Trito-Isaiah (Isaiah 56-66) and the gôlāh group of Ezra,Shecaniah,and Nehemiah (Ezra 7-Nehemiah 13): Is there a connection?

The chronological issue

Most scholars now agree to date the activities of those Judaeans repatriated together with Ezra, Shecaniah, ³ and, later, Nehemiah, to the 5th century BC, but the biblical texts permit us to be more precise. We are told that Ezra, accompanied by a group of lay persons, priests, Levites, musicians, gate keepers, and temple slaves, left Babylon for Judah in the seventh year of Artaxerxes, almost certainly Artaxerxes I Long Hand (465–424 BC), therefore in the year 458 BC. The alternative dating, in the seventh year of Artaxerxes II nicknamed Memory Man (405–359), is sometimes proposed, but the account of Ezra’s activities does not fit the historical context of the early 4th century BC. ⁴ The arrival of Nehemiah in the province from Susa is dated to the 20th year of the same reign, therefore 445 BC (Neh. 1.1) and he remained in Jerusalem as governor of the province for 12 years, therefore from 445 to 433 BC. (Neh. 5.14). We can therefore place the activity of these leading figures in the quarter century 458–433 BC.

The task of dating Trito-Isaiah involves a much higher level of difficulty and dubiety. It may be possible to come up with an at least approximate date for the final form of the book of Isaiah, or even of Trito-Isaiah as a distinct section of the book, but the complex redactional history of these 11 chapters obliges us to concentrate on clues for the dating of the individual components of Trito-Isaiah—25 according to my count based on subject matter and prosody. ⁵ The most promising of such indications can be found in the community lament in Isa 63.7-64.11, which may therefore serve as a suitable point of departure.

Lament over the disaster of 586 BC (Isaiah 63:7-64:11)

This hymn, which begins with a recital of YHWH’s great benevolence shown to the ancestors and their inadequate response, and goes on to question why they now find themselves in such desperate straits, has no connection with either the campaign of YHWH as warrior in Edom which precedes it (63.1-6) or the judgement passed on those who participate in non-Yahwistic cults which follows (65.1-7). The closest parallels are certain passages in Lamentations and the psalms of community lament, especially the Asaphite psalms 74 and 79 and the Korachite psalm 89. Comparison with these psalms should discourage attempts to break up Isa 63.7-64.11 into distinct redactional strata. Apart from one or two obvious glosses (63:11; 64:1-2), it reads as one coherent text. ⁶ The passages relevant to the chronological issue are as follows (my translations):

Why have the reprobates made light of your holy place?

Our adversaries have trampled down your sanctuary. (63.18)

Your holy cities are a wilderness,

Zion also has become a wilderness,

Jerusalem a place of desolation.

Our holy house, our pride and joy,

where our ancestors sang your praise,

has been consumed by fire;

our most precious possession has been turned into a shambles. (64.9-10)

The first half-verse of 63.18 is textually problematic. The NRSV rendering, ‘your holy people took possession for a little while’, has the obvious problem that yārěšû, ‘they took possession’, has no object, and the somewhat less obvious problem that mis‘ār (‘a little’) is used elsewhere for space and size but not for time. REB ‘Why have the wicked trespassed on your sanctuary?’ makes use of the brilliant and, in my opinion, convincing emendation proposed by Charles Cutler Torrey many years ago who reconstructed MT 63.18a lammis‘ār yārěšû ‘am-qodšekā as lammâ si‘ărû rěšā‘îm qodšekâ (‘Why have reprobates made light of your holy place?’). In addition to making a better fit with the immediate context, Torrey’s emendation has the advantage of providing a parallel for miqdāšekâ (‘your sanctuary’) in the second half of the verse and should be accepted. ⁷

The despoliation, systematic destruction, and burning of the temple by the Babylonian general Nebuzaradan (2 Kgs 25.8-17) is also the principal object of lamentation and complaint addressed to YHWH in 64.9-10 together with the disasters of war visited on Jerusalem/Zion and other Judaean cities. ⁸ Jerusalem was attacked and occupied several times throughout history, but we may take it as certain that the catastrophic event which is being lamented here is the Babylonian conquest of 586 BC. The occupation of Jerusalem by Ptolemy I Soter in 302/301 BC has been proposed, but according to Josephus, this ruler took the city by guile, entering it on Sabbath under pretext of offering sacrifice, and there is no record of destruction and no damage to the temple. ⁹ If this is so, it is inconceivable—and this is the main point—that this lament could have been composed after the rebuilding of the temple in the sixth year of Darius I, therefore 516/515 BC (Ezra 6.15). In the broadest terms, therefore, the lament must be dated between the Babylonian conquest and destruction of the temple in 586 BC and the completion of the rebuilding of its successor 70 years later. In fact, the tendency of commentators who have concerned themselves with this chronological issue has been to place the date earlier rather than later in this 70-year period. Thus for George Adam Smith, Isa. 63.7-64.11 ‘must have been written after the destruction and before the rebuilding of the Temple’; for Georg Fohrer, it is the earliest text in Isaiah 40-66; for Claus Westermann, it must have been composed not long after the fall of Jerusalem, and for Norman Whybray within living memory of the disaster, like similar statements in Lamentations 1.10 and 2.7-9. ¹⁰ This should be accepted in spite of the lament in 63.19 that ‘we have long been (mē‘ôlām) like those over whom you do not rule, like those not called by your name’. But whatever date is assigned to this lament within this 70-year period, it could have no relevance for or relation to the activity of the Ezra-Shecaniah-Nehemiah group in the middle years of the following century. ¹¹

