Ezra 4:7

7. Artaxerxes This king is to be identified with Smerdis the Magian, who, in the absence of Cambyses from the capital, and perhaps instigated by the reports of the king’s many tyrannical and brutal deeds, gave out that he was Smerdis the son of Cyrus, and took possession of the kingdom. He is called Gaumata in the Behistun inscription; Tanyoxares by Xenophon and Ctesias; and Oropastes by Justinus. Ewald thinks this latter name should be written Ortosastes, which would closely resemble Artaxerxes. This variety of names shows that no conclusive argument can be made against identifying Ahasuerus with Cambyses, (Ezra 4:6,) or Artaxerxes with Smerdis, solely from the difference in their names. The usurpation of the Magian seems to have been connected with an effort to overthrow the Zoroastrian religion in the Persian empire, and establish Magianism in its place. The Behistun inscription says that Smerdis destroyed the temples of worship in the land. But the usurper was assassinated after a reign of seven months, and Darius Hystaspes gained the throne, and restored the ancient religion of Ormazd. Rawlinson calls attention to the fact “that the only Persian king who is said to have interrupted the building of the temple is that Magian monarch, the pseudo-Smerdis, who was opposed to the pure Persian religion, and would therefore have been likely to reverse the religious policy of his predecessors. The Samaritans weakened the hands of Judah, and troubled them during the reigns of Cyrus and Cambyses; but it was not till the letter of the pseudo-Smerdis was received that the work of the house of God ceased. The same prince, that is, who is stated in the inscriptions to have changed the religion of Persia, appears in Ezra as the opponent of a religious work which Cyrus had encouraged, and Cambyses had allowed to be carried on.” Hist. Ev., p. 148.

Bishlam, Mithredath, Tabeel These, with the rest of their companions, were the “counsellors” (Ezra 4:5) whom the Samaritans hired to work with the Persian officers named in the next verse. They were probably persons that stood high in the community, possibly holding offices of some kind among the nations mentioned in Ezra 4:9. These counsellors wrote the document which follows, (Ezra 4:8-16,) that is, they drew up or prepared the letter for the Persian officers to sign and send unto Artaxerxes king of Persia. From the statement which follows, that the epistle was written in the Syrian tongue, and interpreted in the Syrian tongue, we may infer that these counsellors first prepared it in a Palestinean dialect, that was commonly spoken among the colonists of Samaria, and the Persian officers mentioned in the next verse translated it into Syriac or Aramaean. The Syrian tongue here mentioned, and of which the following letter is a specimen, was the language current at the time of this writing in Syria, Mesopotamia, and Chaldea, and is more properly called Aramaean, ( ארמית ). It is commonly called Chaldee, and often distinguished from the Western-Aramaean, or more modern Syriac, and was the language of Babylonia at the time of the exile. During their exile the Jews acquired this language, and gradually lost the use of the ancient Hebrew, so that upon their return they transplanted this language to Palestine, and subsequently used it as their common tongue. The mass of the people who returned from exile were not able to understand the language in which the law was written, but required to have it explained to them, Nehemiah 8:8; and for the same reason the Targums, or Chaldee paraphrases of the Hebrew Scriptures, were written. There seems to be a sort of confusion and tautology in the statement that it was “written… and interpreted” in this Aramaean language. The words are usually explained as meaning that the writing was both in the Aramaean characters and also in the Aramaean language. But the Hebrew word for interpreted is מתרגם , and properly means translated. From the same root comes the word Targum, the common name of the Chaldee translations of the Old Testament. So the apparently superfluous addition, translated into Aramaean, is, perhaps, best explained as a repetition designed to emphasize the fact that the epistle was not originally drawn up in Aramaean, but translated into that language before it was sent to the king. Hence it is seen how Bishlam and his companions wrote the letter which it seems the chancellor and scribe also wrote. The former wrote it in their common dialect, the latter translated it into Aramaean.