Professor Christine
Hayes: Last time we started
looking at the psalms and a
number of different genres or
forms in which the psalms
appear.
We were just looking at a psalm
last time which seems to
explicitly reject the
Deuteronomistic interpretation
of the national history and the
national tragedy,
depicting Israel as innocent,
and rebuking God for his
inaction.
There's another psalm in this
genre that I'd like to read
from.
This is Psalm 44,
selective passages:
"…In God we glory at
all times,
and praise Your name
unceasingly.
Yet You have rejected and
disgraced us;
You do not go with our armies.
 
…You let them devour us like
sheep;
You disperse us among the
nations.
You sell Your people for no
fortune,
You set no high price on them…
All this has come upon us,
yet we have not forgotten You,
or been false to Your covenant."
[Very different from what the
prophets have been screaming!]
"Our hearts have not gone
astray,
nor have our feet swerved from
Your path,
though You cast us,
crushed, to where the sea
monster is,
and covered us over with
deepest darkness.
 
If we forgot the name of our God
and spread forth our hands to a
foreign god,
God would surely search it out,
for He knows the secrets of the
heart.
It is for Your sake that we are
slain all day long,
that we are regarded as sheep
to be slaughtered.
Rouse Yourself;
why do you sleep, O Lord?
Awaken, do not reject us
forever!
Why do You hide Your face,
ignoring our affliction and
distress?
We lie prostrate in the dust;
our body clings to the ground.
 
Arise and help us,
redeem us, as befits Your
faithfulness."
So here's a psalm full of anger
that contains an explicit denial
of the rhetorically inflamed
charges against Israel that we
read in many of the prophetic
books.
We have not forgotten
You, we haven't been
false to Your covenant,
our hearts haven't gone
astray, we haven't
swerved from Your path.
 
Why are You behaving this way?
 
This astonishing protestation
of innocence that accuses God of
sleeping on the job is
reminiscent of Job.
In a way, the two conflicting
viewpoints that we see running
through a lot of this
literature--one in which:
there is suffering,
therefore there must be sin,
Israel has sinned horribly:
and the other:
there is inexplicable
suffering,
we haven't done anything that
would deserve this,
anything at all--it really is
reminiscent of Job.
It seems to give us these two
perspectives on Job's suffering
as an individual.
 
We see that now played out on
the level of the nation.
What we have here is a view
that is asserting God's
negligence rather than Israel's
guilt.
Then you can contrast psalms
like 44, the one I've just read,
and 74, which I read at the end
of the last lecture,
with Psalms 78 and 106.
 
These psalms belong to the
category of hymns,
and some people call this
category 'hymns in celebration
of divine action in Israel's
history'--the sort of historical
reviews that praise God for all
he has done for Israel;
and they toe the
Deuteronomistic line in their
recapitulation of Israel's
history.
From the Creation,
from the Exodus and on to the
conquest of the Promised Land,
they stress Israel's utter
indebtedness to God.
 
God has patiently endured
Israel's constant faithlessness.
So when you juxtapose these two
types of psalms,
they're just remarkably
different.
He performed marvels in
the site of their fathers,
in the land of Egypt,
the plain of Zoan.
He split the sea and took them
through it;
He made the waters stand like a
wall.
It continues:
"…He split rocks in the
wilderness"--so it's a
recounting of all the marvelous
things that God has done,
But they went on sinning
against Him,
defying the most high in the
parched land.
To test God was in their mind
when they demanded food for
themselves.
They spoke against God, saying,
"Can God spread a feast in the
wilderness?
True, He struck the rock and
waters flowed,
streams gushed forth;
but can He provide bread?
 
Can He supply His people with
meat?
It's interesting that this is
in the third person;
they did all these
terrible sinful things.
The psalm that I just read
previously that protests
Israel's innocence is in the
first person.
We have not strayed at all.
 
We've been completely faithful
to you, why are you treating us
this way?
So God's faithful actions,
Israel's faithless responses
are featured in the psalm that I
just read and also in 106.
 
They toe the Deuteronomistic
line, and again we see this
clear attempt to explain
Israel's tragic end.
Here again the tendency is to
blame Israel and to justify God
at all costs.
We move on now to the genre of
psalms.
Actually, these are two genres
that I'm putting together,
the genres of blessing and
cursing.
Obviously they're rather
antithetical.
But first of all,
psalms of blessing are psalms
that invoke God to bless the
righteous.
It might be the nation Israel
or it might be the righteous
within the nation,
and to punish or afflict the
wicked, and again,
that can be enemy nations or it
can be the wicked within Israel
and other nations.
 
And sometimes these psalms can
be quite shocking in their
violence and in their fury.
 
Psalm 137, "By the rivers of
Babylon"--very rarely people
read all the way to the end of
that particular psalm.
It's very poignant at the
beginning, but at the very end
it calls for vengeance on the
Babylonians who destroyed
Jerusalem,
verses 8 and 9,
"Fair Babylon,
you predator,
/ a blessing on him who repays
you in kind / what you have
inflicted on us;
a blessing on him who seizes
your babies / and dashes them
against the rocks!"
Psalm 109 contains this very
lengthy list of terrible
afflictions that the psalmist is
asking God to smite his foes
with (that was a poorly
constructed sentence!),
that the psalmist is asking God
to, I don't want to say bestow,
but inflict upon his foe.
 
Verses 8 and 10:
"May his days be few,
may another take over his
position.
May his children be orphans,
/ his wife a widow"--that's a
nice way of saying "may he die."
 