Reassurance for the marginal (56.1-8)

Trito-Isaiah opens with an oracular statement with the well-attested prophetic incipit koh ’āmar YHWH (‘This is what YHWH said’). It is addressed to the same Judaean public as the previous passage (55:1-13) but with special attention to two categories of those known to sociologists as ‘the dubiously belonging’, namely, proselytes of foreign origin and the sexually mutilated, perhaps on account of service in the harem of a foreign court. Isaiah 56:1-8 is the opening statement of Trito-Isaiah, but we must bear in mind that this designation for chapters 56-66 was unknown before 1892, the first edition of Duhm’s famous commentary, and in fact 56.1-8 has enough significant links with the preceding prophetic address to raise some troubling questions about the way the book of Isaiah has been divided. Both 56.1-8 and 55.1-13 emphasize the importance of fidelity to the covenant (55.3; 56.4) and the admission of foreigners to the religion of the God of Israel (55.5; 56.3). The lament of the eunuch that he is just ‘a withered tree’ (56.3b) contrasts with the joyful celebration of the trees in 55.12-13, as the memorial and name promised to eunuchs ‘which will not be cut off’ (yād wāšēm ’ašer lo’ yikkārēt, 56.5) recalls the miraculous flourishing of nature in the preceding passage which will be ‘a memorial for YHWH, a perpetual sign that will not be cut off’ (wěhāyāh lěYHWH lěšēm, lě’ôt ‘ôlām lo’ yikkārēt, 55.13b). ¹² Isa 56:1b is an almost verbatim borrowing from Isa 46.13a and the alternative meaning of sědāqāh in 56:1 (‘vindication’, ‘deliverance’, ‘victory’ rather than ‘righteousness’) is rare—if indeed it is attested—in the rest of Trito-Isaiah but is quite common in chapters 40-55. ¹³ There is, finally, the intriguing fact that the great Isaiah scroll from the first Qumran cave adds an initial kî, ‘therefore’, at the beginning of the first line of 56.1-8 which has the effect of attaching it to 55.12-13 immediately preceding and aligning it with 55.6-13 where the same connective particle is prominent (vv 9, 10, 11b).

Isa 56.1-8 begins and ends with the prophetic promise of a future reality to be created by the God of Israel, a reality which must dictate conduct in the present encapsulated in the terms ‘justice and righteousness’. This reality will become manifest in a new or renewed community consisting in the dispersed of Israel, now repatriated in Zion, and others who associate themselves with them (56.8b). ¹⁴ ‘Justice and righteousness’ summarizes commitment to the covenant, the visible expression of which is to be sabbath observance repeated three times in this short passage.

However, the prophetic author’s main concern, after stating the essential conditions of membership in the community which lives by this vision of the future, was to reassure members of foreign origin (běnê-hannēkār) and the sexually mutilated (sārîsîm), both categories accepted as proselytes, of their good standing in the community. Unfortunately this passage, unlike the community lament discussed earlier, provides few and uncertain clues to the time of composition. Both categories are threatened with being ‘cut off’, that is, forcibly excluded from membership in the community (vv 3,5), and it would be interesting to know who was doing the threatening and why they were doing it. One line of enquiry would start from the theme of return from exile introduced at the end of the previous oracular saying (55.12-13) and present less explicitly throughout Isa. 56.1-8. The process of repatriation, prolonged well into the 5th century BC as we have seen, gave rise to tension and conflicts on subjects of major concern between the gôlāh element and those Judaeans who had survived the deportations, in the first place about control of the rebuilt temple (who were qualified to officiate or worship in it) and, in general, about conflicting interpretation of the laws, including the determination of the status of those who had married Babylonian or Elamite women. Isaiah 56.1-8, with its undercurrent of conflict about who qualifies as members of the qěhal yiśrā’ēl (‘the assembly of Israel’), could conceivably be accounted for with reference to the situation created by the repatriation of those who returned with Ezra, Shecaniah, and Nehemiah, but there were many other repatriations on which we are not so well informed. At any rate, the possibility deserves a closer look.

