL, the first day of the first month. He made a short stay world a narrative how himself behaved in that high sta indeed at the river Ahava; but it was the first day of tion; though, in doing this, he could not avoid the saythe fifth month before he reached Jerusalem. Nehemiah ing of something in his own commendation, unless he could not possibly set out so soon in the year, because had been minded, out of his excessive modesty, to conhis commission from the king, and instructions to the ceal from posterity (which it had been invidious to do) neighbouring governors, must have taken some time in an excellent example of his extraordinary virtue, and passing through the several offices: and therefore we love of his country. can scarce suppose that he reached Jerusalem sooner than the time specified; and from thence to the twentyfifth day of the sixth month, (including the three days of rest that he gave himself before he began,) the space will be much about fifty-two days, wherein we suppose that the whole work was finished: ' for if Alexander the Great, as Arrianus and Curtius relate, built the walls of Alexandria, which was seven miles in compass, in the space of twenty days, why should it be thought a thing incredible, that a vast number, not of hired but voluntary men, full of zeal for the work themselves, animated by the example of their rulers, and ranged and distributed in a proper manner for dispatch, should, in almost thrice that space of time, be able to finish a work of less compass, when they had long summer days for it, plenty of stones, and other materials hard at hand, the foundation of the wall unrazed, some parts of it standing entire, only some breaches here and there to be amended; and when their design in the whole was, not to study curiosity but strength, and to provide themselves with such a fortification for the present, as would secure them from any sudden invasion of their enemies?

How long Nehemiah continued at the Persian court, after his return from Jerusalem, the sacred history nowhere informs us. It tells us, indeed, that he came back again, after certain days; but since the word yamin, which we render days, does equally signify years, and in many places of the Hebrew Scriptures is used in that sense, we cannot but wonder how the generality of chronologers, as well as commentators, came to overlook this sense of the word, and in so doing, to make Nehemiah's stay at Shushan much shorter than it possibly could be. For since he had been twelve years in reforming what he found amiss among the Jews, and Ezra had been doing the same for thirteen years before him; they must, one would think, have brought their reformation to such a state and stability, that a little time could not have been sufficient so totally to have unhinged it: and therefore we may conclude, that his absence at court, which gave room for these irregularities to grow to such an height, was not for certain days, but for some years' continuance; and consequently that the author of this part of his life had no intention, either to magnify his good offices, or to relate any thing incredible concerning him; since, though he acquaints us with sundry corruptions that had sprung up, yet he makes the time of his absence, if we take his words in their proper sense, long enough for that purpose.

That Nehemiah was the writer of the account of his own government in Judea, for that is the subject of his book, most interpreters are agreed: ' and, as he appears in that character, it cannot misbecome him to give the

St Paul, no doubt, was a very modest man: "he durst not, as he tells us, make himself of the number, or compare himself with such as commended themselves; and yet, in the very next chapter, (that he might stop the mouths of false apostles, and covetous people,) we find him telling the Corinthians, that he preached the gospel to them freely, and without desiring any contributions of them for his necessary support. I robbed other churches,' says he, ‘taking wages of them, to do you service; and when I was present with you, and wanted, I was chargeable to no man :-for in all things I have kept myself from being burdensome to you, and so will I keep myself; as the truth of Christ is in me, no man shall stop me of this boasting in the regions of Achaia; for what I do, that I will do, that I may cut off occasion from those that desire occasion, that wherein they glory, they may be found even as we :' and after all this, can any find fault with Nehemiah, for telling his reader, that what was prepared for me daily, was an ox and six choice sheep, fowls in proportion, and once in ten days, store of all sorts of wine; yet for all this, required not I the bread of the governor,' that is, the allowances which were made to the governors appointed by the kings of Persia, to provide them a table, ́ because the bondage was heavy upon this people,' and they not in a condition, without much difficulty, to maintain themselves: wherefore think upon me, O God, for good, according to all that I have done for this people.'