May his children wander
from their hovels,
begging in search of [bread].
 
...May he be clothed in a curse
like a garment,
may it enter his body like
water,
his bones like oil.
 
Let it be like the cloak he
wraps around him,
like the belt he always wears.
 
May the Lord thus repay my
accusers,
all those who speak evil
against me.
So again, it's hardly the
simple piety that we often
associate with the Book of
Psalms.
The last category I just want
to briefly mention is a category
of psalms that have a reflective
or meditative tone.
These are psalms of wisdom,
psalms in praise of instruction
or Torah and meditation.
 
They are somewhat proverbial in
nature, many of them will begin
with the sort of stock phrase,
"Happy is the man who…" so we
see that in Psalm 128:
Happy are all who fear
the Lord,
who follow His ways.
You shall enjoy the fruit of
your labors;
you shall be happy and shall
prosper.
Your wife shall be like a
fruitful vine within your house;
your sons, like olive saplings
around your table.
So shall the man who fears the
Lord be blessed."
Or "reveres the Lord" –
[that]
is the sense of "fear"
there.
Many psalms we've seen seem to
presuppose worship in the
temple, and can even have that
antiphonal character,
the call and response,
or call and echo character.
But there are three that,
instead, have this theme of
meditating upon or delighting in
the Torah;
that's Psalm 1,
Psalm 19, and Psalm 119
(conveniently enough!).
 
119 is the longest psalm
because it's written in acrostic
form.
There are different stanzas,
a different stanza for each
letter of the alphabet (22
letters) and there are eight
lines in each stanza,
all eight lines beginning with
that letter of the alphabet,
so it's a very,
very long psalm.
The psalm represents Torah as
an object of study and devotion.
Studying Torah makes one wise
and happy: Psalm 19,
verses 8 through 11,
The teaching of the Lord
is perfect,
renewing life;
the decrees of the Lord are
enduring,
making the simple wise;
The precepts of the Lord are
just,
rejoicing the heart;
the instruction of the Lord is
lucid,
making the eyes light up.
 
The fear (or reverence) of the
Lord is pure,
abiding forever;
the judgments of the Lord are
true,
righteous altogether,
more desirable than gold,
than much fine gold;
sweeter than honey,
than drippings of the
comb.
So this elevation of Torah
reflects the shift that begins
or starts to occur in the Second
Temple Period,
the late Second Temple Period,
in which Torah is of growing
importance.
In about two minutes we're
going to start to talk about
this period and the importance
and centrality of Torah--its
centrality in terms of study
--and the study of Torah as a
form of worship.
So there are many different
ways to categorize and classify
the psalms.
Many individual psalms seem to
combine units that belong to
different categories.
 
So, for example,
you have Psalm 22 which opens
as a lament, "My God,
My God why have You forsaken
me?"
That's the well-known RSV
translation, and then it changes
to a hymn of praise.
It concludes with this--it goes
on into a kind of confident
triumph.
At least one psalm,
Psalm 68, really defies any
kind of rigid categorization,
so we can't be too strict in
trying to impose these forms.
They are helpful guides to the
interpretation of the Psalms,
but again, we can't be too
rigid about it.
But from the sampling that
we've seen it should be apparent
that the Psalms are a microcosm
of the religious insights and
convictions of ancient
Israelites.
Perhaps because so many of them
lack historical
specificity--some of them are
quite historical;
some of them in fact recount
Israel's history in order to
praise God, but many of them,
very, very many of them lack
any real historical specificity,
and that is probably the reason
that the Psalms have become a
great source for personal
spirituality in Western
civilization.
Some of them were composed
perhaps as many as 3000 years
ago, and yet,
they can be inspiring or they
can feel relevant to
contemporary readers.
They can provide an opportunity
to confess one's failings or to
proclaim good intentions,
or to rail against misfortune,
or to cry out against
injustice, or to request
assistance,
or to affirm trust in divine
providence, or to simply express
emotions of praise and joy,
and wonder at creation,
or reflect on human finitude in
the face of divine infinitude.
 
I mentioned briefly the
centrality of Torah--actually
no--let me finish talking about
Psalms and also move onto
another major poetic work then
we'll come back to talk about
the Restoration period.
 
Another poetic book within the
anthology of the Hebrew Bible is
the little work known as the
Song of Songs.
And for many people this is
perhaps the most surprising book
to be included in the Hebrew
canon.
It's a beautiful and very
erotic love song that celebrates
human sexuality and physical
passion.
The opening line seems to be a
late superscription that
attributes the book to Solomon,
and it seems more likely
however that these sensuous love
lyrics are post-exilic.
The attribution to Solomon was
probably fueled by the fact that
in 1 Kings 4,
we read that Solomon--or
there's a tradition there that
Solomon uttered 3,000 Proverbs
and 1,005 songs.
So it seems natural to
attribute this song to Israel's
most prolific composer of songs
and proverbs,
according to tradition.
The speaker in the poem
alternates, most often it is a
woman.
She seems to be addressing her
beloved.
Sometimes she addresses other
women, the daughters of
Jerusalem.
At times the speaker is a man,
but he's not identified as
Solomon.
Solomon's name is mentioned
about six times,
but Solomon is not said to be
one of the speakers and for the
most part the main speaker is
female.
There's a pastoral setting for
the book.
The two young lovers express
their passion through and amid
the beauties of nature.
There are frequent references
to gardens, and vineyards,
and fruit, and flowers,
and perfumes,
and doves, and flocks of goats,
and shorn ewes.
There are very vivid
descriptions of the physical
beauty of the lovers.
 