It was understandable that the observance of sabbath would assume greater importance as emblematic of Israelite identity in the more complex and diverse situation of the early post-disaster period and consequent to the return of a large number of expatriates. In Isaiah 56.1-8, sabbath is the primary instantiation of the law and the covenant, but how it is to be observed is assumed to be known and unproblematic, quite unlike the situation during the governorship of Nehemiah. Whereas during the time of the kingdoms the law forbade only selling on sabbath (e.g. Amos 8.5), Nehemiah also forbade buying, even buying from the non-Israelite local population (Neh. 10.32). He launched a vigorous campaign against the popular Tyrian sabbath market in Jerusalem and forbade anyone to leave the city in search of food on sabbath, in effect putting the city under lockdown, with the goal of putting an end to sabbath shopping within or outside of the city gates, a policy which could hardly have been popular (Neh. 13.15-22).

The situation is quite different on the issue of membership in the household of Israel. We have seen that the principal concern of the author of Isaiah 56.1-8 is to reassure proselytes of foreign origin and those sexually impaired of their good standing in the ‘assembly of Israel’ (qěhal yisrā’ēl). This is otherwise stated as the right to enjoy undisturbed membership ‘in my house and within my walls’ (v.5), which we may parse as access to the temple and to the civic rights which came with membership in a community based on participation in temple worship. Foreigners may also aspire to play an active role in temple worship, a privilege reiterated later in Trito-Isaiah, ¹⁵ and they too may look forward to membership in the servant people of the future Zion (v. 7). All of this is under threat, and the natural assumption would be that the threat proceeds from the application of a point of law or, more likely, an interpretation of a point of law. The problem in Isa 56.1-8 is not one of intermarriage between a Judaean (Israelite) and a person of foreign origin. Such marriages are forbidden in Deut. 7.1-6 and the law is rigorously applied by Ezra and Nehemiah, ¹⁶ but it is not an issue in Isa 56.1-8.

The ultimate source of the problem in Isa 56.1-8 is the law in Deut. 23.2-9 which excludes four categories from membership in the qěhal yisrā’ēl (‘the assembly of Israel’): the sexually impaired; those born of an illicit union; ¹⁷ Ammonites and Moabites, close neighbours of Judah, excluded in perpetuum; Edomites and Egyptians to the third generation. In Ezra-Nehemiah, the part of this law dealing with Ammonites and Moabites is extended to apply to all of foreign descent, and this reading led to immediate and decisive action: they (i.e. the members of this gôlāh sect) ‘separated out’ (i.e. expelled) all those of mixed descent (kol-‘ēreb), which included members who were of foreign origin (Neh 12.3). The same verb (bdl) is used with the technical sense of separation between clean and unclean, between holy and profane in the ritual laws in Leviticus, which is then applied to the necessary separation of the people of Israel from all other peoples, whether ‘ammê ha’ares, the mixed palestinian population, or běnê-hannēkār, foreigners living elsewhere:

I am YHWH your God ... I have separated you (habdaltî) from other peoples. You shall therefore make a separation (hibdaltem) between clean and unclean animals and between clean and unclean birds. You must not contaminate yourselves through land animal or bird or anything that crawls on the ground which I have separated off from you (hibdaltî lākem) to hold them unclean ... You shall be holy to me for I am holy. I have separated you (’abdil ’etkem) from other peoples to belong to me. (Lev. 20.24-26) ¹⁸

This language, to which we may give the name ‘ritual ethnicity’, was taken over enthusiastically by Ezra, Shecaniah, and Nehemiah, using the same technical term for separation or self-segregation. We hear it in the complaint of the group leaders to Ezra about those who had not separated themselves (lo’-nibdělû) from ‘the peoples of the lands’ (Ezra 9:1), and those who eventually did so were signatories to Nehemiah’s written covenant in which the first article was the vow to avoid intermarriage with the ‘peoples of the lands’ (Neh. 10.28-30). ¹⁹ On the contrary, neither the Ezra-Nehemiah narrative nor Chronicles closely related with it has anything to say about eunuchs. A link is also rendered less likely in view of the lack of success of Ezra’s measures beginning already during the governorship of Nehemiah (Neh. 13.23-29) and well attested during the late Persian and early Hellenistic period. The failure of these measures may also help to explain the abrupt and partly unintelligible conclusion to the Ezra story (Ezra 10.44), perhaps consequent on his recall by the imperial authorities bringing his mission to an end. It may also be significant in this respect that the name Ezra appears in no biblical text except Ezra-Nehemiah, and it is absent from Jesus ben-Sirach’s encomium on famous figures from Israel’s past, even though Nehemiah is praised for rebuilding the walls and houses of Jerusalem (Sir 49.13). A propos of Nehemiah, one wonders what he would have made of the oracular statement at Isa. 56.7 that ‘my house will be called a house of prayer for all peoples’. In sum, the interpretation of Deuteronomy 23.2-9 current in the Ezra-Nehemiah group probably made no contribution to the disquietude and the need for reassurance of those threatened with exclusion in Isaiah 56.1-8.

