There was barely interval enough for the returning exiles to take
possession of their ancestral fields before they were called to leave
them unguarded and hasten to the desolate city. Surely their glad and
unanimous obedience to the summons, or, as it may even have been,
their spontaneous assemblage unsummoned, is no small token of their
ardour of devotion, even if they were somewhat slavishly tied to
externals. It would take a good deal to draw a band of new settlers in
our days to leave their lots and set to putting up a church before
they had built themselves houses.

The leaders of the band of returned exiles demand a brief notice. They
are Jeshua, or Joshua, and Zerubbabel. In verse 2 the ecclesiastical
dignitary comes first, but in verse 8 the civil. Similarly in Ezra ii.
2, Zerubbabel precedes Jeshua. In Haggai, the priest is pre-eminent;
in Zechariah the prince. The truth seems to be that each was supreme
in his own department, and that they understood each other cordially,
or, Zechariah says, 'the counsel of peace' was 'between them both.' It
is sometimes bad for the people when priests and rulers lay their
heads together; but it is even worse when they pull different ways,
and subjects are torn in two by conflicting obligations.

Jeshua was the grandson of Seraiah, the unfortunate high-priest whose
eyes Nebuchadnezzar put out after the fall of Jerusalem. His son
Jozadak succeeded to the dignity, though there could be no sacrifices
in Babylon, and after him his son Jeshua. He cannot have been a young
man at the date of the return; but age had not dimmed his enthusiasm,
and the high-priest was where he ought to have been, in the forefront
of the returning exiles. His name recalls the other Joshua, likewise a
leader from captivity and the desert; and, if we appreciate the