THE

Old and New Testaments

CONNECTED, &c.

BOOK III.

An. 536.

Cyrus 1.

CYRUS having issued out his decree for the restor ing of the Jews unto their own land, and the rebuilding of the temple at Jerusalem, they gathered together out of the several parts of the kingdom of Babylon, to the number of forty-two thousand three hundred and sixty persons, with their servants, which amounted to seven thousand three hundred and thirty-seven more.

Their chief leaders were bZerubbabel, the son of Salathiel, the son of Jehoiachin, or Jeconias, king of Judah, and Jeshua, the son of Jozadak, the high priest. Zerubbabel (whose Babylonish name was Sheshbazzar) was maded governour of the land, under the title of Tirshatha, by commission from Cyrus. But Jeshua was high priest by lineal descent from the pontifical family; for he was the son of Jozadak, who was the son of Seraiah, that was high priest when Jerusalem was destroyed, and the temple burned by the Chaldeans. Seraiah,being then taken prisoner by Nebuzaradan, and carried to Nebuchadnezzar to Riblah in Syria,was fthen put to death by him: but Jozadak his son, being spared as to his life, was only with the rest led captive to Babylon, where he died before the decree of restoration came forth; and therefore the office of high priest was then in Joshua his son, and under that title he is named, next

a Ezra i; & ii.

c Ezra i, 8, 11.

e 1 Chron. vi, 14, 15.

1 Chron. vi, 15.

b Ezra ii, 2.

d Ezra v, 14.

f 2 Kings xxv, 18.

h Ezra ii, 2 ; iii, 2. Hag. i, 12; ii, 2.

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Zerubbabel, among the first of those that returned. The rest were Nehemiah, Seraiah, Reelaia, Mordecai, Bilsham, Mispar, Bigvai, Rheum, and Baanah, who were the prime leaders of the people, and the chief assistants to Zerubbabel, in the resettling of them again in their own land, and are by the Jewish writers reckoned the chief men of the great synagogue; so they call the convention of elders, which, they say, sat at Jerusalem after the return of the Jews, and did there again re-establish all their affairs both as to church and state, of which they speak great things as shall hereaf ter be shewn. But it is to be observed, that the Nehemiah and Mordecai abovementioned, were not the Nehemiah and Mordecai of whom there is so much said in the books of Nehemiah and Esther, but quite different persons who bore the same name.

At the same time that Cyrus issued out his decree for the rebuilding of the temple at Jerusalem, he order ed all the vessels to be restored which had been taken from thence. Nebuchadnezzar, on the burning of the former temple, had brought them to Babylon, and placed them there in the temple of Bel his god. From thence they were, according to Cyrus' order, by Mith redath, the king's treasurer, delivered to Zerubbabel, who carried them back again to Jerusalem. All the vessels of gold and silver that were at this time restored were five thousand four hundred; the remainder was brought back by Ezra, in the reign of Ar taxerxes Longimanus, many years after.

And not only those of Judah and Benjamin, but several also of the other tribes, took the benefit of this decree to return again into their own land: for some of them who were carried away by Tiglath Pileser, Salmanezer, and Esarhaddon, still retained the true worship of God in a strange land, and did not go into the idolatrous usages and impieties of the heathens, among whom they were dispersed, but joined themselves to the Jews, when, by a like captivity, they were brought into the same parts; and some, after all the Assyrian captivities, were still left in the land. For we find some of them still there in the

i Ezra ii, 2. Neh. vii, 7. k Ezra i, 7-11. 1 Tobit i, 11, 12; & xiv, 2.

time ofm Josiah, and they suffered the Babylonish captivity, as well as the Jews, till at length they were wholly carried away in the last of them by Nebuzaradan, in the twenty-third year of Nebuchadnezzar. And many of them had long before left their tribes for their religion, and, incorporating themselves with their brethren of Judah and Benjamin, dwelt in their cities, and there fell into the same calamity with them in their captivity under the Babylonians. And of all these a great number took the advantage of this decree again to return and dwell in their own cities; for both Cyrus' decree, as well as that of Artaxerxes, extended to all the house of Israel. The decree of Artaxerxes? is, by the name, to all the people of Israel, and that of Cyrus is to all the people of the God of Israel, that is, as appears by the text, to all those that worshipped God at Jerusalem, which must be understood of the people of Israel, as well as of Judah; for that temple was built for both, and both had an equal right to worship God there. And therefore Ezra, when he returned, in the reign of Artaxerxes Longimanus, sent a copy of the king's decree, whereby that favour was granted him through all Media, where the ten tribes were in captivity, as well as through all Chaldea and Assyria, where the Jews were in captivity; which plainly implies, that both of them were included in that decree, and that being a renewal of the decree of Cyrus, both must be understood of the same extent. And we are told in Scripture, that, after the captivity, some of the children of Ephraim and Manasseh dwelt in Jerusalem, as well as those of Judah and Benjamin. And it appears from several places in the New Testament, that some of all the tribes were still in being among the Jews, even to the time of their last dispersion on the destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans, though then all were comprehended under the name of Jews, which, after the Babylonish captivity, became the general name of the whole nation, as that of Israelites was before. And

S

this being premised, it solves the difficulty which ariseth from the difference that is between the general number, and the particulars of those that returned upon Cyrus' decree. For the general number both in Ezra and Nehemiah, is said to be forty-two thousand three hundred and sixty; but the particulars, as reckoned up in their several families in Ezra, amount only to twenty-nine thousand eight hundred and eighteen, and in Nehemiah, to thirty-one thousand and thirty-one. The meaning of which is, they are only the tribes of Judah, Benjamin, and Levi, that are reckoned by their families in both these places," the rest being of the other tribes of Israel, are numbered only in the gross sum, and this is that which makes the gross sum so much exceed the particulars in both the computations. But how it comes to pass, that the particulars in Ezra differ from the particulars in Nehemiah, since there are several ways how this may be accounted for, and, we can only conjecture which of them may be the right, I shall not take upon me to determine.

Of the twenty-four courses of the priests that were carried away to Babylon, only four returned, and they were the courses of Jedaiah, Immer, Pashur, and Harim, which made up the number of four thousand two hundred and eighty-nine persons. The rest either tarried behind or were extinct. However, the old number of the courses, as established by king David, were still kept up. For, of the four courses that returned, each subdivided themselves into six, and the new courses taking the names of those that were wanting, still kept up the old titles; and hence it is, that after this Mattathias is said to have been of the course of Joarib, and Zecharias of the course of Abia, though neither of these courses were of the number of those that returned. For the new courses took the names of the old ones, though they were not descended from them, and so they were continued by the same names under the second temple, as they had been under the

u Seder Olam Rabba, c. 29.

x Ezra ii, 36–89.

y Talmud. Hierosol. in Taanith.

z 1 Mac. ii, 1.

a Luke i, 5.