Zorobabel

Zorobabel , governor of the Kingdom of Juda to the VI E, chief of the Jewish people.

All crowned authors (Book of Esdras, 3,2 and 5,2; Deliver of Néhémie, 12,1; Aggée, 1,1; Gospel according to Matthieu saint, 1,12) agree to say that it was wire of Salathiel. The only difficulty which present is come from the first book of the Chronicles (3, 19), where its genealogy is thus described: “The wire of Jéchonias were Asir, Salathiel, Melchiram, Phadaïa, Sermeser, Jérémie, Sama and Nadabia. The wire of Phadaïa are Zorobabel and Sëmeï. ” Among the interpreters who sought to return reason of the difference which is between the delivers Chronicles and the other places of the Writing where Zorobabel is constantly called wire of Salathiel, the ones said that he was only the adoptive son or of Phadaïa or Salathiel, as if ever such adoptions had been a title to find place in the crowned genealogies.

Others claim that, by these words: wire of Salathiel, it is necessary to hear: grandson of Salathiel and wire of Phadaïa; but the word wire, in the genealogy of Jesus-Christ reported by holy Matthieu, being taken everywhere in the most strict significance to indicate an immediate generation one does not see why the evangelist would have deviated from this rule for only Zorobabel. The versions syriaque and Arab carry Nadabia, instead of Phadaïa, which proves that in the time when they were made, the Hebrew specimens were not uniform in this point. Perhaps that formerly one read Salathiel and that the names of Phadaïa and Nadabia are the work of some negligent scribe, misled by the higher line, where these names are written.

It is even more probable than it is necessary to cut off the name from Phadaïa and to put at the head of the verse the wire of Salathiel were Melchiram. ;. Zorobabel… ; so that Jéchonias will have as wire only Asir and Salathiel, and that Melchiram and the following will be the wire of Salathiel, like Zorobabel and Semeï. Substitution that we make is all the more natural as these words: the wire of… were , being often repeated in this chapter, one conceives easily how they could have been omitted once. This manner of reconciling the crowned authors appears simpler than to suppose two Zorobabels, while all contributes to prove that the book of the Chronicles speaks about same of which it is question in the parallel places.

When Cyrus had returned freedom to the Jews, Zorobabel was put at the head those which lived the Province of Babylon to bring back them in Judaea. In the seventh month, after being set out again of the Chaldée, the large Jesus priest having formed the intention restoring the public worship, Zorobabel assisted its zeal and helped it to draw up a furnace bridge to offer sacrifices to the Lord. As of the second year, it started to assemble materials to rebuild the temple. But hardly the bases left ground that the Samaritain S, whose one had refused the suspect offers, made as well by their intrigues near the ministers of Artaxerxès as they came to end to stop the work.

They were only several years after Zorobabel, excited by the prophets Aggée and Zacharie, encouraged the people, which went to continue the House of the Lord with more heat than the first time. Darius having granted its protection to the Jews the work was not stopped any more; Zorobabel had the consolation to see it completing and to attend the dedication of the temple, which was made four years after one had started again to work there.

Though Zorobabel, resulting from the royal blood of Juda, had all the rights which the birth could give him to be put at the head of its nation, it was not itself which he undertook to lead and to control it. God who calls it his servant and who had taken care on him in the middle of the revolutions whose Perse was agitated after the death of Cambyse, chooses it to be the instrument of the delivery of his people and the re-establishment of the civil statue and monk of the Jews. God had not restricted himself to give the most authentic approval to the company of Zorobabel, it had still announced in a vision of Zacharie the facility with which it would be carried out. This prophet saw in dream a gold candlestick with seven branches, carrying each one a lamp, which communicated per as many pipes with a tank placed above them, continuously to provide them oil, which it received from two planted olive-trees one with the right-hand side, the other with the left of the candlestick. These lamps, which discussed themselves without one being obliged to renew of it the oil, indicated the future state of the Jews, which was to take again his antique splendor under Zorobabel, without another help that of the Lord.

Samarie is represented here under the image of a proud mountain which is levelled in front of the son of Salathiel, and the angels which directed it in all its projects, under that of the seven eyes of the Lord, attentive to examine what occurs in the country. This metaphor is drawn from the government of Persia, where seven principal ministers, that one called the eyes of the king, were charged to take care on all that arrived in the kingdom. Zorobabel appears itself, the level with the hand, tracing the plan of the house of God and raising the hopes of those which, witnesses of the glare whose the first temple had shone, were afflicted with the weak beginnings of the second.

Zorobabel had seven male children: Mosellam, Hananias (which one believes being the same one as Iabiud placed in the genealogy of Jesus-Christ, by Matthieu saint, and than the Vesa, in that of holy Luc), Hasaban, Ohol, Barachie, Hasadias, Josabhesed, and a named girl Salomith. We can judge veneration which always the Jews for the memory of this great man by the praise had that makes of it the author of the book of the School Siastique. One sometimes confused Zorobabel with Sassabasar.

External bonds

the first book of Esdras in the Seventy: university thesis on the book apocryphal book of Esdras in the Greek Bible, in which the problems of chronology and the identification of Zorobabel are approached.

Source

“Zorobabel”, in Louis-Gabriel Michaud, old and modern universal Biography: history alphabetically of the public life and private of all the men with the collaboration of more than 300 French scientists and literary men or foreigners , 2nd edition, 1843-1865. Certain references were specified.

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