The core section of Trito-Isaiah (Isaiah 60-62)

Before pursuing our enquiry into Isa 60-62, we should first take note of a significant structural feature of Trito-Isaiah: chapters 60-62 form its mid-section preceded and followed by four chapters (56-59 and 63-66). This mid-section begins and ends with an apostrophe to Zion (60.1-3, 10-22; 62.1-9) and the joyful announcement of return from exile (60.4-9; 62.10-12), both major themes of Isaiah 60-62. At the centre of chapters 60–62, its almost exact centre, is the statement of a prophet, perhaps the signature of the prophetic author of chapters 60–62, announcing good news about liberty for captives, consolation for those who mourn over Zion, and a new age dawning (Isa 61.1-3a). ²⁰ The resulting a-b-a structure at both the macro and micro level of Isaiah 56-66 presents in these central chapters the prophetic vision of a new age for Zion and Zion’s people in counterpoint to the problems, failures, and discouragement of the prophet’s contemporaries which form the subject matter of 56-59 and 63-66. ²¹

This core section provides no information comparable to what we were able to extract from the lament in 63.7-64.11. That foreigners are charged with the restoration and rebuilding of what was destroyed by the Babylonian army (60.10; 61.4) is fantasy rather than fact, and there is of course no allusion to Nehemiah’s contribution to that task. Return from exile and repatriation is predicted as imminent and certain (60.1-9; 62.10-12), in the line of similar joyful predictions in Isaiah 40-55 (40.3-5; 52.7-12). These prophetic announcements and the upbeat note they sound would therefore fit very well in the years following the fall of Babylon to the Persians in 539 BC during the reign of Cyrus (559-530) when expectations of a return from Babylon to Judah were at their highest. In that case, Isaiah 60-62 would obviously refer to a time long before the activity of Ezra, Shecaniah, and Nehemiah.

At this point in Trito-Isaiah, the central theme and the most powerful symbol is Zion, a name not even mentioned in Ezra-Nehemiah but fully in evidence in Deutero-Isaiah. ²² At a later point the emphasis will be on the Servants of the Lord, a minority group then ill-regarded but destined to be vindicated in the coming judgement (Isa 65.8-16; 66.14). As the renewed people of God and citizens of the future Zion, they constitute the other major theme in Trito-Isaiah. On these Servants Ezra-Nehemiah is likewise silent. ²³

Isaiah 56-59

No one coming to Isaiah 56.9-59.21 after reading Ezra 7-Nehemiah 13 could fail to notice how different are the concerns and the manner in which they are expressed in these two texts. Isa 56:9-12 condemns corrupt leaders, including priests and prophets, whose leadership will lead to disaster; 57:1-2 laments the death of a saddîq and of hăsîdîm (’ānšê hesed) associated with him; and 57.3-13, together with 65.1-7 and 66.3-5, 17, condemns practitioners of non-Yahwistic cults. None of this was on the agenda of Ezra and his group as set out in Ezra-Nehemiah. Even when matters of common interest are present, as in the sermon on fasting and sabbath (58.3-14), what is important in Ezra-Nehemiah is conformity with the law as interpreted in that gôlāh group and accompanied by ritual segregation of those of Israelite descent (Neh 9.1-2), while in Isaiah the emphasis is on genuine fasting, the internal disposition of the one fasting confirmed by good works, here described as the true fasting. ²⁴ Along the same lines, sabbath is the day for reflection and putting aside one’s everyday interests and concerns. Borrowings from older prophetic texts are also in evidence. This is a subject for a more thorough study than can be undertaken here, but we may note the following examples: the invitation to wild animals (i.e. foreign nations) to ravage the Judaean homeland represented as a vineyard in 56.9, which has drawn on Jer. 12.9-10; the presentation of leaders as shepherds who feed themselves rather than the sheep entrusted to them in 56.11, close to Ezek. 34.1-10; ²⁵ priests and prophets as watchmen in 56.10, using a common metaphor for the prophetic function. ²⁶

Beyond these specific concerns and literary procedures which distance these four chapters, and Trito-Isaiah in general, from Ezra 7-Neh 13, there is the emotional tone of these texts which puts them in a category by themselves. One example: in the confession of sin and community lament in Isa. 59.1-20, we are hearing the ‘new prophecy’ of the Levite as teacher and preacher in the Deuteronomistic manner of Jeremiah 17.19-27 and Zechariah 7-8. There is a broader sensitivity and a deeper resonance here than can be found in Ezra-Nehemiah, well expressed in a comment of Charles Cutler Torrey on 59.1-20:

This great poem de profundis stands alone in the collection as a picture of sin and misery. The prevailing impression, through most of its extent, is of darkness. Sin has separated the people from their God (verse 2), his face is hidden from them. Thus the light has gone; they have become as blind men, staggering in the dark, groping for support, stumbling at noon as in twilight. ²⁷ (Author’s emphasis)

As for the date of this material; with the possible exception of 56:1-8, discussed earlier, it makes a good fit with the six decades from the completion of the rebuilt temple in 516/515 to the arrival of Ezra in the province of Yehud (Judah) in 458, corresponding to the gap between the events recorded in Ezra 1-6 and those in Ezra 7-Neh. 13. There is little or nothing here in common with Ezra 7-Nehemiah 13.

