3), it is difficult to gather all the facts.
Nevertheless the undaunted Judaean pressed on unmoved by the threatening letters which were sent around, and succeeded in completing the walls within 52 days. Nehemiah also appears as governor of the small district of Judah and Benjamin. Famine, the avarice of the rich, and the necessity of providing tribute had brought the humbler classes to the lowest straits. Faced with old social abuses, he vehemently contrasted the harshness of the nobles with the generosity of the exiles, who would redeem their poor countrymen from slavery. He himself had always refrained from exacting the usual provision which other governors had claimed; indeed, he had readily entertained over 15o officials and dependants at his table, apart from casual refugees (Neh. v.). We hear something of a 12 years' governorship and of a second visit ; but the evidence does not enable us to determine the sequence (xiii. 6). Neh. v. is placed in the middle of the building of the walls in 52 days; the other reforms during the second visit are closely connected with the dedication of the walls, and with the events which immediately follow his first arrival, when he had come to rebuild the city. Nehemiah also remedies religious abuses. He found the busy agriculturists and traders (some from Tyre) pursuing their usual labours on the Sabbath, now more strictly observed, and he pointed to the disasters which had re sulted in the past from such profanation (Neh. xiii. 18; cf. Jer. xvii. 20 sqq.; Ezek. xx. 13-24; Isa. lvi. 2, 6; lviii. Moreover, the maintenance of the Temple servants called for supervision ; the customary allowances had not been paid to the Levites, who had come to Jerusalem after the smaller shrines had been put down, and they had forsaken the city. His last acts were the most significant. Jews had married women of Ashdod, Ammon and Moab, and the impetuous governor indignantly ad jured them to desist from the historic cause of national sin. Even members of the priestly families had intermarried with Tobiah and Sanballat ; the former had a chamber in the Temple, the daughter of the latter was the wife of a son of Joiada, the son of the high priest, Eliashib. Tobiah was cast out, the offending priest expelled and a general purging followed, in which the foreign elements were removed. With this Nehemiah brings the account of his reforms to a conclusion, and the words "Remember me, 0 my God, for good" (xiii. 31) have a meaning. According to Josephus (Ant. xi. 7, 2), a certain Manasseh, the brother of Jaddua and grandson of Joiada, refused to divorce his wife, the daughter of Sanballat. For this he was driven out, and, taking refuge with the Samaritans, founded a rival temple and priesthood upon Mt. Gerizim, to which repaired other priests and Levites who had been guilty of mixed marriages. There is little doubt that Josephus refers to the same events; but he places the schism and the foundation of the new Temple in the time of Alexander the Great. At all events, there is now a complete rupture with Samaria, and thus, in the concluding chapter of the last of the historical books of the Old Testament, Judah maintains its claim to the heritage 'of Israel and rejects the right of the Samaritans to the title.
16. Ezra.—In this separation of the Judaeans from religious and social intercourse with their neighbours, the work of Ezra (q.v.) requires notice. The story of this scribe (now combined with the memoirs of Nehemiah) crystallizes the new movement inaugurated after a return of exiles from Babylonia. The age can also be illustrated from Isa. lvi.–lxvi. and Malachi (q.v.). There was a poor and weak Jerusalem, its Temple stood in need of renovation, its temple-service was mean, its priests unworthy of their office. On the one side was the poverty of the poor; on the other the pride of the governors. There were two religious parties: one exclusive, the other more cosmopolitan and syncretising, extended a freer welcome to strangers, and tolerated the popular and superstitious cults of the day (Isa. lxv. seq.). But the former won and, realizing that the only hope of maintaining a pure wor ship of Yahweh lay in a forcible isolation from foreign influence, it took measures to ensure the religious independence of their assembly. It is related that Ezra, the scribe and priest, returned to Jerusalem with priests and Levites, lay exiles, and a store of vessels for the Temple. He was commissioned to enquire into the religious condition of the land and to disseminate the teaching of the Law to which he had devoted himself (Ezra vii.). On his arrival the people were gathered together, and he read "the book of the Law of Moses" daily for seven days (Neh. viii.). They entered into an agreement to obey its teaching, undertaking in particular to avoid marriages with foreigners (x. 28 sqq.). An account is given of this reform (Ezra ix. seq.), and Ezra's horror at the intermarriages, which threatened to destroy the distinctive character of the community, sufficiently indicates the attitude of the stricter party. The true seed of Israel separated themselves from all foreigners (not, however, without some opposition) and formed an exclusively religious body or "congregation." Dreams of political freedom gave place to hopes of religious independence, and "Israel" became a church, the foundation of which it sought in the desert of Sinai a thousand years before. (See SAMARITANS and for Torrey's views, EZRA AND NEHEMIAH, BOOKS OF; NEHEMIAH.) Post-exilic Judaism.—With Nehemiah and Ezra we enter upon the era of normative Judaism. Judah was a religious com munity whose representative was the high priest of Jerusalem. Instead of sacerdotal kings, there were royal priests, anointed with oil, arrayed with kingly insignia, claiming the usual royal dues in addition to the customary rights of the priests. With his priests and Levites, and with the chiefs and nobles of the Jewish families, the high priest directs this small State, and his death marks an epoch as truly as did that of the monarchs in the past. This hierarchical government, which can find no foundation in the Hebrew monarchy, is the forerunner of the Sanhedrin (q.v.) ; it is an institution which, however inaugurated, set its stamp upon the narratives which have survived. Laws were recast in accordance with the requirements of the time, with the result that by the side of usages evidently of very great antiquity, details now appear which were previously unknown or wholly unsuitable.