In v. 4 we read—' Then said we unto them after this manner, What are the names of the men that make this building ?' whence Movers infers that the writer was an eye-witness and contemporary. The example of Joshua, v. 6, is adduced as confirma tory. But this passage is not a valid proof.
To the compiler belongs vi. 19-22. It describes the celebration of a passover, whose attendant circumstances in honour of the Levites resemble the celebration of the passover under King IIeze kiah, as related in Chronicles (2 Chron. xxx. 15 2.5). In the 22d verse the king of Persia is termed king of Assyria ; which reminds one of 2 Chron.
xxxiii. i 1. The same redactor continues in vii. t-ti. Here he begins with a genealogy of Ezra, which nearly agrees with I Chron. vi. 35-38. The way in which Ezra is spoken of in ver. 6, to, 1, shews that he himself could not have so written. He is termed a ready scribe in the law of Moses ;' it is said that he had prepared his heart to seek the law of the Lord, and to do it ;' and an explanation of -ivp is given in the nth verse, which is incorrect. The only objection to attributing vii. t-i 1 to the compiler or Chronist is, that he here skews an acquaintance with the fact of Artaxerxes living after Darius, while in iv. 7 he places him before Darius ; but the Chron ist was not careful to remove contradictions of this kind ; he transcribed his sources without much elaboration or change.
In vii. 12-26 we have a Chaldee piece, giving Artaxerxes's written commission to Ezra to return with his countrymen to Judaea. This is an authen tic document.
From vii. 27, ix. 15, Ezra himself is the writer. He employs the first person. But there is reason for excepting the 35th and 36th verses of the 8th chapter ; both because the first person plural is suddenly changed for the third, and also on ac count of the want of connection between the 34th and 35th verses, a circumstance unlike Ezra's. They belong to the compiler.
In x. 1-17 the Chronist reappears. Six times is Ezra cited in these verses. It is also said that he went into the chamber of Johanan, the son of Eliashib—of the high-priest Eliashib who lived after Nehemiah (See Neh. xii. 22, 23), sheaving that Ezra himself was not the writer. It is rather hypercritical in Havernick to assert, that because Eliashib is not called high-priest in this book, he may not have been till afterwards, and hence that Ezra and Eliashib may have lived together. In
compiling the piece, it is probable that the Chron ist used accounts written by Ezra.
From x. 18 to the end of the chapter was written by Ezra, and inserted here by the com piler. It does not bear the impress of the Chron ist himself.
Our analysis shews that the book of Ezra in its present form did not proceed from the scribe nimself. Some pieces of his are in it, but another put them there. The Chronicle-writer is the author or compiler, who made it up from pieces partly written by Ezra and others, and in part by himself.
Keil, after the example of Havernick, is anxious to uphold the unity and integrity of the book, claiming it all for Ezra himself, with the exception of the Chaldee section in iv. 8-vi. 18, which the latter took, without alteration, into the body of the work. How little ground there is for this view may be inferred from the preceding analysis, which shews that the work is incompact and in artificial. In speaking of Ezra, the writer some times uses the first person, sometimes the third ; different parts are composed in different languages; two pieces are in Chaldee, which were not written by the same person ; the style varies in various places, and there is an apparent chasm in the his tory of more than half a century at the end of the 6th chapter—a real chasm in the opinion of such as make Artaxerxes in vii. t, 11, etc , a different person from the Artaxerxes of iv. 7.
In opposition to all these phenomena it is use less to appeal to the interchange of the first and third persons in the prophets, e. g., Is. vii. 1-16, comp. with viii. t, etc.; Jet. xx. 1-6, comp. with ver. 7, etc., xxviii. I, etc., comp. with ver. 5, etc.; Ezek. i. 1-3; vi. t ; vii. t, 8; Jer. xxxii. I S ; Hosea i. 2, 3 ; iii. 1. The cases are not paral lel, prophetic writing being very different from historical prose. There is no necessity, 916 Keil alleges, for Ezra to speak of himself in the third person in the first seven verses of the 7th chapter. All the unity belonging to the book is that arising from its being the compilation of the Chronist, who put materials together relating to the times of Zerubbabel and Ezra, written by Ezra and others, interspersing his own here and there. In conse quence of the one redactor there is considerable similarity of expression throughout ; though cer tainly not enough to prevent the critic from se parating pieces of different writers incorporated into the work.