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now finished temple (Ezr 6:14-18), and (as further related, Ezr 6:19-22, in the Hebrew tongue) to celebrate their passover with rejoicing. In the second part (Ezra 7-10), 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 (Ezr 7:1-10) 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 (7:11-26), with a postscript by Ezra (Ezr 7:27.). Then follows a list of those who went up with Ezra (Ezr 8:1-14); and particulars given by Ezra himself concerning his journey, his arrival at Jerusalem (8:14-36), and the energetic proceedings by which he effected the separation of the heathen women from the congregation (9:1-10:17); the book concluding with a list of those who were forced to put away their heathen wives (10:18-44).
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 (Ezr 6:19-22), to the seventh of Artaxerxes, in which Ezra went up from Babylon (Ezr 7:6), separates the events of the first part from those of the second. The narrative of the return of Ezra from Babylon in Ezr 7:1 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