They are described in highly
erotic passages.
Translations of the Song of
Songs vary tremendously as you
might imagine,
so I'm going to read one little
section from the translation by
someone named Walsh,
C.E.
Walsh, which I think captures
the tremendous eroticism in some
of the passages of Song of
Songs:
I slept,
but my heart was awake.
 
Listen, my lover is knocking.
 
"Open to me my sister, my love,
my dove, my perfect one,
for my head is wet with dew…"
My lover thrusts his hand into
the hole,
and my insides yearned for him,
I arose to open to my lover,
and my hands dripped with myrrh,
my fingers with liquid myrrh,
upon the handles of the lock.
I opened to my lover,
but he was gone.
[Walsh 2006,111-12]
These poems are very unique.
They give expression to the
erotic feelings of a woman and,
as I say, translations will
vary tremendously.
According to Jewish tradition,
the ancient Rabbis debated over
whether or not the Song of Songs
should be included in the canon.
And it was Rabbi Akiva,
a late first- early
second-century sage,
whose view prevailed.
He declared "the whole world
was only created,
so to speak,
for the day on which the Song
of Songs would be given to it.
 
Why?
Because all the writings are
Holy, but the Song of Songs is
the Holy of Holies."
But for some religious
authorities over the centuries,
the candid descriptions of
passionate love proved to be too
much,
and so the explicit content of
the book (which contains no
reference to God,
by the way;
God is not mentioned anywhere
in the Song of Songs,
so it seems to have been a
completely secular poem
originally)--the explicit
content of the book has at times
been interpreted away.
So not only do we have
translations that tone down a
great deal of the eroticism,
but we also have a tradition of
interpretation that interprets
away a lot of the explicit
content of the text.
 
So we have trends within Jewish
tradition that read the book as
a metaphor or an expression of
God's love for his chosen
people, Israel.
Christians have allegorized the
song, seeing it as an expression
of Christ's love for his bride
who is the spiritual church.
 
And I think some--I think all
of the sections will be dealing
with the Song of Songs this
week,
so you should have an
interesting time looking at some
of the interpretations of this
text.
Now I want to move on a little
bit more to the historical
background of some of the books
that we'll be looking at in
today's lecture and then also
the last couple of lectures.
We left the Israelites in exile
in Babylon.
And in 539 BCE the Babylonian
Empire was itself defeated by
the Persians under the
leadership of Cyrus--Cyrus of
Persia.
In 539 he manages to establish
the largest empire that's been
seen in the Ancient Near East to
date.
It stretches from Egypt all the
way north up to Asia Minor which
is modern-day Turkey,
and all the way over to Eastern
Iran; a huge empire.
Unlike other ancient empires,
the Persian Empire espoused a
policy of cultural and religious
independence for its conquered
subjects.
The famous Cyrus Cylinder--this
is a nine inch long fired clay
cylinder and it's covered in
cuneiform writing--it tells of
Cyrus' conquest of Babylon.
The conquest is described as
being at the command of
Babylon's god,
Marduk, so obviously the
Babylonians' god Marduk wanted
"our Cyrus of Persia" to be able
to come in and conquer this
nation.
It tells of his conquest and it
tells of Cyrus' policy of
allowing captives to return to
their homelands and to rebuild
their temples and worship their
gods.
This is consistent;
this archaeological find is
consistent with the picture
that's presented in the Bible.
According to the biblical text
we'll be discussing soon,
Cyrus in 538 gave the Judean
exiles permission to return to
Jerusalem and reconstruct their
temple.
The exiles did return;
many of the exiles
returned.
They returned to what was now a
Persian province:
it's the province of Yehud;
I don't think I wrote that up
there.
 
 
Yehud is the name now of Judea
and Yehud is where we're going
to get the word Jew.
 
Yehudi is the word Jew;
one who belongs to the province
of Yehud.
So many of the exiles returned
to this now-Persian province
Yehud, and they exercised a fair
degree of self determination.
 
Now, periodization of Jewish
history tends to center on these
events, so the period from 586
to 538 or so--that's known as
exilic period.
Most scholars maintain that the
traditions of the priestly
source, the traditions of the
Deuteronomistic source had
pretty well reached their final
form in those years.
 
Obviously, older traditions go
into the composition of those
corpora, but they reach their
final form for the most part in
that period.
So the post-exilic period
following is also known as the
Persian period,
at first, but of course the
Persians won't rule for long.
Alexander's going to come
marching through the Ancient
Near East, so after the Persians
we'll have the Hellenistic
Period.
But the period after the exile
is referred to as the Persian
period, the period of the
Restoration, the post-exilic
period.
It's also called the Second
Temple Period because by about
520 they will have reconstructed
the temple;
so it's not inaccurate really
to refer to this time as the
Second Temple Period.
 
The second temple will stand
until 70, the year 70 of the
Common Era.
So the period,
of course, before the exile we
think of as the First Temple
Period (the temple is destroyed
in 586),
so the first temple period or
pre-exilic period.
Now, the books of First and
Second Chronicles provide a
second account of the history of
Israel.
Genesis all the way through 2
Kings has given us one long
account.
FirstChronicles actually begins
with Adam and it does go
through--1 and 2 Chronicles do
go up to the Babylonian exile.
 