Isaiah 63-66

The report of YHWH to the watchman who questions him about his blood-stained clothing on returning from single combat in Edom (63.1-6) has nothing in common with chapters 60-62 which it follows but is matched with 59.15b-20 which immediately precedes the core section; another example of the a–b–a pattern in Trito-Isaiah, with the core section in the middle. It may be set out as follows:

YHWH prepares for battle (59.15b-20)—YHWH at war with Edom. (63.1-6)

Community lament (59.9-15a)—Community lament. (63.7-64.11)

Why God remains silent (59.1-8)—Why people do not respond to God’s offer. (65.1-7)

Both 59.15b-20 and 63.1-6 must therefore have been put in place later than 60-62, but this does not decide their respective dates of composition. The literary device of reporting to a watchman or sentinel and asking or answering questions on returning to one’s own city is modelled on Isa 21.11-12, another encounter between one returning home from Seir, that is, Edom, and a sentinel. ²⁸ It may be compared with the much longer anti-Edomite saying in Isa. 34.1-17 in which YHWH is engaged in a campaign of extermination in Edom, his sword covered in blood. ²⁹ In both Isa. 63.1-6 and 34.1-17 Edom, whose tense relations with Israel are dramatized in the account of Esau’s relations with his brother Jacob, stands for all nations hostile to Israel (Judah). ³⁰ In both these anti-Edomite texts, there is also a strong apocalyptic note, an anticipation of the end time, summed up in the expression yôm nāqām (‘day of vengeance’ or ‘day of vindication’), a variation on the more common ‘day of YHWH’. ³¹ This kind of eschatological language is entirely lacking in Ezra-Nehemiah.

In its attitude towards Edom, and in consideration of the extreme language in which contempt for Edom is expressed, Isa 63.1-6 belongs with those texts which excoriate Edom and Edomites in the aftermath of the Babylonian campaign, the sack of Jerusalem, and the destruction of the temple in 586 BC. Edomites urged the Babylonians to level Jerusalem down to its foundations (Ps. 137) and they played their part in the disaster by looting, ambushing, robbing the survivors, and infiltrating southern Judah (Obad. 13-16; Ezekiel 35.1-15; 36.5). They are also warned that punishment would fall on them in due course (Lam. 4.21). Perhaps the closest parallel is Mal. 1.2-5 in which, as in Isa 63.1-6, the destruction of Edom is explicitly an expression of the anger of the God of Israel. This ‘Edomphobia’ is clearly a feature of the years following soon after the disaster of 586 BC.

The community lament (63.7-64.11), discussed earlier, is followed by a condemnation of those who practise forbidden cults, often while outwardly orthodox Yahwists (65.1-7). Like the denunciation of the Sorceress and her children (57.3-13), the syncretism issue comes up in Ezra-Nehemiah only as a foreseeable consequence of marriage with non-Israelite women, a major concern for the gôlāh sect of Ezra, Shecaniah, and Nehemiah, most clearly in evidence in Nehemiah’s violent treatment of Judaean men who had married women from Philistia, Ammon, and Moab, followed by his expulsion of a member of the high priestly family (Neh. 13.23-28).

The Servants of the Lord and those who tremble at the word of God

At this point in Trito-Isaiah (65.8-16), we begin to hear about the Servants of the Lord, disciples of the Servant whose painful life and death are recorded in Deutero-Isaiah. This title ‘Servants of the Lord’ is used with reference to the people of Israel as a whole in many places in the Hebrew Bible, including the promise to foreigners that they may aspire to minister to the Lord, to love his name, and be his servants (56.6). In Trito-Isaiah, however, ‘Servants of the Lord’ has a more specific reference to a minority of the faithful, the core of a new people God was even then gathering to himself, the ‘remnant’ of which the prophets of old had spoken. In Trito-Isaiah, these servants are the few good grapes for the sake of which the rotten bunch will not be destroyed (65.8-9). Although now spurned and rejected, their vindication, promised towards the conclusion of Deutero-Isaiah (54.17b), will be manifested in the final judgement (65.8-16; 66.14-16). Ezra, Shecaniah, Nehemiah, and other members of this gôlāh group no doubt thought of themselves as the faithful and the elect in Israel, but they never refer to themselves as Servants of the Lord in this more restrictive sense, and there is no assurance of eschatological reversal as in Isa 65.13-14. ³² Finally, as noted earlier, there is no allusion to Zion, the ultimate cité lumière, as the destiny of these Servants of the Lord.