To serve God for nothing, or purely for his own sake, is a notion that perhaps may comport with our glorified state, where our service will be attended with vision; but, at present, it is too romantic, and what the Author of our being expects not from us. He who made us, and set the springs in our nature, knows very well, that we are principally moved by hopes and fears, and for this reason has propounded rewards and punishments to us; nor did we ever find it, till now, accounted a flaw in the character of the worthies of old, or an indication of their mercenary spirits, that, in all their good works or sufferings, they had a respect to the recompence of the reward, which God, the righteous judge,' had promised to give unto his faithful servants.

10

Ezra, no doubt, was at this time a man of great esteem among his brethren, and no less favoured in the Persian court; otherwise Artaxerxes would never have granted him a commission to reform and regulate the affairs of the Jewish church, fraught with such ample powers Ever since that time, the Jews have looked upon him as another Moses, who, as Moses was the giver of the law, revived and restored it, after it had been in a manner quite lost and extinguished in the Babylonish captivity. There is some reason to believe therefore, that "this scribe of the law of the God of heaven,' was the usual title or appellation of honour, whereby Ezra was digni

A. M. 3475. A. C. 529 ; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M. 4947. A. C. 464. EZRA iv. 7—END, EST. NEH. PART OF HAG. ZECH. MAL.

fied and distinguished among his countrymen; and that Artaxerxes might take it upon common report, and so insert it in his commission, as the name whereby he was generally styled among the Jews, without ever giving himself time to consider what was the full purport and intendment of it.

But if even he did attend to this, yet, as the heathens had different kinds of gods, celestial, terrestrial, and infernal, he might easily reconcile this to his own principles, only by supposing that this God of the Jews was one of the celestial order, and, though a deity peculiar to them, might nevertheless be reverenced and worshipped by him in conjunction with his other gods.

agreed, that the same hand which composed the two books of Chronicles was concerned in writing that part of Ezra, because the Chronicle concludes with the very same words wherewith the history begins, which, in ancient authors, to connect the thread of the discourse, as Grotius observes, is no unusual thing. The Jewish doctors indeed are chiefly of opinion, that these Chronicles were written by Ezra. But this can hardly be, because the author, whoever he was, continues the genealogy of Zerubbabel to the twelfth generation, which is lower than Ezra lived. Nor can Ezra be the author of the six first chapters of the book which bears his name, because the person who wrote it is said to have been at Jerusalem in the time of Darius Hystaspes; whereas Ezra did not go thither until the reign of Artaxerxes. It is most likely, therefore, that Ezra, upon his coming to Jerusalem, might meet with certain annals or memoirs kept, of the several transactions that had happened since the time of the people's return from captivity, and that to these, after he had made an extract of such as were true and authentic, he added a farther continuation of the history of his own government. For, that the four last chapters of the book were of his own composing, is evident from this testimony. And at evening sacrifice,

10

I arose up from my heaviness, and having rent my garment, and my mantle, I fell upon my knees, and spread out my hands unto the Lord.' Then follows the prayer which he made, and immediately it is subjoined, Now when Ezra had prayed, and when he had confessed, and cast himself down before the house of God:' which plainly shows, that Ezra was the author of that part of the book, which speaks of himself in the first person.

