* Neh. v.

     ** Neh. xiii. 6:  “in the two and thirtieth year of
     Artaxerxes, King of Babylon, I went unto the king.”

This work of revision, begun under the influence of Ezekiel, and perhaps by his own followers, had, since his time, been carried on without interruption, and by mingling the juridical texts with narratives of the early ages collected from different sources, a lengthy work had been produced, very similar in composition and wording to the five Books of Moses and the Book of Joshua as we now possess them.* It was this version of the Revelation of Jahveh that Ezra brought with him from Babylon in order to instruct the people of Judah, and the first impressions received by him at the end of his journey convinced him that his task would be no light one, for the number of mixed marriages had been so great as to demoralise not only the common people, but even the priests and leading nobles as well.  Nevertheless, at a general assembly** of the people he succeeded in persuading them to consent to the repudiation of alien wives.

* This is the priestly revision presupposed by recent critics; here again, in order to keep within the prescribed limits of space, I have been compelled to omit much that I should have liked to add in regard to the nature of this work and the spirit in which it was carried out.

     ** Ezra, vii.-xi., where the dates given do not form part of
     the work as written by Ezra, but have been introduced later
     by the editor of the book as it now stands.

But this preliminary success would have led to nothing unless he could secure formal recognition of the rigorous code of which he had constituted himself the champion, and protracted negotiations were necessary before he could claim a victory on this point as well as on the other.  At length, about 367 B.C., more than a year after his arrival, he gained his point, and the covenant between Jahveh and His people was sealed with ceremonies modelled on those which had attended the promulgation of Deuteronomy in the time of Josiah.  On the first day of the seventh month, a little before the autumn festival, the people assembled at Jerusalem in “the broad place which was before the water gate.”  Ezra mounted a wooden pulpit, and the chief among the priests sat beside him.  He “opened the book in the sight of all the people... and... all the people stood up:  and Ezra blessed the Lord, the great God.  And all the people answered ‘Amen, amen!’ with the lifting up of their hands; and they bowed their heads and worshipped the Lord with their faces to the ground.”  Then began the reading of the sacred text.  As each clause was read, the Levites stationed here and there among the people interpreted and explained its provisions in the vulgar tongue, so as to make their meaning clear to all.  The prolix enumeration of sins and their expiation, and threats expressed in certain chapters, produced among