The final chapter of Trito-Isaiah and the book of Isaiah as a whole opens with what may appear on first reading to be a repudiation of the temple (66.1-2), ³³ until one notices that this reading is incompatible with what is said about the temple elsewhere in Trito-Isaiah: it is YHWH’s holy, beautiful, and glorious house’ (60.7, 13; 64.11), his holy mountain shrine and house of prayer for all peoples (56.7, 13; 65.11). A more plausible approach would be to read this statement as directed against a too materialistic understanding of the deity and the location of the deity, reflecting the same concern as in Solomon’s prayer at the dedication of the first temple: ‘Will God indeed dwell on earth? Heaven itself, the highest heaven, cannot contain you, how much less this house I have built?’ (1 Kgs 8.27). For the same reason, the temple is said to be the footstool on earth for the throne of God in heaven, ‘the place where my feet rest’ (Isa 60:13). ³⁴ Hence, also the practice, frequent in Deuteronomy, of representing the temple as the place where the Name of God is invoked, God whose dwelling is in heaven (Deut. 12.5, 11; 14.23, etc).

It is in fact at once made clear in the next two verses that the problem is not the temple itself but the priests who officiate in it and are responsible for the prescriptive daily sacrifices (66.3-4). According to the most probable reading of 66.3-4, these temple priests are accused of indulging in syncretistic practices including the offering of children to Molech and similar ‘abominations’, in line with polemic elsewhere in Trito-Isaiah against such practices (Isa 57.3-13; 65.1-7; 66.17). In contrast to this deplorable situation within the temple priesthood, members of the ruling class and the elite as they were, the Lord looks with favour on the poor, the afflicted, and those who tremble at the word of God.

The general sense of the third of these terms is clear enough. Trembling can be brought on by consternation (Gen. 27.33; 42.28), or by fear (e.g. Isa. 10.29; 19.16; 32.11), or by a combination of fear, awe and reverence, as here. The fact that it occurs in the participial form with reference to a plurality only in Isa. 66.2,5 and in Ezra 9.4 and 10.3 has been for some recent commentators a major argument in favour of a connection between Trito-Isaiah and Ezra-Nehemiah. ³⁵ Before deciding, however, we should note the qualifications attached to each of these four texts. Isa 66.2 reads, ‘those who tremble at my (God’s) word’; In Isa 66.5, the hărēdîm are those who tremble at his (God’s) word and are urged to attend to the prophetic word of God which follows and which vindicates them and their eschatological faith against the denunciations of ‘the brethren’; Ezra 9.4: ‘all those who trembled (kol hārēd) at the words ³⁶ of the God of Israel’ supported Ezra after he received the news that members of those recently repatriated with Ezra had contracted marriages with local women, including women not of Israelite descent; Ezra 10.3: Shecaniah, a leading member of Ezra’s gôlāh group, proposes to Ezra to expel from the group the women involved in these marriages together with their children ‘in keeping with the wise decision of my lord and of those who tremble at the commandment of our God (hahărēdîm běmiswat ’ělohênû) and let it be done according to the law’. Since there is no law in the Pentateuch obliging an Israelite to divorce his foreign wife and expel her from the community together with her children, the decision of Ezra, ³⁷ supported by the ‘tremblers’, must refer to a restrictive interpretation of either Deut. 7.1-6 or 23.2-9. The hărēdîm would then be those in Ezra’s gôlāh who supported his policy of controlling marriage—a familiar feature of sectarian movements.

The qualifications added to all four texts in which the hărēdîm are mentioned preclude the possibility of taking this designation as the title of a distinctive group, party or sect as, for example, the Pharisees, Sadducees, and Essenes of Josephus. In this respect, hărēdîm are of the same order as, for example, yir’ê YHWH (‘those who fear the Lord’) or ’ăbelîm, mit’abēlîm, ’ăbēlê siyyôn (‘mourners’, ‘those who mourn over Zion’). ³⁸ At the same time, these qualifications reveal more clearly the difference between the hărēdîm of Isaiah 66 and those of Ezra 9-10. In Isaiah, they are in the same category as the poor and afflicted, they are excluded and mocked, and are inspired by an eschatological vision communicated through the word of prophecy. In Ezra-Nehemiah, on the contrary, they are associated with Ezra in the leadership of the gôlāh group and are concerned with the interpretation and implementation of ‘the commandment of our God’ (miswat ’ělohênû, Ezra 10.3). The emphasis is on the solution of present problems with no appeal to eschatological faith.