But, after all, if we reflect a little on the ease and indolence, and, in a manner, total sequestration from all business, wherein these great monarchs of the east were used to indulge themselves, we shall find reason to believe, that Artaxerxes knew nothing of the matter. If he be the same who goes under the name of Ahasuerus in the book of Esther, he had been imposed on by Haman to consent to a bloody decree against the Jews, with so little thought and consideration of what he was about, that he did not so much as remember the person at whose instigation it was done : and yet, notwithstanding the great mischief which this negligence of his might have brought upon him, we find him instantly sinking into the like sleepy and careless temper. 2 Write ye for the Jews, says he to Mordecai and Esther, as it liketh you, in the king's name, and seal it with the king's ring,' and whatever is thus wrote and sealed, no man may reverse. And, by parity of reason, why may we not suppose, that when Ezra applied to court for his commission, the whole form of drawing it up was referred And, in like manner, that Nehemiah was the writer of to him, and such other Jews as he thought proper to take what is reputed his, seems to be evident," not only from into his council? For, 'Write ye, as it liketh you, in the his own declaration in the front of it, (which was the king's name,' might, in one case as well as the other, practice of Herodotus, Thucydides, and other ancient be all that the king had to say to the matter. And in-historians in those days,) but from the testimony of the deed, if we look into the contents of the commission itself, we shall soon perceive that it must have been drawn by something more than a heathen hand. For if Ezra himself had been to dictate the words, how could he have expressed the tenor of his commission more fully than in these forasmuch as thou art sent by the king, and his seven counsellors, to inquire concerning Judah and Jerusalem, according to the law of thy God, which is in thine hand:' what Jewish king could have given more pious instructions than these: and thou Ezra, after the wisdom of thy God, set magistrates and judges, such as know the laws of thy God, and teach ye them that know them not? And where can we find a livelier sense of God's supreme authority, and of that regard which is due from the greatest kings and potentates to his commands, more emphatically expressed than here: 'whatsoever is commanded by the God of heaven, let it be diligently done for the house of the God of heaven?' "Words," as Jacobus Capellus, in a kind of rapture, cries out, "fit to be written upon the palaces of kings in letters of gold, and engraven on the minds of all the faithful with a stile of adamant.”

36

Jewish church likewise, which all along received it into their canon, and from the approbation of the seventy interpreters, who, from the very first, gave it a place in their translation under that name.

There is some difficulty, indeed, in reconciling the account of Josephus concerning Sanballat, and what is recorded of him in Nehemiah. Josephus" tells us," That he, being made governor of Samaria under the last Darius, married his daughter to one whose father had been high priest of the Jews, and that when his son-inlaw was thereupon driven out of Jerusalem, he obtained leave of Alexander to build a temple on mount Gerizim, like that at Jerusalem, and to make him the priest thereof." Now, to make this accord with what we read in Nehemiah," the general opinion is, that there were two Sanballats, the first the Sanballat of the Holy Scriptures, and the other the Sanballat of Josephus; and that there were two marriages contracted by two different persons, sons of two different high priests of the Jews, with two different women, who were each daughters of two different Sanballats; the first the daughter of the Sanballat of the Scriptures, and the other the daughter of the Sanballat of Josephus, and that he who married the first of them 8 Chap. vii.

1 Chron. iii. 19.

9 Chap. ix. 5.

Ezra v, and vi.

