dissolution never could be said to have been completely repaired and undone. This conclusion is confirmed by the unanimous concurrence of the Jews of later ages themselves, who look upon Ezra as their second founder both in church and state, and venerate his memory with the same respect as they do that of Moses. To Ezra it is their belief that they owed the canon of scripture, such as it survived the captivity and was transmitted to their own times. To Ezra, consequently, the whole Christian world is indebted for the scriptures of the Old Testament in their present state. On Ezra it was the persuasion of the Jews that the mantle of the last of the prophets rested; and with Ezra, in the person of Malachi, that the canon of prophetical inspiration closed. To Ezra, at least, it is certain that the Jews were indebted for the only account of the return of their ancestors from captivity, which was any where extant in their own scriptures; for the reader need not be told that there is no history even of the return of the Jews under Zerubbabel, but what is contained in the Book of Ezra: and this too is one of the circumstances of distinction which ought to be allowed its weight in coming to a conclusion upon the question of the comparative importance, whether in the counsels of Providence, or in the religious and the civil history of the Jews, of the mission of Ezra and that of Zerubbabel respectively.

Add to this, that as there is no evidence of the return of any fresh body of the Jews after this mission of Ezra-of nothing in short but the return of individuals, even if of that—and consequently that if the proper effect of the captivity was ever properly undone, it was so by the return which accompanied this mission; so this mission, and the return which accompanied it, stand at a determinate distance of time from

the first return after the captivity, and the first interposition of any delay to the completion of its proper effect which is far from being unsignificant or unimportant. This return took place in the first of Cyrus, B. C. 536, exactly seventy years from B. C. 606, the date of the first captivity in the third of Jehoiakim. We cannot, perhaps, suppose, that the proper effect of the return, or the proper execution of the edict of Cyrus, was ever suspended or superseded in the reign of Cyrus; though it may fairly be collected from Ezra iv. 5. that it was even then opposed and obstructed more or less. Ezra iv. 6. authorizes the same inference of the reign of Ahasuerus; who, if he was the next to Cyrus, and distinct from Artaxerxes, mentioned in the following verse-and this Artaxerxes was the immediate predecessor of Darius, as he appears to have been -must be the same with Cambyses, the successor of Cyrus, and the predecessor of Smerdis the Magian, who was succeeded by Darius Hystaspis. The first actual impediment to the continued operation of the edict of Cyrus, may be supposed to have taken place in the reign of Cambyses; and if so, it must be concluded from Ezra iv. 6. that it took place at the beginning of his reign. The precise beginning of the reign of Cambyses is not earlier than B. C. 530, nor later than B. C. 529: and referred to either, B. C. 528 would be truly and properly in the beginning of his reign. Let it be assumed, then, that the first accusations against the Jews, which so far took effect as actually to impede the continued operation of the edict of Cyrus, took effect at the beginning of the reign of Cambyses, B. C. 528. Reckon forward another seventy years from this date, and you come to B. C. 458—the year of this mission of Ezra, and the year of the last and most final of that series of providential dispensa

tions in behalf of the Jews, which led to the return of the captive Jews, and undid the effect of the captivity -if it ever was undone, after it had once taken place. That is, as there had been one seventy years' interval between the beginning of the captivity and the first return from it; so was there another seventy years' interval between the first interposition of any actual impediment to the effect of that return, and the final undoing of the effect of the captivity, if it ever was completely undone, by the return under Ezra.

When we consider the shortness of the interval between the mission of Ezra, B. C. 458, and that of Nehemiah, B. C. 444; that Ezra and Nehemiah followed from the court of the same king-within fourteen years only of each other; that they were consequently strictly contemporaries, and both in Judæa at once we can scarcely fail to conclude that the mission of Nehemiah might always be intended to be auxiliary to that of Ezra, especially in the purposes of Providence. An interval of fourteen years merely is almost too little to be taken into account in the scope and comprehension of a prophecy like this; so strictly at least, as not to allow us to infer that the object assigned to the return, the building of Jerusalem, and the effect predicted to ensue upon it, the building again of the street and the wall-might not both have been contemplated in that going forth of the word, which coincided with the mission of Ezra, though both might ultimately be carried into final effect by the ministry of Nehemiah.

The order of the terms of the prediction, in this instance, is something remarkable. The street, it is said, shall be built again, and the ditch or wall—that is, the street first, and the wall next: which was actuo Cf. Nehemiah viii. 1-13-xii. 26. 36.

ally the order of the event; the street of Jerusalem having been the first thing completed, and the wall the last. Nor is there any reason why that special circumstance of distinction, mentioned in conjunction with these events, Even in troublous times, or, Even in strait of times, should not be restricted to the last of them in particular, the building again of the wall; and not taken in common with both. In this case, adopting the marginal version, Even in strait of times, or as it might more closely be rendered, Even in strait of the times; which a comparison of the Vulgate and the Hebrew will shew to admit of the possible meaning of a disproportionate or inadequate space of time— a space of time not what would naturally have been required, and might naturally have been expected for such an effect-it will express, as it appears to me, the most remarkable and characteristic circumstance in the history of the mission of Nehemiah, that by incredible exertions of speed, the entire wall of the city was raised and finished in fifty-two days' time, from the commencement of the work; not much more than three days after his arrival in Jerusalem P*. Not but that

* The words of the original

: ובצוק העתים in this instance are

of which the first is a word, which as a noun substantive occurs only in this passage of Daniel. The version of Theodotion does not assist us here in coming at its meaning; for, occurring as we have observed only once, and that in this present instance, Theodotion renders it by EKKEνwońσovτaι-probably because he understood it as one of the tenses of pr】 intumuit. The

Septuagint, however, may give us a possible insight into its meaning, having rendered the passage by κατὰ συντέλειαν καιρῶν: and thereby implied that the notion of completion, consummation, or, it may be, of dispatch, entered into it.

The word is derived in the

Lexicons from pry fudit: which in one of its conjugations (Hiphil) assumes the sense of coarctavit, constrinxit, or the like; and in the past conjugation an

? Nehemiah vi. 15. ii. 11—iii. 1—iv. 23. v. 16. vi. 1. Cf. Dissertation xviii. vol. ii. 139, 140.

the sense of Even in troublous times, would accord to the context of the prophecy in this instance, as well as be verified by the event, when we consider the difficulties which Nehemiah had to contend with, and the many alarms to which he was daily and hourly exposed; difficulties and alarms which were the prin