We can take this a bit further. The last two chapters of Isaiah mention another category of those despised and excluded by their ‘brethren’, the Servants of the Lord who form a distinct group of the disciples of the Servant of Isaiah 49-53. The parallel between those who tremble at the prophetic word in Isa. 66.2-5 and the prophetic Servants of the Lord in 65.8-16 is unmistakable in both form and content. Those who tremble at God’s word are, together with the poor and afflicted, the object of divine favour (66.2); their opponents, the sacrificing priests, have chosen what does not please God (66.3-4); those who tremble at God’s word are invited to hear a prophecy predicting their future vindication and shame for those who oppress them (66.5). In the same a–b–a pattern discussed earlier, the Servants of the Lord are promised a blessed future (65.8-10); their opponents, who neglect the sanctuary of Zion and follow Gad and Meni, gods of good luck rather than the God of Israel to whom they are unresponsive, are destined for the sword, namely, destruction (65.11-12); the Servants of the Lord, like the hărēdîm, are invited to hear a prophetic word about their ultimate vindication:

These are the words of the Sovereign Lord YHWH:

My servants will eat, while you go hungry,

my servants will drink, while you go thirsty,

my servants will rejoice, while you are put to shame,

my servants will exult with heartfelt joy,

while you cry out with heartache and wail with anguish of spirit ...

For the former troubles are forgotten and hidden from my sight. (65.13-16)

The designation hărēdîm is therefore one of several used with reference to the Servants of the Lord, disciples of the Servant whose life and death are recorded in Deutero-Isaiah. The context in which the designation occurs and the people to whom it refers in Ezra have nothing in common with Trito-Isaiah.

The temple in Trito-Isaiah and Ezra-Nehemiah

The distinctive attitude to the temple and to those qualified to worship in it is set in the opening lines of Trito-Isaiah where the temple is described as a house of prayer for all peoples in which foreigners faithful to the covenant will experience joy (Isa. 56.6-7). Since the Jerusalem temple, like many temples throughout the Persian empire, was also the focus of civic life, the eunuchs in the same passage can be given a memorial and a name ‘in my house and within my walls’; in other words, they will be granted access to the temple and to all civic rights and obligations which came with membership in the temple community. ³⁹ More often than not in Trito-Isaiah, the walls are those which surround the ideal Zion, residence of YHWH Lord of Hosts (58.8; 60.1-7; 66.20), corresponding to the closely related passage in Isa. 2.1-5 about the visionary mountain of the Lord’s house to which all nations will stream. Parallel to this way of speaking about city and temple can be found in prophetic texts from the early years of the reign of Darius I (522–486 BC), the age of Zerubbabel and his colleague the priest Jeshua, following on the decree of Darius permitting the rebuilding of the temple in Jerusalem. The closest parallel to Trito-Isaiah is Zechariah 1-8 where we read that people from many nations will attach themselves to the God of Israel (Zech 2.11 cf. 8.22-23). Throughout Proto-Zechariah, the title “YHWH sěbā’ôt (‘Lord of Hosts’), associated with the holy ark and Zion, occurs 35 times. This title does not occur in Trito-Isaiah, but the corresponding designation in Trito-Isaiah is kābôd (‘glory’), an attempt to encapsulate the experience of divine presence in the temple. This epithet is intimately associated with the ark; indeed, it is practically synonymous with the ark. When the daughter-in-law of Eli, priest of the ark sanctuary at Shiloh heard that this sacred palladium had been captured by the Philistines she gave her new-born child the name Ichabod. ⁴⁰ When the ark reached its final destination in Solomon’s temple, we are told that the glory filled the temple (1 Kgs 8.11). Wherever mention is made of the glory of God in Psalms, we may suspect an allusion to the holy ark. ⁴¹

This way of representing the temple and those qualified to worship the Lord of Hosts in it is a fundamental theme of Trito-Isaiah. In Ezra-Nehemiah, the temple was obviously of great importance but surprisingly little is said about it. Ezra is presented as a priest in the Chronicler’s introductory narrative (Ezra 7.1-10) and throughout the rescript of Artaxerxes (7.11, 12, 21). He is included among the priests in the list of temple personnel in Neh. 12.1, but this attribution is widely doubted, and with reason. The priestly genealogy in Ezra 7.1-5 is taken from 1 Chr. 5.27-41 (Eng. Tr. 6.1-15), the name Ezra is absent from other lists of priests, and Ezra could not be the son of Seraiah who was executed by the Babylonians after the fall of Jerusalem (Ezra 7.1; 2 Kgs 25.18-21). In spite of this characterization of Ezra, none of the prayers in Ezra-Nehemiah take place in the temple. Ezra prays and confesses the sins of his people in front of the temple (Ezra 10.1, 6), and the assembly to decide on the exogamous marriage issue is also located there (10.9-17). The public reading and explanation of the law was held in the open space at the Water Gate (Neh. 8.1-12), and even the celebration of Sukkoth (Neh. 8.13-18), together with the penitential service and confession of sin which followed the feast (9:1-37), took place outside the temple. ⁴²

