Commentaria in Tobiam
(Eliasib) “WAS OVER THE STOREHOUSE OF THE HOUSE OF OUR GOD, AND WAS NEAR OF KIN TO TOBIAS,” etc.—This Tobias was “the Ammonite servant,” as was said in chapter 2, verse 10. He was therefore a bitter enemy of the Jews, yet rich and powerful, and for that reason the high priest Eliasib had contracted an alliance with him by marriage. For this reason, as his kinsman, he had put him in charge of the storehouse of the temple, which was a great dignity and profit to Tobias, but a greater indignity and harm to Israel, because an Ammonite servant was raised to so great a dignity in Israel, contrary to the law of Deuteronomy 23:3, cited in verse 4. There was harm also because Tobias turned the storehouse away from the uses of the priests and the temple, for which it had been established, to his own advantage, laying up in it all his household goods. Nehemias, judging this most unworthy, drove him out of the storehouse and restored it to Israel.
(He had made) for him, that is, for Tobias, as is clear from verse 7, “A GREAT STOREHOUSE, AND THERE BEFORE HIM THEY LAID UP THE OFFERINGS, AND FRANKINCENSE, AND VESSELS,” etc.—As if to say: Eliasib put Tobias the Ammonite in charge of the whole treasure of the temple, namely the firstfruits and tithes, and the other things which were brought to the Levites and priests.
4. “TO MAKE HIM A TREASURY,”—That is, the storehouse already mentioned, as the Septuagint has it, in which the treasures of the temple were kept. This is clear from the Hebrew.
8. “I CAST OUT THE VESSELS,”—that is, the household goods of Tobias.
9. “AND I BROUGHT BACK THERE THE VESSELS OF THE HOUSE OF GOD, AND THE SACRIFICE,”—that is, the things pertaining to sacrifice, such as oil, wine, fine flour, salt, etc.
11. “I MADE THEM STAND IN THEIR PLACES,”—As if to say: I restored the Levites and singers to their own places and offices.
19. “WHEN THE GATES OF JERUSALEM WERE AT REST ON THE SABBATH DAY,”—from their office of sending out and admitting those who entered. The Hebrew has: “when the gates were darkened,” that is, when the evening of the sixth day was at hand; for then the Sabbath began, as I have already said. Hence the Septuagint renders it “before the day,” that is, the artificial day, of the Sabbath. Nehemias therefore commanded the gates to be shut for the whole natural day of the Sabbath, for twenty-four hours, lest anyone should violate the Sabbath by carrying burdens through them.
“THAT NONE SHOULD BRING IN A BURDEN,”—through the gates. Hence a gate (porta) is so called because burdens are carried in and out (portentur) through it, says Cato, and after him Isidore, Etymologies, book 15, chapter 1; although Donatus says that a gate is so called from the carrying of the plough: because, he says, in marking out cities, with a cow and a bull yoked together, the one who marked out the city lifted the plough by hand at the gate, so as not to cut a furrow where the entrances to the city were to be left.
21. “I WILL LAY HANDS ON YOU,”—that is, I will seize and punish you, and I will confiscate the burdens of merchandise which you bring in.
24. “AND THEIR CHILDREN (the Hebrew has: half, or the half part of the children) SPOKE HALF IN THE LANGUAGE OF AZOTUS” (and the language of Azotus smacked of a foreign and Azotic religion. For the other half spoke the language of Moab, or of Ammon, or of Madian, the peoples from whom their mothers came; for the children, brought up by their mothers, drank in their language with their milk. I rebuked the parents of such children, indeed I) “BEAT (with scourges) AND PLUCKED OFF THEIR HAIR” (the Complutensian text wrongly has “trampled”), that is, I pulled out their hair and tore out their locks, which is a great ignominy. Among them the chief was the son of Joiada the high priest, of whom
28. “AND OF THE SONS OF JOIADA THE SON OF ELIASIB THE HIGH PRIEST,” verse 24.
“ONE HAD MARRIED A DAUGHTER OF SANABALLAT THE HORONITE.”—So the Roman text reads, although the Complutensian and the ancient Bibles have “Horonite” in the genitive; so it seems it should be read, for so have the Hebrew, the Septuagint, Vatablus, Pagninus and others, that the sense may be: One of the sons of Joiada had taken a daughter of Sanaballat the Horonite, and was therefore his son-in-law.