They echo a good deal of what
we find in the Books of Samuel
and Kings, but they have more of
a priestly bias and they
eliminate a lot of material that
sheds a poor light on Israel's
kings.
So, for example,
you won't find the story of
David and Bathsheba when you're
reading the Chronicles account
of the reign of David.
So Chronicles is already an
interpretation.
It's an inner-biblical
interpretation.
It is the Bible interpreting
itself.
A later strand of tradition
reflecting on earlier strands of
tradition and re-presenting that
material in a particular light.
The Chronicler is less
interested in David's political
genius, for example;
it doesn't go into his strategy
and his political
accomplishments nearly so much
as it does go into his role in
establishing Jerusalem as a
religious capital,
in planning a temple,
in organizing the music for
temple worship.
These are the interests of the
Chronicler.
The Book of 2 Chronicles
concludes with the decree of
Cyrus, permitting the Jewish
captives to return to their
homeland and build their temple.
 
We have a second,
fuller version of this decree,
which as I said,
seems to be consistent with
what we know of Persian
policies--the policy of
tolerating and even encouraging
local religious cults.
So that fuller version appears
in Ezra.
I'm going to read first from 2
Chronicles.
2 Chronicles 36:22-23,
And in the first year of
King Cyrus of Persia,
when the word of the Lord
spoken by Jeremiah was
fulfilled,
the Lord roused the spirit of
King Cyrus of Persia to issue a
proclamation throughout his
realm by word of mouth and in
writing,
as follows: "Thus said King
Cyrus of Persia:
The Lord God of Heaven has
given me all the kingdoms of the
earth,
and has charged me with
building Him a House in
Jerusalem, which is in Judah.
 
Any one of you of all of His
people, the Lord His God be with
him and let him go up.
Then in Ezra there is an
addition.
Ezra 1:3 and 4,
…let Him go up to
Jerusalem that is in Judah,
and build the House of the Lord
God of Israel,
the God that is in Jerusalem;
and all who stay behind,
wherever he may be living,
let the people of his place
assist him with silver,
gold, goods,
and livestock,
besides the freewill offering
to the House of God that is in
Jerusalem.
Notice that the decree at the
very beginning in Chronicles--in
the 2 Chronicles version--the
decree is said to fulfill the
word of the prophet Jeremiah.
 
Now, you remember that Jeremiah
prophesied that the Babylonian
exile would last 70 years;
he wrote a letter,
he said settle down,
this is going to last a while,
plant plants and build homes.
 
So he had prophesied 70 years
for an exile.
Well, from the time of the
first departure of exiles in
597, maybe to the return in
538,61 years--it's close.
If you look from the
destruction of the first temple
perhaps in 586 to the completion
of the second somewhere between
520,515, we're not really sure,
that's about 70 years.
Either way, it seems that in
the eyes of the Chronicler it
was close enough.
 
This seems to have been a
fulfillment of Jeremiah's
prediction.
That it would be about 70 years
before they would return.
 
So the books of Ezra and
Nehemiah give an account of the
return of the Babylonian exiles
in the late sixth and fifth
century.
And Ezra and Nehemiah were
regarded as a unit;
those two books were regarded
as a unit in the Hebrew Bible,
until the Middle Ages.
They may in fact have formed
part of a larger historical
work;
Ezra, Nehemiah,
1 and 2 Chronicles.
 
Ezra, and to a lesser degree,
Nehemiah seem to have a good
deal in common with Chronicles,
and therefore may derive from
the same author.
So sometimes in secondary
literature you will see
references to the Chronicler,
which refers to the
hypothetical author of 1 and
2Chronicles and Ezra and
possibly Nehemiah.
The chapters report the initial
return of the exiles,
the rebuilding of the temple,
the career of Ezra,
and the career of Nehemiah.
 
All four of the books were
probably edited in the late
fifth century BCE,
maybe close to the fourth
century--that's our best
guess--when Judah was a small
province still within the
massive Persian Empire.
The books of Ezra and Nehemiah,
however, contain conflicting
information about the return,
about the restoration,
and as a result our knowledge
of the timing of various events
is quite poor.
It's really not clear who
returned first to help rebuild
Jerusalem, whether it was Ezra a
priest, or Nehemiah a scribe.
 
He was a Persian--;:
not a scribe,
he was a governor.
 
Ezra was a priest and scribe,
Nehemiah was a Persian
appointed governor of Judah.
 
And even though the Chronicler
dates events according to the
year of the reign of the Persian
king,
the king is Artaxerxes,
and unfortunately there are two
kings named Artaxerxes in the
fifth century and there's one in
the fourth,
so it's extremely difficult to
figure out when these events
happened.
So keeping in mind that even
the experts cannot agree at all
on the sequence of events,
we are simply going to look at
the career of Ezra,
the career of Nehemiah.
I'm not going to claim priority
for either of them.
Because the events are not
presented in chronological
order, even in the books,
I'm going to skip fairly freely
around, back and forth between
the Books of Ezra and Nehemiah.
So the Book of Ezra opens with
Cyrus' decree,
which we've heard,
and then provides a long list
of the exiles who returned to
Judah after 538.
They're led by Sheshbazzar;
and then among the exiles he
says there was Yeshua who was a
priest and Zerubbavel.
Zerubbavel was a grandson of
King Jehoiakim who was the last
Davidic king who had been kept
in house arrest in Babylon.
He had been among the exiles in
597, he eventually had been
released from house arrest in
Babylon,
so now his grandson Zerubbavel,
a Davidide, was returning to
Jerusalem, and you can imagine
that this would have stirred
hope in the hearts of many.
 
