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prayed to God, “O Lord! save me from this untoward generation.”
And God heard his cry, and He carried him away and gave him life
till the day when Israfiel shall sound the trump of judgment.[686]
Both Jews and Mussulmans believe that Elijah is not dead, but that
he lives, and appears at intervals. The Mussulmans have confused
him with El Khoudr, and relate many wonderful stories of him. He is
unquestionably the origin of the Wandering Jew. His reappearances
are mentioned in the Talmud, and in later Jewish legends, as, for
instance, in a story told by Abraham Tendlau.[687] A poor Jew and his
wife were reduced to great necessity; the man had not clothes in
which to go forth and ask for work. Then his wife borrowed for him
clothes, and he entered the street seeking work. He met a venerable
man, who bade him use him as a slave. The Jew engaged to build a
palace for a prince with the assistance of his slave, for ten thousand
thalers. The mysterious stranger laboured hard, and angels assisted
him, so that the mansion was completed with astonishing rapidity.
When the Jew had received the money, the old man announced that
he was Elijah, who had come to assist him, and vanished.
After the Arabs had captured the city of Elvan, Fadhilah, at the head
of three hundred horsemen, pitched his tents, late in the evening,
between two mountains. Fadhilah having begun his evening prayer
with a loud voice, heard the words “Allah akbar!” (God is great!)
repeated distinctly, and each word of his prayer was followed in a
similar manner. Fadhilah, not believing this to be an echo, was much
astonished, and cried out, “O thou! whether thou art of the angel
ranks, or whether thou art of some other order of spirits, it is well, the
power of God be with thee; but if thou art a man, then let mine eyes
light upon thee, that I may rejoice in thy presence and society.”
Scarcely had he spoken these words, before an aged man with bald
head stood before him, holding a staff in his hand, and much
resembling a dervish in appearance. After having courteously
saluted him, Fadhilah asked the old man who he was. Thereupon
the stranger answered, “Bassi Hadut Issa, I am here by command of
the Lord Jesus, who has left me in this world, that I may live therein
until He comes a second time to earth. I wait for the Lord, who is the
Fountain of Happiness, and in obedience to his command I dwell
beyond the mountain.”
When Fadhilah heard these words, he asked when the Lord Jesus
would appear; and the old man replied that his appearing would be
at the end of the world.
But this only increased Fadhilah’s curiosity, so that he inquired the
signs of the approach of the end of all things; whereupon Zerib bar
Elia gave him an account of the general social and moral dissolution
which would be the climax of this world’s history.[688]
“In the second year of Hezekiah,” says the Rabbinic Sether Olam
Rabba (c. 17), “Elijah disappeared, and he will not appear again till
the Messiah come; then he will show himself once more; and he will
again disappear till Gog and Magog show themselves. And all this
time he writes the events and transactions that happen in each
century.... Letters from Elijah were brought to King Joram seven
years after Elijah had disappeared.”
A prophecy ascribed to Elijah is preserved in the Gemara:[689] “The
world will last six thousand years; it will lie desert for two thousand
years; the Messiah will reign two thousand years; but, because of
our iniquities which have super-abounded, the years of the Messiah
have passed away.”
XL.
ISAIAH.
Ezekiel, whom the Arabs call Kazquil, was the son of an aged
couple, who had no children. They prayed to God, and He gave
them a son.
Ezekiel was a prophet, and he exhorted the men of Jerusalem to
war, but they would not go forth to battle. Then God sent a
pestilence, and there died of them every day very many. So, fearing
death, a million fled from the city, hoping to escape the pestilence,
but the wrath of God overtook them, and they fell dead.
Then those who survived in the city went forth to bury them, but they
were too numerous; therefore they built a wall round the corpses to
protect them from the beasts of the field; and thus they lay exposed
to the heat and cold for many years, till the flesh had rotted off their
bones.
Once the prophet Ezekiel came that way, and he saw this great
multitude of dead and dry bones. He prayed, and God restored them
to life again, and they stood upon their feet, a great army, and
entered into the city, and lived out the rest of their days. It is said that
among the Jews there are, to this day, descendants of those who
were resuscitated, and they may be recognized by the corpse-like
odour they exhale.[697]
The Jews relate that a celebrated Rabbi found the greatest difficulty
in comprehending the Book of Ezekiel; therefore his disciples
prepared for him three hundred tuns of oil to feed his lamp whilst he
studied at night the visions of the prophet.[698]
XLIII.
EZRA.
Cyrus, in the year 537 before Christ, put an end to the captivity of the
Jews in Babylon, as had been foretold by Daniel; and not only did he
permit the Jews to return to Jerusalem, but he furnished them with
the means of rebuilding their city and temple. The Oriental writers, to
explain the motive of Cyrus, say that his mother was a Jewess, and
that he himself was married to the Jewess Maschat, sister of
Zerubbabel, a granddaughter of the king Jehoiakim.