10 Ezra x. 1. Huetii Demonst, prop. 4.

12 Jewish Antiq. b. xi. c. 7 and 8.
13 Prideaux's Connection, anno 409.

2

7

6

A. M. 3475. A. C. 529; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M. 4947. A. C. 464. EZRA iv. 7-END, EST. NEH. PART OF HAG ZECH. MAL. was the son of Joiada, but he who married the second of | hereof is obvious, namely, because the authors who them was the son of Johanan, and brother of Jaddua. wrote of the affairs of Persia at this time, entered no But there is no reason to have recourse to this perplexed farther into them than as they were coincident with the solution, seeing that Josephus has incurred a palpable affairs of Greece; and though the last six chapters of mistake in point of chronology. For, since this mar- this history are not to be found in any Hebrew copy, yet riage was consummated while Joiada, the son of Eliashib, Origen is of opinion, that once they were extant, though was the high priest of the Jews, even in the fifth year of now lost, and that from it the Septuagint formed their his pontificate; and since he entered upon that office translation; though others, with more probability, think, in the eleventh year of Darius Nothus, who reigned in that (as the history of this memorable transaction might all nineteen years, it must follow, that the license which be recorded by divers hands) there were once two HeSanballat obtained for the building of a temple at Sama- brew copies of it, one in a larger, and the other in a less ria, was not from Alexander, but from this Darius, in the volume, and that, as the less is what we have at present, fifteenth year of his reign, and above eighty years before from the larger has proceeded the Greek copy, with its the Darius Codomannus whom Alexander vanquished was sundry additions. known. There is no occasion, therefore, to suppose any more Sanballats than one, or to extend his life to any immoderate length; only we may perceive, that Josephus was under a mistake in placing this Sanballat under the reign of Codomannus, who should have been placed under a former Darius, sirnamed Nothus; and conse-like notion of him, this might be reason sufficient for his quently, that all he tells us of this Sanballat's attending Alexander in his wars, and obtaining of him a license to build a temple, is a mere fiction founded on that mistake; because, in Alexander's time, the Samaritans, by murdering Andromachus, his governor of Syria, had so incensed that great conqueror against them, that, instead of granting them any favours, we find him making all the havoc of them that he could.

8

Haman, we read, was an Amalekite, one of that nation against which God pronounced a curse; and therefore, upon this consideration, Mordecai night think himself not obliged to pay him the reverence which he expected; and, if the rest of the Jews had the

9

extending his resentment against the whole nation. But there seems to be something more in the reverence which the people were commanded to pay him, than what is the effect of civil respect. The king of Persia, we know, expected a kind of divine adoration from all that approached his presence; ' as we read of one Timagoras, upon whom the people of Athens passed sentence of death, for his worshipping of Darius, accounting the honour of their whole city debased by this mean submission of one of their citizens, though at that time Darius was one of the greatest monarchs upon earth. And as the kings of Persia did arrogate this to themselves, so they sometimes imparted it to their chief friends and favourites, as it seems at this time to have been the case with Haman. For we can hardly conceive, why the king should give a particular command, 10 that all his servants should reverence him, if by this reverence no more is intended than that they should show him a respect suitable to his station: but now, if we suppose that the homage expected from them was such as came near to idolatry," we need not wonder, that a Jew should deny that honour, or the outward

Who the author of the book of Esther was, the opinions of the learned are various. Some ascribe it to Ezra, others to Mordecai, others to Mordecai and Esther in conjunction, and others again to the joint labours of the great synagogue, who, from the time of Ezra to Simon the Just, superintended the edition and canon of Scripture. Those who contend for Mordecai, have these words to allege in his behalf: And Mordecai wrote these things, and sent letters unto all the Jews, that were in all the provinces of king Ahasuerus, and the Jews undertook to do as Mordecai had written to them: 5 but the thing is evident, that these words relate, not to the book itself, but to the circular letters which Mordecai sent to the Jews, in all the provinces of the Persian empire, signifying what a nighty deliverance God had vouch-expressions of it, to any man, since the wise and sober safed them, and, in commemoration of it, instituting an annual festival to be observed for ever.

And indeed the institution of this annual festival, and its continued observation, is a standing proof that this history of Esther is real, and not fictitious; since we can hardly conceive, how a wise nation should at first appoint, and afterwards continue the celebration of this solemn time of feasting and rejoicing every year, merely because a certain man among them had once the good fortune to write an agreeable fable or romance; much less can we conceive, from what motive a whole assembly of learned doctors should receive a writing of no better character into the canon of their Scriptures, or (to make it of more universal use) should honour it with a Greek translation.

It must be owned, indeed, that no foreign author has taken any notice of this piece of history; but the reason

Greeks did positively refuse to give it to the very kings
themselves. And that this was the case before us, the
author of the apocryphal additions to the book of Esther
seems to imply, when he introduces Mordecai as pray-
ing in these words,-12 Thou knowest, O Lord, that it
is not contumacy, nor pride, nor desire of vain glory,
that makes me not worship Haman : for I would willingly
kiss his feet for the safety of Israel. But I do it, that

I may not prefer the glory of a man, to the glory of
God, nor adore any one but thee, my Lord, alone.'