Chapter 3 of Ezra describes the
sacrifices offered on a rebuilt
altar and the beginning of the
process of rebuilding the
temple,
probably around 521 or so:
When the builders had
laid the foundation of the
temple of the Lord,
priests in their vestments with
trumpets,
and Levites sons of Asaph with
cymbals were stationed to give
praise to the Lord,
as King David of Israel had
ordained.
They sang songs extolling and
praising the Lord,
"For He is good,
His steadfast love for Israel
is eternal."
All the people raised a great
shout extolling the Lord because
the foundation of the House of
the Lord had been laid.
 
Many of the priests and Levites
and chiefs of the clans,
the old men who had seen the
first house [=the first temple],
wept loudly at the sight of the
founding of this house.
Many others shouted joyously at
the top of their voices.
The people could not
distinguish the shouts of joy
from the people's weeping,
for the people raised a great
shout, the sound of which could
be heard from afar.
So the older generations who
remember the magnificence of the
first temple of Solomon shed
tears.
The younger people are shouting
for joy at the establishment of
a new temple.
But the building doesn't
proceed smoothly and that's due
largely to the hostilities of
the surrounding communities.
 
These surrounding communities
are referred to adversaries,
adversaries of Judah and
Benjamin.
In chapters 4,5,
and 6 these Samaritans in many
cases, offer to assist in the
project of reconstruction.
Their offer is rejected,
and as a result the Samaritans,
insulted, persuade the Persians
that this is a bad idea.
Rebuilding a potentially
rebellious city is a bad idea,
and the Persians listen to them
and they order the rebuilding
stopped.
There are two prophets then,
Haggai and Zechariah.
 
 
 
So these are prophets now of
the post-exilic period.
As we go through our
periodization of prophets you'll
want to add this fourth
category, post-exilic prophets.
They urge the continuation of
the building.
A Persian official objects,
the Jews appeal to the new
Persian Emperor Darius.
 
And they ask him to search
through the court records,
look for the original
authorization by Cyrus--we have
been authorized to do this.
 
According to the text,
Cyrus' edict is found.
Darius agrees not only to
enforce it, but to honor his
obligation to supply money for
the rebuilding.
This is under Persian imperial
sponsorship, and he will honor
the obligation to supply money
for the rebuilding and to
procure sacrifices as well.
 
The temple is finally
dedicated, we think,
about 515 BCE and a Passover
celebration is celebrated in the
sanctuary.
There are other social tensions
in the Restoration community,
specifically friction between
those who had remained behind in
Judea during the exilic period
and the returning exiles,
who although they were few in
number, enjoyed imperial
support.
These self-styled children of
the exile, they refer to
themselves as sons of the exiled
or children of the exile they
refer to the local people--the
local Judeans--as "peoples of
the land."
This is a derogatory term that
seems to cast aspersions on
their very status as Jews.
They're like the other
nations or peoples of the land.
They seem to be classifying
even Judeans in that category of
"other."
As we will soon see,
some radically different views
of Jewish identity are going to
emerge during this period.
 
So that's the initial
Restoration, the process by
which the temple was rebuilt.
 
Let's jump now to (we think)
somewhere in the mid-fifth
century perhaps.
Nehemiah--he's a Jewish subject
of Persia--he's the official cup
bearer to the Persian Emperor
Artaxerxes in the court at Susa.
 
This is a position that
probably entailed his being a
eunuch.
The Book of Nehemiah opens with
a description of Nehemiah's
grief.
He hears these reports of the
terrible conditions of his
people in Jerusalem sometime
around the mid-fifth century
and,
weeping, he asks for the
consent of the emperor to go to
Jerusalem and to help rebuild
the city.
So Nehemiah travels to
Jerusalem, we think about 445
BCE, and he undertakes the
refortifications of the city.
 
And he meets with opposition.
 
There's some internal
opposition.
There's a female prophetess,
Noadiah, in Nehemiah 6:14,
who seems to be opposed to
this.
There's some external
opposition as well from Israel's
neighbors: the Samaritans,
the Ammonites,
some Arabs.
They resent this reconstruction
and they see the reconstruction
of the city's defensive walls as
an affront to Persian rule.
 
But Nehemiah continues;
he gives his workmen weapons so
that they can protect themselves
against enemy attack and the
walls around the city are
completed in record time.
These refortifications help to
establish Jerusalem as an urban
center, and eventually Nehemiah
is appointed governor of Judah,
under Persian domination.
 
The text says that he
institutes various reforms:
economic reforms,
social reforms.
He seems to be trying to
improve the situation of the
poor, and establish public
order.
We think that the governorship
of Nehemiah overlapped to some
degree with the mission of Ezra,
and Ezra's activities are
reported in both the books of
Ezra and Nehemiah.
Some scholars believe that they
didn't overlap,
that that's an illusion created
by our sources.
But chapter 7 of the book of
Ezra introduces Ezra.
He's a Babylonian Jew,
he comes from a priestly
family, but he's also described
as a scribe who is expert in the
Torah of Moses.
In verse 10 of chapter 7 it's
said that Ezra had dedicated
himself to study the teaching of
the Lord so as to observe it and
to teach the laws and rules to
Israel.
So Ezra is commissioned by the
Persian Emperor in a letter,
the text of which is
represented or reproduced in
chapter 7:12-26.
The Emperor commissions him to
travel to Jerusalem,
to supervise the temple,
and to assess how well Mosaic
standards are being implemented
in the Judean province.
He's charged with appointing
scribes and judges to administer
civil and moral order.
 