In 523 before Christ, Cambyses, having reigned a brief time, was
succeeded by Smerdis, the Magian, who is called, in the Scriptures,
Artaxerxes. He, being ill-disposed towards the Jews, withdrew from
them the gifts made by Cyrus, and arrested their work. Smerdis,
however, reigned only two years, and was succeeded by Darius
Hystaspes, who continued the work of Cyrus, by the hands of Ezra
or Esdras, one of the instruments used by God to restore His people.
Ezra was the son of Seraiah, of the lineage of Aaron.
In the Koran[699] it is said that Ezra, passing through a village near
Jerusalem, whose houses were ruined, exclaimed, “Can God restore
these waste places, and revive the inhabitants?”
Then God made him die; and he remained dead for one hundred
years. At the end of that time God revived him, and he saw the
village rebuilt, and full of busy people.
The commentators on the Koran say that Ezra (Ozaïr), when young,
had been taken away captive by Nebuchadnezzar, but that he was
delivered miraculously from prison, and returned to Jerusalem, which
he found in ruins. He halted at a village near the city, named Sair-
Abad. Its houses were fallen and without inhabitants, but the fig-tree
and vines remained in the gardens. Ezra collected the fruit, and
made himself a little cell out of the fallen stones. And he kept near
him the ass on which he had ridden.
The holy man, on contemplating from his hermitage the ruins of the
holy city and the temple, wept bitterly before the Lord, and said often
with a tone rather of lament than doubt, “How can the walls of
Jerusalem ever be set up again?”
Then God bade him die, and hid him from the eyes of men, in his
cell, with all that he had about him, his fruit, his mat, and his ass. At
the close of a century God revived him, and he found all as when he
had died; the ass standing, and the fruit unwithered. Then Ezra saw
the works that had been executed in Jerusalem, how the walls were
being set up, and the breaches repaired, and he said, “God is
Almighty; He can do whatsoever pleaseth Him!”
After his resurrection, he went into the holy city, and spent night and
day in explaining to the people the Law, as he remembered it. But it
had been forgotten by the Jews, and therefore they disregarded his
instruction.
The Iman Thalebi says, that the Jews, to test the mission of Ezra,
placed five pens in his hand, and with each he wrote at the same
moment with like facility as if he held only one; and he wrote all the
Books of the Sacred Canon, as he drew them from his memory,
without the assistance of a book.
The Jews, however, said amongst themselves, “How can we be sure
that what Ezra has written is the true sacred text, since there is none
amongst us who can bear witness?”
Then one of them said, “I have heard say that my grandfather
preserved a copy of the sacred books, and that they were hidden by
him in a hollow rock, which he marked so that it might be recognized
again.”
They therefore sought the place which had been marked, and there
they found a volume containing the Scriptures, which having been
compared with what Ezra had written, it was found that the
agreement was exact. Then the people, astonished at the miracle,
cried out that Ezra was a god.[700]
At the time of carrying away into Babylon, the sacred fire had been
cast into a well in the temple court. Ezra, having drawn some of the
dirt out of the well, placed on it the wood of the sacrifice; then the
flame, which for a hundred and forty years had been extinguished,
burst forth again out of the mire. When Ezra saw this wonder, he
thrice drank of the dust out of the well; and thus he imbibed the
prophetic spirit, and the power of recomposing from memory the lost
sacred books.[701]
XLIV.
ZECHARIAH.
Footnotes
1. Rev. xii. 7-9.
3. Luke x. 18.
8. Eisenmenger, i. p. 104.
9. Ibid., i. p. 820.
92. Gen. v. 1.
100.
Jacobus Vitriacus, Hist. Hierosol., c. lxxxv.
101.
As King Charles’s oak may be seen in the fern-root.
102.
Fabricius, i. p. 84.
103.
Neue Ierosolymitanische Pilgerfahrt. Würtzburg, 1667, p. 47.
104.
Stephanus Le Moyne, Notæ ad Varia Sacra, p. 863.
105.
Abulfeda, p. 15. In the Apocryphal book, The Combat of Adam
(Dillman, Das Christliche Adambuch des Morgenlandes;
Göttingen, 1853), the same reason for hostility is given. In that
account, Satan appears to Cain, and prompts him to every act
of wickedness.
106.
Tabari, i. c. xxx.
107.
Jalkut, fol. 11 a.
108.
Yaschar, p. 1089.
109.
Targums, ed. Etheridge, London, 1862, i. p. 172.
120.
Jalkut Chadasch, fol. 6, col. i.
121.
Pirke R. Eliezer, c. xxi.
122.
Ibid.
123.
Ibid.
124.
Eisenmenger, ii. p. 8.