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Updated: June 18, 2025
Now Esdras presented the sacred money to the treasurers, who were of the family of the priests, of silver six hundred and fifty talents, vessels of silver one hundred talents, vessels of gold twenty talents, vessels of brass, that was more precious than gold, twelve talents by weight; for these Presents had been made by the king and his counselors, and by all the Israelites that staid at Babylon.
Our people have built a great synagogue beside his tomb, and the Ismaelites, Arabians, or Mahometans, have built a mosque close by, as they have a great respect for Esdras and the Jews. It is four miles from hence to Chuzestan, which is the same with the ancient city of Elam, now almost ruined and uninhabited.
The prophet Aggaeus, after the temple was repaired again by Esdras, and the people might think they had a very just cause to rejoice on their own behalf for so great a benefit received of Almighty God, yet made he them all burst out into tears, because that they which were yet alive and had seen the former building of the Temple, before the Babylonians destroyed it, called to mind how far off it was yet from that beauty and excellency which it had in the old times past before.
So he cried out to the girl to hurry up with the light, and she brought it, whereupon he went down and examining the Hunchback found that he was stone dead. O for Aaron! O for Joshua, son of Nun! O the Ten Commandments! I have stumbled against the sick one and he hath fallen downstairs and he is dead! How shall I get this man I have killed out of my house? O by the hoofs of the ass of Esdras!"
And in order to appease God, they offered sacrifices, and slew rams, as oblations to him; but it does not seem to me to be necessary to set down the names of these men. So when Esdras had reformed this sin about the marriages of the forementioned persons, he reduced that practice to purity, so that it continued in that state for the time to come.
He makes the ancient scribe and law-giver of Israel his mouthpiece, but he is dealing with the events of his own time. Nevertheless, his allusions are veiled and obscure; he speaks in riddles, yet he speaks to a people who understand his riddles, and know how to take his symbolic visions. This book is in our English Apocrypha, under the title 2 Esdras.
Full of longing and anxiety I await the arrival of my servants with the joyful news." Then said Esdras, "They cannot be much longer, for it is a good while since they went away." "In vain has my troubled gaze looked up and down the street of Kedron. But nothing can I see and nothing hear. Go, my Esdras, go toward the Kedron gate and see."
In regard to the books of the Old Testament, Esdras, a priest of the law, testifies himself to having corrected and completed wholly the pretended sacred books of his law, which had partly been lost and partly corrupted. He divided them into twenty-two books, according to the number of the Hebraic letters, and wrote several other books, whose doctrine was to be revealed to the learned men alone.
Arrived at the boundary of the field, the spot marked by the broken half-buried pillar of red granite Heliobas had mentioned, he paused thinking dreamily of the words of Esdras, who in answer to his Angel-visitant's inquiry: "Why art thou disquieted?" had replied: "Because thou hast forsaken me, and yet I did according to thy words, and I went into the field, and lo!
Thou shalt also dedicate those holy vessels which have been given thee, and as many more as thou hast a mind to make, and shall take the expenses out of the king's treasury. I have, moreover, written to the treasurers of Syria and Phoenicia, that they take care of those affairs that Esdras the priest, and reader of the laws of God, is sent about.
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