Though we are far from pretending to apologize, either for the injustice of Ahasuerus in abdicating his queen, or for the conduct of Esther in going to his bed, yet a good deal of this might be resolved into the custom of a nation, where the king was absolute, and his subjects mere vassals, where the will of the prince, I say,

A. M. 3473. A. C. 529; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M. 4947. A. C. 464. EZRA iv. 7--END, EST. NEH. PART OF HAG. ZECH. MAL. was a perfect law, and a plurality of wives and concu- | which was to be paid to Haman; and the interposition bines reputed honourable. This, however, may be said of Providence in behalf of the Jewish nation, even durin behalf of Ahasuerus, that he did not divorce his wife, ing their captivity, had been so visible, that the wise without first consulting his counsellors, and such as were men about Haman might, from experience, form a conbest acquainted with the laws of their country; and jecture, that if their God was become their friend, (as by therefore, if there was any iniquity in it, they were the this strange turn of affairs in favour of Mordecai it looked persons chiefly to be blamed, who represented the as if he was,) no weapon forged against them would queen's disobedience as a crime of such a dangerous prosper; because they had seen so many plots, which nature, that it would have had a noxious influence upon would have crushed any other nation, turn to their the whole nation, had it not been severely punished. advancement, as well as their enemies' destruction. The And this may be said in excuse for Esther, that the advice which Achior gave to Holofernes, is founded words which we render, she was brought,' may equally upon the known experience of those times, and bespeaks signify she was taken away,' namely, by violence; a man well acquainted with the state of the Jews: 'Now, * for (as the Targum upon this passage relates the matter) therefore, my lord, and governor, if there be any error 'Mordecai, hearing of the king's edict for the collection in this people, and they sin against their God, let us of all the beautiful virgins in his dominions, hid his consider that this will be their ruin.-But if there be no cousin in a private place, where the officers could not iniquity in their nation, let my lord now pass by, lest find her; but when Esther (whom all the neighbourhood their Lord defend them, and their God be for them, and knew to be a great beauty) was missing, an order from we become a reproach before all the world.' Considerthe king to Mordecai was procured, which, upon pain of ing, then, that Mordecai was of the seed of the Jews, a death, obliged him to produce her.' However this be, people whom God had wonderfully raised from under it is certain, that the persons whom the king took to his great oppressions, and that, at this time, there was a bed in this manner, were not reputed harlots, but became desperate design, by Haman's management, carrying his lawful wives, though wives of an inferior degree; on against them, Haman's wise men might easily, and and therefore it is no great wonder, that Esther, in these without the spirit of prophecy, divine, ' that as Mordecai circumstances, though a very virtuous woman, should (whom they knew to be a man of great courage and consent; nor can we tell, but that Mordecai and she wisdom,) was now got into the king's favour, it would might have a dispensation from God, (as God, no doubt, not be long before he would find an opportunity of apcan dispense with his own laws,) supposing there were plying to him, who was a person of a mild disposition, any contrariety to the divine laws in this transaction. for a revocation of the bloody decree which Haman, by imposing upon his credulity, had procured, and consequently of ruining Haman in the king's good graces. For the known instability of court favours, and the little quarter that there is given to rivals or enemies, made it no hard matter, from Mordecai's advancement to read Haman's destiny.

5

To account for the humour of princes, and their management of public affairs, is next to a thing impossible. We see, even among us, that great men are sometimes unmindful of the highest services that are done them, and take no care to reward them, especially if the person be in himself obscure, and not supported by a proper recommendation. And therefore we are not at Haman, indeed, was outrageously bent against the all to wonder, if a prince, that buried himself in indo-Jews, and what he offered the king in lieu of the damage lence, and made it a part of his grandeur to live un-which his revenues might sustain by the destruction of so acquainted and unconcerned with what passed in his dominions, (as this was the custom of most eastern kings,) should overlook the great service which Mordecai had done him, or if he ordered him a reward, that, by the artifice of those at court, who were no well-wishers to the Jews, he might be disappointed of it.

