We proceed to inquire,
I. Is the seventh of Artaxerxes, when Ezra received his decree concerning Jerusalem, (Ez. 7), rightly placed in the year B. C. 457? The following historical testimony fully answers this question:—
“Ptolemy mentions an eclipse of the moon in the seventh of Cambyses, which, according to modern astronomical calculation, took place in the night following the 16th of July, in the year of the Julian period 4191, at the beginning of the second year of the sixty-fourth Olympiad. As the vulgar era is dated from January 1st 4714 of the Julian period, it follows that this eclipse was B. C. 523. The date of this eclipse, decided by the unerring record of astronomy is undisputed. Consequently as Petavius observes, it is ‘the cardinal point and foundation, on which depend the arrangement of preceding and succeeding times, and the concord of sacred and profane history.’ (De Doct. Tempt. Lib. x, c. 14.)”
This was in the seventh of Cambyses. Cambyses reigned seven years and five months; or, if we include the seven months of the usurper Smerdis who followed him, according to the canon of Ptolemy, eight years. He therefore reigned one year after this eclipse. He was followed by Darius, who reigned thirty-six years; and he in turn by Xerxes who reigned twenty-one years; and this brings us to the first of Artaxerxes, B. C. 464. These are undisputed records of history, from an undisputed starting point, based on the calculations of astronomy. There can therefore be no dispute in regard to it. The first, then, of Artaxerxes being 464, his seventh would be B. C. 457. Here the canon of Ptolemy places it, which is a canon of undoubted authority, the “accuracy of which is demonstrated by the concurrent agreement of more than twenty eclipses.” And before it can be shown to be wrong, the calculation of these eclipses (and they have been repeatedly calculated) must be shown to be incorrect, which is an impossibility.
2. We come therefore to the second inquiry. Was the commission granted to Ezra, sufficiently comprehensive to fulfill the prophecy to restore and to build Jerusalem? Let us inquire into the intent of that phrase. It must mean to restore the Jewish state, civil and ecclesiastical, and re-settle it according to the law of Moses. To restore anything is to bring it back to its original state. The condition then of the Jewish state and church previous to the captivity, may be taken as a standard for its restoration after that event. But at the time when Ezra received his commission, the Scriptures were in a manner lost, the people were in a profound ignorance of the law; the worship of God was neglected; and everything was in great disorder and confusion. This we learn from the reformation which Ezra set about on his arrival at Jerusalem.
Of Ezra’s commission we read in Ez. 7:11, “Now this is the copy of the letter that king Artaxerxes gave unto Ezra the priest, the scribe, even a scribe of the words of the commandments of the Lord and of his statutes to Israel.” “The letter then follows, written not in Hebrew, but in Chaldaic, or Eastern Aramaic, the language then used at Babylon. At the 27th verse the narrative proceeds in Hebrew. We are thus furnished with the original document, by virtue of which Ezra was authorized to ‘restore and to build Jerusalem.’”
The decree commences; “Artaxerxes, king of kings, unto Ezra the priest, a scribe of the law of the God of heaven, perfect peace and at such a time, I make a decree,” &c.; and after granting certain favors to the house of God at Jerusalem, it closes in the following words: “And thou, Ezra, after the wisdom of thy God, that is in thine hand, set magistrates which may judge all the people that are beyond the river, all such as know the laws of thy God, and teach ye them that know them not. And whosoever will not do the law of thy God, and the law of the king, let judgment be executed speedily upon him, whether it be unto death, or to banishment, or to confiscation of goods, or to imprisonment.”
What could be required more ample than this commission to establish the government, enforce the observance of the law of God, and punish those who transgressed? At any rate no other instance of a decree so comprehensive as this can be found since the captivity.
“Sir Isaac Newton justly observes that the dispersed Jews became a people and a city, when they returned into a body politic; and that was in the seventh year of Artaxerxes Longimanus, when Ezra by the king’s commission, erected magistrates all over the land, to govern the people according to the law of God and of the king: under Ezra they first became a polity or city by a government of their own.”
However much stress may be laid upon the expression to build the city, nothing can be urged from it as an objection against the decree in question; for that Ezra understood himself fully empowered to proceed with the building of the city, and the wall is evident from his prayer, as recorded in chap. 9:9; and that he understood further that the conditional prophecies concerning his people were then fulfilled in that restoration is evident from the closing words of that prayer, when he says, “Should we again break thy commandments and join in affinity with the people of these abominations, wouldst not thou be angry with us till thou hadst consumed us, so that there should be no remnant nor escaping.”
But further, seven weeks (49 years) are allotted to the building of the street and wall in troublous times. The reckoning of the time can of course only commence with the commencement of the work; and the work did not commence till the Autumn of that year in which Ezra went up; for it was not until the fifth month that he reached Jerusalem. Ez. 7:8. And in just forty-nine years from this time the work was completed in the last act of reformation by Nehemiah, recorded in the last chapter of his book.
Says Prideaux under the year B. C. 409, “In the fifteenth year of Darius Nothus ended the first seven weeks of the seventy weeks of Daniel’s prophecy. For then the restoration of the church and state of the Jews in Jerusalem and Judea was fully finished, in that last act of reformation, which is recorded in the thirteenth chapter of Nehemiah, from the twenty-third verse to the end of the chapter, just forty-nine years after it had been first begun by Ezra in the seventh year of Artaxerxes Longimanus.”
U. S.