Commentaria in I Esdrae
Prologue and Argument
Esdras and Nehemias, says St. Jerome in his epistle to Paulinus, which is prefixed to the Bibles—the helper, that is, and the consoler from the Lord—are compressed into one volume. They restore the temple, they build the walls of the city; and all that multitude of the people returning to their country, the list of the Priests, the Levites of Israel and the proselytes, and the work of the walls and towers divided among the several families, present one thing in the outer shell and hold another in the marrow.
Here note that the captivity of the Hebrews was twofold. The earlier was that of Israel, or the ten tribes, who were carried off by Salmanasar into Assyria, and it was perpetual; of this see 4 Kings 17 and Tobias 1:4. The other, which came 134 years after the first, was that in which the remaining two tribes, Juda and Benjamin, were led by Nabuchodonosor into Babylon, 4 Kings, last chapter. It is the return of this second people from Babylon to Jerusalem after the seventy years of captivity that is treated here, so that the history of the Jewish nation, and likewise of the Synagogue, that is, the Church of God, is woven on in a continuous thread. The first and second books of Esdras are canonical Scripture, and no one has doubted their authority. For they exist in Hebrew and are in the Hebrew canon; the third and fourth, however, are apocryphal, as I shall say in its place.
The author of the first book is Esdras, of the second Nehemias, as is plain from the title of each, and likewise from the course of the narrative. Yet the Book of Nehemias is called the second of Esdras, partly because it contains what was done by Esdras and Nehemias together, partly because among the Hebrews and Greeks Nehemias and Esdras were formerly only one book. So Sixtus of Siena and Bellarmine, De Script. Eccles., under Nehemias, and St. Jerome in the epistle cited, Lyranus, Dionysius and others; although St. Athanasius in the Synopsis, and Isidore, book 6 of the Etymologies, chapter 2, hold that both the second book and the first were written by Esdras.
You will ask first: Who was Esdras? I answer that he was the son of Saraias the high priest, who at the destruction of Jerusalem was killed with the other chief men by Nabuchodonosor, in the eleventh year of Sedecias, 4 Kings 25:18 and 21. That this is so is plain from chapter 7, verse 1, where Esdras, reckoning his genealogy, says: “Esdras the son of Saraias, the son of Azarias (who was high priest under Ozias king of Juda, as is plain from 2 Paralipomenon 26:20), the son of Helcias, the son of Sellum, the son of Sadoc,” and so on. All these are listed in the catalogue of the High Priests… begot Josedec. Now Josedec went forth when the Lord carried away Juda and Jerusalem by the hand of Nabuchodonosor. Hence it follows that Esdras, begotten of the same father Saraias, was the brother of Josedec, who was High Priest in the captivity, and to whom there succeeded his son Jesus, likewise High Priest, who with Zorobabel the leader brought the Jews back from Babylon to Jerusalem. Indeed the Hebrews, according to St. Jerome in the Traditions on the book of Paralipomenon, and Sixtus, book 1 of the Bibliotheca, under Esdras, think that Esdras is the same as Josedec (for he had two names), and so was High Priest. Hence in the last chapter of the third book of Esdras he seems to exercise full and absolute pontifical right in dissolving the marriages of the Israelites, even of the priests, with foreign wives. But this cannot be said; for if Esdras was Josedec the High Priest, then Jesus the son of Josedec was not High Priest in Babylon: for Esdras was then living. We must say therefore that Josedec was the elder brother of Esdras, and so High Priest, and that at his death in Babylon his son Jesus succeeded him, who accordingly as High Priest led the people out of Babylon with Zorobabel. For Jesus would not have done this, but Esdras, if he himself had been Josedec the High Priest. Rupertus and others think that Esdras was Malachias the Prophet, whose reasons I have set out at length, examined and refuted in the proem to Malachias. Yet Esdras lived at the same time as Malachias, and treats almost the same argument as he; which was the occasion of supposing them to be one and the same.
You will ask secondly whether Esdras was a prophet. St. Augustine seems to deny it, book 18 of The City of God, chapter 36, saying: “Esdras is held rather a writer of things done than a prophet.”
I say, however, that Esdras was not only a historian and a scribe, that is, a doctor of the law, but also a prophet. This is plain because by divine inspiration he wrote this book as canonical Scripture, and, as many hold, the books of Paralipomenon, and chapter 36 of Genesis, and the last chapter of Deuteronomy; for this contains the death of Moses, which Moses himself, being already dead, could not write; indeed St. Augustine, book 18 of The City of God, chapter 37, etc., and St. Isidore, book 6 of the Etymologies, chapter 2, hold that Esdras was also the author of the book of Esther. Moreover, it is no less, indeed a greater gift of prophecy, to write sacred books from God than to foretell the future. Finally, Esdras throughout this whole… return into the fatherland, through whom the redemption of the people was accomplished: and the review and renewal of the divinely inspired utterances.
the book relates that the Jews, returning from Babylon to Jerusalem by the command of Cyrus, began to restore the city with the temple, but, hindered by the calumnies of their adversaries, were forced to desist. You will ask thirdly whether Esdras restored Holy Scripture. Many hold that all the books of the Old Testament were burnt by the Chaldeans with the Temple: and were restored by Esdras from memory by divine rather than human aid. For this he seems to relate at length book 4 of Esdras, chapter 14, which book is cited from time to time as canonical by St. Augustine, Cyprian, Athanasius, Clement of Alexandria and others. From this book Tertullian drew this opinion, in his book On the Dress of Women, chapter 7: “When Jerusalem was destroyed by storm,” he says, “it is agreed that the whole body of Jewish literature was restored through Esdras.” St. Irenaeus, book 3, chapter 25, where he speaks of the miraculous agreement of the Seventy interpreters: “It is not wonderful,” he says, “that God wrought this in them, when in that captivity of the people which was made by Nabuchodonosor the Scriptures were corrupted, and after 70 years, when the Jews were going down into their own country, he then, in the times of Artaxerxes king of the Persians, inspired Esdras the priest of the tribe of Levi to recall all the words of the former Prophets, and to restore to the people the law which had been given through Moses.” Eusebius asserts the same in the same words, book 5 of the History, chapter 8. St. Jerome, Against Helvidius: “Whether you wish to say that Moses is the author of the Pentateuch, or Esdras the restorer of the same work, I do not refuse.” Clement of Alexandria, book 1 of the Stromata: “Zorobabel,” he says, “when he had conquered his adversaries by wisdom, obtained from Darius the renewal of Jerusalem, and with Esdras…”