“WHOM I DROVE AWAY FROM ME,”—and from the assembly of Israel, judging it unworthy that Sanaballat the Samaritan, an unbeliever, should mingle in marriage with Israel, and indeed with the high priest.
Moreover, this Sanaballat is different from Sanaballat the governor of Samaria who, according to Josephus, book 11, chapters 7 and 8, gave his daughter as wife to Manasses, brother of the high priest Jaddus, under Alexander the Great, and made Manasses high priest of the schismatic temple built by the schismatics in Samaria on Mount Garizim, about which temple there was perpetual strife between the Jews and the Samaritans, even in the time of Christ, as is clear from John 4:24. That he was another is clear from this, that Sanaballat the Horonite was father-in-law of the son of Joiada, while the other, according to Josephus, was father-in-law of Manasses, brother of the high priest Jaddus; therefore this was not that man; for Joiada was the grandfather of Jaddus: Joiada begot Jonathan, and Jonathan begot Jaddus; and Manasses, brother of Jaddus, was son-in-law of this later Sanaballat. Perhaps the later was the son or grandson of the former.
“WHOM I DROVE AWAY FROM ME.”—By “whom” understand not so much Sanaballat as Sanaballat’s son-in-law, namely the son of Joiada the high priest, who had taken Sanaballat’s daughter as wife; for him Nehemias expelled and deprived of the priesthood, because of the foreign marriage. So Sanchez. For Sanaballat was not present, much less subject to Nehemias; but the son of Joiada was present and subject to him; hence he expelled him.
Of the Third and Fourth Books of Esdras, and What and How Great Is Their Authority
Note that these two books of Esdras are not canonical, as Genebrardus observes in his Chronology, page 90, but are apocryphal, that is, of hidden authority; because it is not certain to the Church that they are canonical and parts of holy Scripture, and she has therefore rejected them from the catalogue of the sacred books and placed them among the apocrypha: hence these two books are not found in the Hebrew text, nor in the Greek of the Septuagint. Yet many of the ancients cite them, either as sacred or as honest; in many Greek codices the third book of Esdras is itself the first of Esdras, because this third book begins with the acts of King Josias, who preceded Esdras; and what are called in the Latin Bibles the first and second of Esdras are named by the Greeks the second of Esdras. So Origen cites this third book of Esdras, homily 9 on Josue, near the end; St. Athanasius, oration 3 Against the Arians; Clement, book 1 of the Stromata, page 64; Cyprian, epistle to Pompeius; the author of the Unfinished Work, homily 4 on Matthew; Sulpicius, book 2 of his History, where he has almost the same as we have in Esdras, apart from that remarkable account in chapter 3 of the three young royal guards and their dispute about the strongest thing, in which the first says: Wine is strong; the second: The king is stronger; but the third, Zorobabel, says that women are stronger, but truth is strongest. This Josephus cites, book 11 of the Antiquities, chapter 4, and St. Augustine, City of God, book 18, chapter 36, mystically applies it to Christ, who is the truth that overcomes all things. Nor does this book contain anything suspect of fable; it is therefore of greater authority than the history of Livy, Sallust, Curtius and other writers who are not hagiographers. Finally, this third book of Esdras relates the same things that are related in the first and second books; but what is briefly said there is recounted more fully here, and it adds and supplies some things omitted there. To them, therefore, it stands as the books of Paralipomenon stand to the books of Kings.
You will say: This book, chapter 1, last verse, numbers 77 years of servitude, whereas Jeremias, chapter 25, numbers only 70. I answer that both are true; for 70 run to the first year of Cyrus; 77 if after Cyrus you add the years of the reign of Cambyses, enemy of the Jews, until Darius son of Hystaspes, who granted them full and stable liberty together with the building of the temple. Wherefore Bellarmine, book 1 On the Word of God, chapter 20, asserts that the third book of Esdras is canonical of the third order, to which belong the third and fourth books of Machabees and the book of Hermas, or the Shepherd. But the fourth book of Esdras has more difficulty. For St. Jerome, in the Preface to Esdras, says that it contains dreams; and by Sixtus of Siena, Bibliotheca book 1, Pererius on Daniel, page 897, and Bellarmine, in the place already cited, this book is called fabulous and is charged with falsehood and lying, and it seems to smack of fables, especially those of the Talmudists; but in truth I have found nothing in it which can openly be convicted of falsehood, and which does not admit a fitting and true sense, if you take the words strictly.