Ezra 4:7

And in the days of Artaxerxes Artaxerxes Longimanus succeeded his father Xerxes and reigned forty years (465 425). He is mentioned in Ezra 7:1; Nehemiah 2:1.

The name in the inscriptions appears as Artakshathra, compounded of -Arta" meaning -great" (cf. Arta-phernes, Arta-bazus) and -Khsathra" -kingdom".

The view which identifies this Artaxerxes with Pseudo-Smerdis or Gomates, the usurper of the Persian crown on the death of Cambyses, is discussed in the Note on the whole section appended to Ezra 4:23.

wrote Bishlam, Mithredath, Tabeel, and the rest of their companions It has been very commonly supposed that this verse introduces the letter which is so fully described in Ezra 4:8-10, and is therefore to be explained in close connexion with Ezra 4:8. According to this view -Bishlam, Mithredath, Tabeel and the rest of their companions" are the Samaritans who originate the accusation of the Jews before Artaxerxes, while Rehum, Shimshai &c. (Ezra 4:8-9) are assumed to be the Persian officials of the Province, induced by the bribes or misrepresentations of the Samaritan community to forward to the king in writing their formal complaint against the Jews. Furthermore, as the letter is said to have been written in Aramaic, and we pass immediately from Hebrew into Aramaic, this in itself would be a reason for supposing that Ezra 4:8 &c. described more fully in detail the writing mentioned in Ezra 4:7. But (a) this theory fails to account for the abruptness of style and the want of connexion between Ezra 4:7-8, which is evident even in the English version; (b) the bare statement of Ezra 4:7 that Bishlam and his companions -wrote to Artaxerxes", and of Ezra 4:8 that Rehum and Shimshai also wrote to Artaxerxes, can only by a process of imagination be transformed into private Samaritan information imparted to the Persian officials and then lodged by them before the king in the shape of a departmental complaint; (c) the theory does not explain why the Hebrew is not resumed after the conclusion of the letters (Ezra 4:17; Ezra 4:21). The version preserved in 1EEsther 2:16 cuts the knot by freely fusing the two verses together -But in the time of Artaxerxes king of the Persians, Belemus, and Mithridates, and Tabellius, and Rathumus, and Beeltethumus, and Semellius the secretary, with others that were in commission with them, dwelling in Samaria and other places, wrote unto him against them that dwelt in Judea and Jerusalem these letters following".

It seems preferable to ascribe the disjointed character of these Ezra 4:6-8 to the roughness of the Compiler's work, and to suppose that each of these three verses presents us with a separate instance of Samaritan opposition in which the Samaritans -wrote" an indictment against the Jews. Having mentioned what took place in the reign of Xerxes (Ezra 4:6), the Compiler goes on to state that there were two such written accusations in the days of Artaxerxes. The first he says was written by Bishlam &c., the second by Rehum &c. In his mention of the first letter, he either condenses the full document into a brief notice or was only able to discover a short statement in the public chronicles. In his mention of the second, he is able to lay the document before his readers, obtaining it from an Aramaic chronicle, from which he makes a long extract and introduces it without further preface.

This explanation accounts for (a) the abrupt transition from Ezra 4:7 to Ezra 4:8, (b) the mention in both verses of a letter written to Artaxerxes, (c) the continuance of the Aramaic language in the narrative, e.g. Ezra 5:17; Ezra 6:18.

Bishlam, Mithredath, Tabeel Names of foreign colonists, -Bishlam" the LXX. renders -in peace" (ἐν εἰρήνη) as if not a proper name. On -Mithredath" see note chap. Ezra 1:8. -Tabeel" perhaps a Syrian name; cf. the name Tabeal (Isaiah 7:6), or a Persian (cf. Tabalus, Herod. I. 153).

the letter The Hebrew has here (cf. Ezra 4:18; Ezra 4:23) made use of a Persian word, which completely mystified the Versions. The LXX. renders it -the tax-collector" (ὁ φορολόγος), the Vulgate -accusationis". It is pronounced -nisht'ewân" and is compared with a modern Persian -nuwischten" to write. Perhaps the word occurred in the records from which the Compiler obtained his information as to the letter.

was written in the Syrian tongue, and interpreted in the Syrian tongue R.V. - was written In the Syrian character, and set forth in the Syrian tongue", margin - Or Aramaic" for -Syrian". This is all we hear about the letter. What occasioned its composition and how it was received we do not know.

We gather from this verse that in the days of Artaxerxes the official correspondence of the Syrian province or satrapy was conducted in Aramaic. This indeed, had been the language of diplomatic communication in the days of the Assyrian monarchy (2 Kings 18:26; Isaiah 36:11). As the language of diplomacy and commerce among the races of Western Asia, it held its own with Greek and was only finally displaced in a much later time by the diffusion of Arabic, which followed upon the successes of the Mahommedans (see Introduction on -the Aramaic language"). The strange thing is that its use should have been made the subject of special remark in this verse. But probably the point to which attention is drawn, is the fact of the letter being written in Aramaic characters as well as expressed in the Aramaic tongue. The early Aramaic Alphabet probably differed considerably from the early Hebrew. The mention of the Aramaic characters is perhaps adduced as a proof that the Compiler had either seen the actual letter or obtained the account from a source which mentioned this point particularly. The verse shows conclusively that Aramaic was not yet the language of the Jewish people.