6

many of his subjects, is a prodigious sum for any private man to be owner of; but we read of several such persons in history, who, in those ancient times, were possessors of much greater. Pithius the Lydian, for instance, when Xerxes passed into Greece, was possessed of 2000 talents of silver, and of 4,000,000 daricks in gold, which There seems, however, to have been a particular direc- together, amounted to near L5,500,000 of our sterling tion of providence in having his reward delayed till this money; and Marcus Crassus, the Roman, after he had time, when he and all his nation were appointed to de- | consecrated the tenth of what he had to Hercules, feasted struction, when the remembrance of his services might all the people of Rome at 10,000 tables, and gave be a means to recommend them to the king's mercy, and a donative of corn to every citizen, as much as would the honours conferred on him a deep mortification to his last him three months, found the remainder of his esadversary. These honours indeed were very remark-tate to be 7,100 Roman talents, which amount to above able; but by Haman's manner of proposing them, they seem to have been the usual marks of distinction and esteem, that the kings of Persia conferred on those whom they were minded to make conspicuous; and so far was Mordecai from being elated with then, that as soon as the solemnity was over, we read, that he returned to his duty, and attendance at the king's gate. He had declared himself a Jew, to satisfy the people at court, that he could not, with a good conscience, comply with the king's command relating to the reverence

3

L1,500,000 of our money. This may seem a little strange to us at present; but our wonder will cease, if we consider that, from the time of David and Solomon, and for 1500 years afterwards, the riches of this kind were in much greater plenty than they are now. The prodigious quantities of gold and silver which Alexander found in the treasures of Darius; the vast loads of them which were often carried before the Roman generals, when they returned from conquered provinces; and the

4 Judith v. 20, 21.

S Poole's Annot. and Patrick's Comment. on Esther vi. 13.
6 Herodotus, b. vii.
Plutarch in Crasso,

CHAP. III.—Of Ezra's edition of the Holy Scriptures and the institution of Synagogue-Worship.

36

A. M. 3475. A. C. 529; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M. 4947. A. C. 464. EZRA iv. 7-END, EST. NEH. PART OF HAG. ZECH. MAL excessive sums which certain of their emperors expended| in donatives, feasts, shows, and other instances of luxury and prodigality, are of this proof sufficient: but at length the mines of the ancient Ophir, which furnished all this plenty, being exhausted, and by the burning of cities, and devastation of countries, which followed upon the eruptions of the Goths, Vandals, and Huns, and other barbarous nations in the west, and of the Saracens, Turks, and Tartars in the east, a great part of the gold and silver, which the world then abounded with, being wasted and destroyed by this means, the great scarcity | Malachi, and had that title given him because he was of both, which afterwards ensued, was occasioned; nor have the mines of Mexico, Peru, and Brazil, been as yet able fully to repair it.

EZRA, no doubt, in his knowledge of the Holy Scriptures, was a great man. The sacred history gives him this character, that he was a ready scribe in the law of Moses, which the Lord God of Israel had given.' The Jewish doctors look upon him as the second founder of it; and are generally of opinion, that he was the prophet

sent as God's messenger, to revive their religion, after it had been, in a manner, quite extinguished. Nay, 'many ancient fathers of the Christian church attribute more to him, in this particular, than even the Jews themselves; for they suppose, that, in the Babylonish captivity, all the Scriptures were entirely lost and destroyed, but that Ezra, by divine revelation, renewed and recovered them again. This, however, is carrying the compliment too far, and leaving the authority of the Holy Scriptures to stand upon a very precarious bottom; since some may be apt to infer, that he who is said thus wonderfully to have restored them, might much more likely have forged the whole.