He has the backing of the
Persian empire to institute
Mosaic Law as the standard and
norm for the community in
Jerusalem.
This is standard operating
procedure for the Persians--to
find loyal subjects to regulate
their own local cults according
to ancestral traditions and
Ezra's work needs to be
understood in that light.
Chapter 7::
"For you are commissioned
by the king and his seven
advisors to regulate Judah and
Jerusalem according to the law
of your God,
which is in your care,...And
you, Ezra, by the divine wisdom
you possess, appoint magistrates
and judges to judge all the
people of the province of Beyond
the River" [Cis-Jordan]
[See Note 1]
"who know the laws of your God,
and to teach those who do not
know them.
Let anyone who does not obey
the law of your God and the law
of the king be punished with
dispatch,"
[so he has powers of
enforcement]
"whether by death,
corporal punishment,
confiscation of possessions,
or imprisonment."
In addition,
Ezra is appointed to bring
treasures of silver and gold to
the temple.
The text says that Ezra brings
with him a copy of the Mosaic
Torah in order to regulate and
unify Jewish life in the
Restoration community,
and together Ezra and Nehemiah
bring about a revival.
 
Ezra's reforms are aimed at
strengthening the religious
identity of the Judahites.
 
He wants to revitalize morale
and he also wants to prevent the
decline of Mosaic standards and
to prevent the decline of
biblical monotheism.
 
His two most important acts are
the dissolution of foreign
marriages (this is a first) and
his renewal of the covenant.
I'll say a little bit first
about the dissolution of foreign
marriages.
Ezra is said to have been
distressed when he arrived to
discover that many of the
returned exiles had married
with, we think,
non-Israelite women.
 
It's not clear.
Sometimes "peoples of the land"
might refer to Judeans who had
remained behind but who
themselves had perhaps become
lax,
in Ezra's eyes,
in their observance of Mosaic
standards.
But they had married women who
seemed to follow pagan practices
perhaps.
Chapters 9 and 10 describe his
efforts to reverse this trend.
He begs God to forgive the
people for this violation of his
law, and then at a great
assembly,
he calls upon all the people to
divorce their foreign spouses.
Now, this isn't in fact
Pentateuchal law plainly read.
The prohibition of marriage
with any foreigner is a great
innovation on Ezra's part,
and it's one that,
as we shall see,
was not universally accepted at
all.
The high incidence of
intermarriage is perhaps
indicated by the fact that it
took several months to identify
all those who had intermarried
and to send away their spouses
and their children.
Even priests were among those
who didn't view intermarriage
per se as a violation of the
covenant.
In the next two lectures we'll
see other perspectives on this
question of integration of
foreign groups within the
community.
So I raise it as an issue now:
we're going to see many
different attitudes as we move
through the last section of the
Bible.
The text of Ezra's prayer
before God is a fascinating
presentation of Ezra's
interpretation of Israel's
history and prior texts,
and again, constitutes yet
another response to the calamity
that had befallen the nation;
but also constitutes another
example of inner-biblical
interpretation:
later levels,
or layers within the biblical
text turning to older traditions
and interpreting them,
or reinterpreting them.
So listen to how Ezra
understands biblical tradition
and listen to how he interprets
Israel's history.
This is from Ezra 9,
he's praying to God before the
assembled people.
 
From the time of our
fathers to this very day we have
been deep in guilt.
 
Because of our iniquities we,
our kings, and our priests have
been handed over to foreign
kings,
to the sword,
to captivity,
to pillage, and to humiliation,
as is now the case.
But now, for a short while,
there has been a reprieve from
the Lord our God,
who has granted us a surviving
remnant...
remember the prophetic idea of
a remnant that would survive?
 
...and given us a stake
in His Holy place;
our God has restored the luster
to our eyes and furnished us
with a little sustenance in our
bondage… Now,
what can we say in the face of
this, O our God,
for we have forsaken Your
commandments,
which You gave us through Your
servants, the prophets when You
said,
here he's quoting the Bible;
'The land that you are
about to possess is a land
unclean through the uncleanness
of the peoples of the land,
through their abhorrent
practices with which they,
in their impurity,
have filled it from one end to
the other.
Now then, do not give your
daughters in marriage to their
sons or let their daughters
marry your sons;
do nothing for their well being
or advantage,
then you will be strong and
enjoy the bounty of the land and
bequeath it to your children
forever.'
So he's quoting earlier
tradition.
After all that has
happened to us because of our
evil deeds and our deep
guilt--though You,
our God, have been forbearing,
[punishing us]
less than our iniquity
[deserves]
in that You have granted us
such a remnant as this-- shall
we once again violate Your
commandments by intermarrying
with these people who follow
such abhorrent practices?
 
Will You not rage against us
till we are destroyed without
remnant or survivor?
So Ezra's argument is,
first of all,
following the Deuteronomistic
line.
History reflects God's judgment.
Israel's tragic fate is because
of her sins, and indeed,
she's been given a mercy and a
reprieve.
She hasn't been punished as
fully as she deserves.
He also follows the prophetic
line that this remnant has been
saved and now restored.
 
So the covenant hasn't been
completely abrogated.
But notice his identification
of the sin for which Israel was
punished.
Israel has mixed--and this is
the language that he uses
elsewhere--Israel has mixed holy
seed with common seed through
marital unions with the peoples
of the land,
meaning foreigners certainly,
but possibly also some of these
Judeans who had remained in the
land during the exile and who
seem to have adopted some of the
customs of their neighbors.
 
And if history is any guide,
he's warning,
the community is placing itself
at great risk by intermarrying
again with those who will lead
them into the worship of other
gods and the performance of
abhorrent practices.
Surely he says,
this time God will not be so
merciful as to spare even a
remnant.
So learn from history.
 