Conclusion

Attachment to the temple in theory and neglect of the temple in practice in Ezra-Nehemiah provides a clue to what is perhaps the only link between Ezra-Nehemiah and Trito-Isaiah. The privileges and wealth of the temple priesthood, or at least of its upper echelons, explain the frequent criticism which priests attracted and, incidentally, the increasing evidence of lack of confidence in the sacrificial system which priests controlled and from which they drew a significant part of their income and emoluments. ⁴³ Beginning under Persian rule, the temple became increasingly secularized and commercialized to the point where, under Seleucid rule, the high priesthood was, in effect, sold to the highest bidder. The Jerusalem temple also served as a bank of deposit and possessed and rented out land, ⁴⁴ all under the control of the senior priests. This contributed to the low opinion of the priests, or at least the senior priests, evident especially in Ezra-Nehemiah, a few texts in Isaiah, and Malachi. In Ezra-Nehemiah, priests were among the leading offenders in marrying women from the mixed population in the province, perhaps after leaving their former wives behind in Babylonia (Ezra 9.1-2). Ezra compelled them to swear an oath to rectify the situation (10.5) and a list of seventeen priests, perhaps incomplete, is appended (Ezra 10.18-22). In his autobiographical record, Nehemiah presents an incident in which one of the priest-officials employed by the temple granted a concession in the temple to a relative belonging to the wealthy Tobiads in Ammon who had extensive commercial interests in the province of Judah (Neh. 13.4-9). About the same time, a grandson of the high priest Eliashib married the daughter of Sanballat the Horonite, one of Nehemiah’s most dangerous enemies. This was probably a mariage de convenance which aimed to give Sanballat some control over the Jerusalem temple and its considerable assets (Neh. 13.28). Nehemiah concluded his apologia with the statement that they—the senor priests—had defiled the priesthood and followed it up with the claim that he had ‘purified them (the priests) from everything foreign and put in order the services of the priests and Levites’ (13.30a).

In Trito-Isaiah, criticism of the temple priesthood concentrates rather on non-Yahwistic religious practices, as noted earlier with respect to Isa. 66.1-4. Given the well-established links between the last two chapters of Isaiah and the first chapter of the book, especially Isa. 1.27-31, the ‘rulers of Sodom’ of 1.10 and the ‘rebels and sinners’ of 1.28 would have included the priests denounced in 66.1-4, especially in view of the criticism of sacrifice and temple worship as currently performed in 1.11-17 and addiction to syncretistic cults in 1.29. The catalogue of priestly delinquencies in Malachi 1-3 parallels both Ezra-Nehemiah and Trito-Isaiah. It includes violating the covenant of priesthood (Mal. 2.4-9), engaging in idolatrous practices (an abomination, tô‘ēbāh, 2.11), marriage with foreign, that is, non-Israelite women (‘the daughter of a foreign god’), ⁴⁵ injustice towards widows, orphans, foreigners (3.5). ⁴⁶ To these, we may add the curious conclusion or epilogue to Zechariah 9-14: ‘On that day there will no longer be traders ⁴⁷ in the house of the Lord of Hosts’ (Zech. 14.21b), a prediction that the current commercialization of the temple will eventually come to an end.

These more or less contemporaneous indications of loss of confidence in the temple priesthood must have taken some time to develop after the euphoria and enthusiasm of the first repatriations under Cyrus I and the resumption of the cult in the rebuilt temple under Darius I. We have seen that the activity of Ezra, Shecaniah, Nehemiah governor of the province, and the others repatriated with them, date to the reign of Artaxerxes I (465-424), therefore to the mid-5th century, and we have seen that the same approximate date is assigned to Malachi. ⁴⁸ With Trito-Isaiah, the situation is rather more complicated. We have seen that the greater part of these 11 chapters belongs to the period prior to Ezra-Nehemiah, that is, to the reign of Darius I, the period of the early repatriations and the restoration of the temple cult, and reflects the euphoria and excitement of that time. Polemic against the temple priests and concern about the efficacy of sacrifice, the performance of which was their principal task, is confined to the first and last chapter of Isaiah. This is not the place for a detailed analysis of this last chapter, ⁴⁹ but many commentators have read it as a collection of addenda following the original conclusion in 65.17-25, the splendid vision of the new heaven, new earth, and the new creation on God’s holy mountain. The first of these later additions, 66.1-4, could be read, together with the polemic against the temple priests in Malachi, as reflecting the loss of esteem suffered by the temple priests between the reign of Darius I (522-486) and Artaxerxes I (465-424). The many parallels between this last chapter and the first chapter of the book permit the additional proposal that at least 1.27-31 with its many links with Isaiah 66, and perhaps the entire first chapter, was attached to the existing book about the same time. If so, this would provide a simple explanation of the additional title introducing the second chapter of the book.