The great sum which Haman would have given to gratify his revenge against the Jewish nation, was an additional provocation to them, no doubt, to slay every one who came to annoy them; but then it must be considered that, in this, they acted by virtue of an edict, which authorized them to stand upon their own defence; that they were not the first aggressors, but only opposed those that openly assaulted them, and were for putting an unjust decree in execution against them; and as the Amalekites, who might be dispersed throughout the Persian dominions, were the known and inveterate enemies of the Jews, and, following now the fortune of Haman, might be forward enough to execute the decree which he had procured against them, it is therefore reasonably pre-by the pious care of that good prince, we are informed, sumed, that most of those whom the Jews, in their necessary defence, both in Shushan and in the provinces, did destroy, were of that devoted nation; and that, by this their slaughter, the prophecies against Amalek were accomplished.

We readily acknowledge, indeed, that in the time of Josiah, through the two preceding reigns of Manasseh and Ammon, copies of the law might be very scarce. But

that this defect was soon remedied; that copies were taken of the original law that was then found in the temple; that search was made in the schools of the prophets, and in all other places where they could be found, for the other parts of holy writ, and transcripts formed out of these likewise, so that, in a short time, all that were desirous to know the law of their God, either by writing them out themselves, or procuring others to do it for them, were furnished with copies both of the law and the prophets. Within a few years, indeed, the city and temple were destroyed, and with them was the authentic copy of the laws, which was reposited in the temple, burned and consumed; but before this calamity befell the Jews, all the sacred writings then extant were got into private hands, and carried away with them into captivity.

However this be, we cannot take leave of this wonderful deliverance of the Jewish nation, without making this one reflection upon it, namely, "That though, in the whole, there was no extraordinary manifestation of God's power, no particular cause or agent, that was in its working, advanced above the ordinary pitch of nature; yet the contrivance, and suiting these ordinary agents appointed by God, is, in itself, more admirable than if the same end had been effected by means that were truly miraculous. That a king should not sleep, is no unusual thing, nor that he should solace his waking thoughts by hearing the annals of his own kingdom, or the journals That Daniel had a copy of the Holy Scriptures with of his own reign, read to him, &c. ; but that he should lie him in Babylon, is certain, because he not only quotes awake at that time especially, when Haman was watch-the law, but makes mention likewise of the prophecies ing to destroy the Jews; and that, in the chronicles of of the prophet Jeremiah, which he could not have done, the kingdom they should light on that place where Mor- had he not had them by him. That, at the finishing of decai's unrewarded services were recorded; that the the temple, (which was in the sixth of Darius, and above king thereupon should resolve forthwith to do him ho- fifty years before Ezra came to Jerusalem,) copies of nour; that Haman should come in at the very nick of the law were in common use, no one can doubt, who time, when he was so disposed, and should ignorantly reads, how the priests and Levites were settled in their determine what honour should be done him, and be ap-respective functions, & according as it is written in the pointed to that ungrateful office himself: this was from books of Moses:' and that when the people called for the keeper of Israel,' who 'neither slumbers nor sleeps,' the Scripture, to have it read unto them, they did not and was truly marvellous in his people's eyes.' For request of Ezra to get it anew dictated to him, but that although miracles, in their nature, are more apt to strike he would bring forth the book of the law of Moses, the sense, yet such secret contrivances of God's wisdom

3 Ezra vii. 6.

See Chald. Paraph, in Malach.; and Buxtorf in Tiberiade, c. 3. See Irenæus against Hæresies, b. iii. c. 15; Tertul. on the Dress of Women, c. iii; Hieronym. against Helvidius: August. on the Miracles of Scripture, b. ii; and Chrysost. Hom. S. on the Epistle to the Hebrews.

Dan. ix. 11. 13. Ibid. ver. 2. Ezra vi. 18. Neb.viii, 1.