We sinned once by
intermarrying,
that was the sin for which we
have been exiled.
If we do the same thing again,
this time we will be punished
without any hope of a remnant.
 
So his interpretation of Mosaic
prescriptions about marriage is
an expansive one.
 
The Torah does prohibit
intermarriage with the native
Canaanites at the time of the
conquest,
the rationale being that they
would lead Israelites into
abhorrent pagan practices,
child sacrifices, and so on.
But of course it's actually not
a completely--there is actually
a legal provision for how to go
about marrying a captive
Canaanite woman;
so it's not a completely
unqualified prohibition to begin
with.
The Torah then also prohibits
intermarriage with certain,
very specific foreigners,
Moabites and Ammonites,
specifically because of their
cruel treatment of the
Israelites during their trek
from Egypt to the Promised Land.
Egyptians are prohibited only
to the third generation.
But there's no prohibition
against marriage with other
foreigners--a Phoenician,
an Arab--so long as they enter
into the covenant of Yahweh,
as long as they don't lead the
Israelite partner into the
worship of other gods.
The rationale for intermarriage
prohibitions in the Pentateuch
are always behavioral,
they're always moral.
If this person will lead you
astray to abhorrent practices
that is prohibited.
 
But marriage into the
group is not prohibited.
Indeed, Israel's kings married
foreign women regularly.
Many of the kings of Israel
were themselves offspring of
these foreign women.
 
They were still fully Israelite.
 
Israelite identity passed
through the male line.
But Ezra who is protective of
Israel's religious identity,
is zealous for the Lord,
is wary of God's wrath--he's
interpreting and promulgating
these prohibitions in such a way
as to create a general ban on
intermarriage of any kind.
Israel mustn't make the same
mistake twice.
Israelite identity is now made
contingent in Ezra's view on the
status of both the mother and
the father.
One is only an Israelite if one
has both an Israelite mother and
an Israelite father.
 
Both must be of the "holy seed."
 
This is a phrase which is being
coined now in Ezra's time and is
now serving as a rationale for
the ban on intermarriage.
It's not that a person is
prohibited because they will
lead you astray to the worship
of other gods.
That's something that can be
corrected if the person in fact
enters into the religious
community of Israel.
The rationale is that they just
simply are not of holy seed and
there's nothing that you can do
to change that,
so this becomes a permanent and
universal ban.
So that's the first very
important thing that Ezra tries
to do: the dissolution of
marriage with foreign spouses
and to establish a blanket
universal ban on intermarriage,
to make Israelite identity
dependent on the native
Israelite status of both mother
and father.
His second deed is the renewal
of the Mosaic Covenant.
This act is reported in
Nehemiah 8.
There's an extended public
reading of the Torah of Moses
and that's followed then by a
renewal of the Mosaic Covenant:
When the seventh month
arrived--the Israelites being
[settled]
in their towns--the entire
people assembled as one man in
the square before the Water
Gate,
and they asked Ezra the scribe
to bring the scroll of the
Teaching of Moses with which the
Lord had charged Israel.
 
On the first day of the seventh
month, Ezra the priest brought
the Teaching before the
congregation,
men and women and all who could
listen with understanding.
He read from it,
facing the square before the
Water Gate, from the first light
until midday,
to the men and the women and
those who could understand;
the ears of all the people were
given to the scroll of the
Teaching.
Ezra the scribe stood upon a
wooden tower made for the
purpose…Ezra opened the scroll
in the sight of all the people,
for he was above all the people;
as he opened it,
all the people stood up.
Ezra blessed the Lord,
the great God and all the
people answered,
"Amen, Amen,"
with hands upraised… and the
Levites explained the Teaching
to the people,
while the people stood in their
places.
They read from the scroll of
the teaching of God,
translating it and giving the
sense;
so they understood the reading.
Apparently the assembled people
no longer understood the
classical Hebrew of the Bible,
if it was formulated in that.
What he was actually--what is
this scroll?
This is the first time now that
we're hearing about the Torah as
a scroll and being read to
people.
So this is historically quite
fascinating.
But the people don't seem to be
able to understand it.
Ezra and his assistants are
probably translating it into
Aramaic which is now the
lingua franca of the
Persian Empire,
giving the sense of the text
perhaps as it's being read.
 
We really can't be certain what
it is that Ezra was presenting
as the Torah of Moses.
 
It may have been the Pentateuch
basically in the form that we
now have it.
Both D and P are very strongly
reflected in Ezra.
 
He quotes from them,
he refers to them,
and then interprets and applies
them in new and interesting
ways.
In any event,
this Torah was to become the
basis and the standard--with a
lot of good heavy Persian
imperial support--for the Jewish
community from that time
forward.
And at a festival celebration a
few weeks later there was an
additional public teaching of
the law and a recital of
Israel's history that once again
laid special emphasis on
Israel's obligations,
what she owed to Yahweh.
The recitation of that history
is found in Nehemiah 9,
and again as an interpretation
of the calamities that Israel
had faced;
it's consistent with the
earlier prayer of Ezra that I
read.
God has withheld nothing from
Israel, yet Israel has defied
God, rebelled against Him,
killed the prophets who had
urged them to turn back to the
covenant;
and God tolerated Israel's sin
as long as he possibly could but
finally he had to punish her.
 
But even so,
in His great compassion God
didn't abandon Israel
completely.
Verse 33 of this prayer then
turns and addresses God,
"Surely you are in the right
with respect to all that has
come upon us,
for You have acted faithfully
and we have been wicked."
 
