day in the year when the chief priest entered the Devir as the people’s representative. The element of expiation was also evident in the sacrifices that were offered daily in the Temple court. The people would bring bulls, sheep, goats, or pigeons as “guilt” or “sin” offerings, according to their means. They would lay their hands on the animal’s head as a symbol of its surrender to Yahweh. After the beast had been killed, parts of it were given to the person who offered it, and he or she would share it with family and friends. The communion feast on earth mirrored the restored harmony with the divine.
Even though Yahweh never returned to Zion in the way that Second Isaiah had predicted, people continued to dream of the day when he would create “a new heaven and a new earth” in Jerusalem. The old hopes did not die, and Jerusalem became a symbol of that final salvation: integration, harmony, intimacy with God, and a return to paradise. The New Jerusalem would be like no other city: everybody would live a long and happy life there; everybody would be settled in his own place. There would be no weeping in the city, and the pain of the past would be forgotten. The gentiles would be astonished by the city of peace, which would establish life as it had been meant to be.44 But other people were more disillusioned. There were social problems in the city, some prophets pointed out, and the inhabitants still flirted with the old paganism.45 There were worries about the new exclusive attitude of the Golah: should not the City of God be open to everybody, as Zechariah had suggested? Perhaps Jerusalem should open its doors to foreigners, outcasts, and eunuchs—people regarded as “unclean” by the priests. Yahweh had proclaimed, “My house will be a house of prayer for all the peoples”: one day he would bring these outsiders into the city and let them sacrifice to him on Mount Zion.46
Yet in the fifth century, there seemed little chance of Jerusalem’s becoming a cult center for either Judaeans or gentiles. The city was still largely in ruinous condition and underpopulated. Jerusalem might even have suffered fresh damage in 458 during the disturbances that broke out all over the Persian empire when King Xerxes ascended the throne. In about 445 the news of the city’s plight reached Susa, the Persian capital, and shocked the community of Judaeans there. One of the leading members of this community was Nehemiah, who held the post of cupbearer to King Artaxerxes I. He was so distressed to hear of the humiliation of the Golah in Jerusalem, whose walls were still in ruins, that he wept for several days in penitence for the sins that his people and family had committed, which had caused this calamitous state of affairs. Then he begged the king to allow him to go to Judah and rebuild the city of his ancestors. The king granted his request and appointed Nehemiah the peha of Judah, giving him letters of recommendation to the other governors in the region and promising him access to timber and other building materials from the royal park.47 Artaxerxes probably hoped that Nehemiah would be able to bring stability to Judah: a reliable Persian bastion so near to Egypt would enhance the security of his empire.
The books of Ezra and Nehemiah consist of a number of unrelated documents, which an editor has attempted to string together. He thought that Ezra and Nehemiah were contemporaries and makes Ezra arrive in Jerusalem before Nehemiah. But there are good reasons for dating Ezra’s mission much later, in 398, during the reign of King Artaxerxes II.48 So Nehemiah probably set out from Susa in about 445. He would have regarded his post as a religious challenge, since the building of fortifications had long been a sacred duty in the Near East. When he arrived in Jerusalem, he stayed in the city incognito for three days and then went out secretly one night to ride around the walls. He paints a grim picture of the old fortifications “with their gaps and burned-out gates.” At one point he could not even find a path for his horse.49 The next day he made himself known to the elders, urging them to put an end to this shame and indignity. The whole city responded in a massive cooperative effort, priests and laity working side by side, and managed to erect new walls for the city in a record fifty-two days. It was a dangerous task. By this time relations with the Am Ha-Aretz had seriously deteriorated, and Nehemiah constantly had to contend with the machinations of some of the local dynasts: Sanballat, governor of Samerina; Tobiah, one of his officials; and Gershen, governor of Edom. The situation was so tense that the builders constantly feared attack: “each did his work with one hand while gripping his weapon with the other. And as each builder worked, he wore his sword at his side.”50 There was no attempt to fortify the old Mishneh suburb on the Western Hill. Nehemiah’s city simply comprised the old ’Ir David on the Ophel. From the biblical text we can see the way it was organized. The markets were ranged along the western wall of the city; the priests and temple servants lived next to the Temple on the site of the old Ophel fortress. Artisans and craftsmen inhabited the southeastern quarters, while the military were concentrated in the northern district, where the city was most vulnerable. Nehemiah also built a citadel, probably northeast of the Temple on the site later occupied by the Hasmonean and Herodian fortresses. On 25 Elul (early September) 445 the new walls were dedicated: Levites and choristers from the surrounding villages were divided into two huge choirs and processed in contrary directions around the new walls, singing psalms, before filing together into the Temple courts; the music and shouts of rejoicing could be heard from miles away.
Nehemiah had brought new hope to Jerusalem, but it was still not much of a city. No new families were growing up there, and the people were reluctant to move in. Constantly fearing attack from the Am Ha-Aretz, the citizens had to organize themselves into a watch to guard the new gates. Nehemiah managed to bring the population up to about ten thousand by organizing a lottery whereby every tenth man had to move into the city.51 The settlers who “volunteered” in this way were regarded as performing a pious action. During Nehemiah’s twelve years in Jerusalem, the city gradually superseded Mizpah as the capital of the province: he built a residence for the peha in Jerusalem. Gradually the city became the center of the life of the Golah in Judah. But there was a power struggle going on within Jerusalem itself: some of the priests had close links with the Am Ha-Aretz, including Sanballat, who seems to have been the most dangerous of Nehemiah’s opponents. He also had to curb the greed of some of the wealthier citizens, who were seizing the sons and daughters, vineyards and fields of the poor, when they proved unable to pay off their loans with interest. With considerable popular support, Nehemiah forced the nobles and officials to take a solemn oath to stop charging interest.52 It was an attempt to make Jerusalem a refuge for the poor once again, but it naturally antagonized the upper classes, who tended to turn more and more to their allies in the neighboring territory. There seems to have been considerable tension in the country. Sanballat, Tobiah, and Gershen could see perfectly well that fortifying the city was a bid for political control and preeminence.
In his second term of office, which began in about 432, Nehemiah also made new legislation to prevent members of the Golah from marrying the local people. He expelled the chief priest Eliashib, who was married to Sanballat’s daughter; Eliashib took up residence in Samaria, where he was probably joined by other malcontents from the priestly caste. The question of mixed marriage became an increasingly contentious issue in Jerusalem. Nehemiah’s legislation was not designed to ensure the purity of the race in the twentieth-century sense but was an attempt to express the new sacred geography developed in exile by such prophets as Ezekiel in social terms: the Golah must live apart from the Goyim, as befitted God’s holy people. In Babylon, the exiles had been concerned to preserve a distinct Judaean identity, centered on the presence of Yahweh in Israel. The same centripetal pull was also evident in social life. The Torah obliged the people of Israel to marry beyond the basic family unit, but it was considered better to marry people who were as closely related as was legally possible. People inside the family were regarded as acceptable marriage partners, while those outside