So again, this justification of
God and blaming of the
Israelites for all that has
befallen them and learning a
lesson for that in the
future--no intermarriage.
All of this is but a prelude
then to the people's
reaffirmation and renewed
commitment to the covenant,
and it's spelled out in great
detail in Nehemiah 10.
Chapter 10 opens,
"In view of all this,
we make this pledge and put it
in writing,"
and then there follows a list
of all the officials:
the Levites,
the priests,
the heads of the people.
 
And it says that all of these
officials and leaders in
conjunction join with the
people, verse 30 and 31,
they:
… join with their noble
brothers, and take an oath with
sanctions to follow the Teaching
of God,
given through Moses the servant
of God, and to observe carefully
all the commandments of the Lord
our Lord,
His rules and laws.
Namely: We will not give our
daughters in marriage to the
peoples of the land or take
their daughters for our
sons.
So we then read the various
obligations that the people are
committing themselves to,
and these include observance of
the Sabbath day and the Sabbath
year as well as supplying the
needs of and the upkeep of the
temple.
But it's surely significant
that the ban on intermarriage
and the observance of the
Sabbath top the list.
 
We are going to commit
ourselves again to God's
teaching, his rules and laws;
namely: we won't intermarry and
we'll observe the Sabbath!
 
So these are singled out at the
top of the list,
as central covenantal
obligations.
Chapter 13 describes Nehemiah's
efforts to see that the people
live up to this pledge.
 
And he scurries around
Jerusalem--he's enforcing the
cessation of work on the
Sabbath, he's persuading
individuals to give up their
foreign wives.
Ezra and Nehemiah were zealous
in their promotion of the
renewed covenant,
and in their view,
the centerpiece of the covenant
was the ban on intermarriage and
the observance of the Sabbath.
 
It is interesting that these
two phenomena,
in addition to circumcision,
will emerge as the three
identifying features of a Jew in
the ancient world when you look
at external literature:
they are a circumcised people,
there's one day of the week
that they don't work,
and they don't marry outside
their group.
Those are the kinds of themes
that you start to see in
writings of ancient Greeks and
so on when they talk about this
people.
Ezra and Nehemiah's reforms can
be seen as a direct response to
the events of Israel's history.
What's happened before just
cannot be allowed to happen
again.
And they view the tragic
history as a cautionary tale.
 
It's calling upon the people to
make the necessary changes to
avoid a repeat disaster.
 
There's only one way to
guarantee that Israel will never
again be destroyed.
 
She has to live up to the
covenant she failed to honor in
the past.
She has to rededicate herself
to the covenant and this time
she has to be single-minded in
her devotion to God,
because history has shown that
God will punish faithlessness
and betrayal.
Israel can't be led astray by
the beliefs and practices of her
neighbors, and so a strict
policy of separation has to be
enforced if Israel's going to
finally be cured of the desire
for idols.
Again, it's interesting that in
Jewish tradition--the Jewish
tradition is that the flirtation
with idolatry,
which had plagued Israel in the
First Temple Period,
ceased to exist in the Second
Temple Period.
So again, this is another area
in which Jews earned for
themselves a reputation in
antiquity.
They have a reputation for
their strict monotheism,
their scrupulous avoidance of
foreign gods.
They will not bow down to
another god.
There is this people that
doesn't intermarry,
they don't work one day a week,
and they won't bow down to our
kings or to other gods;
these are the kinds of things
you find in writings in this
period.
So Ezra and Nehemiah,
backed by Persian imperial
authority, help to create and
preserve--not just
preserve--create and
preserve,
a national and religious
identity for Jews at a
precarious time.
Their reforms were not
universally welcomed.
Already, even in the books of
Ezra and Nehemiah which give a
very sympathetic account of
their work, obviously,
we can see rumblings and
discontent.
There are other works that are
going to express opposition to
the separatism of Ezra and
Nehemiah.
Isaiah 56:1-7,
an interesting passage,
it states quite explicitly that
foreigners who have joined
themselves to God are welcome.
 
They are welcome in the temple;
they are welcome even to
minister before God.
 
There is a good deal of
historical evidence for the
assimilation of foreigners
within the Jewish community
going on all the time.
 
Non-Jews became Jews,
they married Jews.
We know of one family,
the Tobiad family,
quite influential--they were
originally an Ammonite family.
Now, that is a group that is
explicitly prohibited from
entering the congregation in
Deuteronomy!
But this is a family that
adopted Jewish identity,
became fully assimilated.
 
So clearly there's great
difference of opinion on this
matter.
In the last two lectures we're
going to be focusing a lot on
the diversity of approaches to
the whole question of Israelite
or Jewish identity,
and the relationship to the
Gentile world.
So, although under Ezra,
the Torah became the official
and authoritative norm for
Israel,
although under Ezra Judaism
took the decisive step towards
becoming a religion of
Scripture,
based on the scriptural text.
 
This did not in itself result
in a single uniform set of
practices or beliefs.
 
Adopting the Torah as a
communal norm simply meant that
practices and beliefs were
deemed to be authentic,
to the degree that they
accorded with the sense of
Scripture--and interpretation of
Scripture varied dramatically.
So that widely divergent groups
now, in the Persian period and
as we move into the Hellenistic
period,
widely divergent groups will
claim biblical warrant for their
specific practices and beliefs.
 
So in short,
Ezra may have unified Israel
around a common text,
but he didn't unify them around
a common interpretation
of that text.
Alright, when we come back
we'll be looking at about four
more books, all of which set up
very interesting and different
views on some of these basic
questions.
