to bring a thing to an end, to finish it. The form שׁיציא is not a participle pass. formed from the Shaphel (Gesen.), for this would be משׁיציא, but a Hebraized passive form of the Shaphel in the meaning of the Targumistic Ishtaphal, like חיתיוּ, Dan 3:13, and חיתית, Dan 6:18, with the active היתיו, Dan 6:17. In the Targums שׁיצי has mostly an active, and only in a few passages the intransitive meaning, to end, to be at the end; comp. Levy, chald. Wörterbuch, s.v.[1]
Verses 16-17
The sons of Israel, more exactly the priests and the Levites, and the rest of the sons of the captivity, kept the dedication of this house of God with joy. חנכּה עבד = the Hebrew חנכּה עשׂה, to celebrate the dedication (2Ch 7:9). בּחדוה, Hebrew בּשׂמחה; see Neh 8:10. They brought for the dedication a hundred bullocks, two hundred rams, four hundred lambs as burnt-offerings, and twelve he-goats for a sin-offering for all Israel, according to the number of the tribes of Israel, because the temple was intended for the entire covenant people, whose return to the Lord and to the land of their fathers, according to the predictions of the prophets, was hoped for (comp. e.g., Eze 37:15., Jer 31:27.), not, as older expositors thought, because certain families of the ten tribes, who had before settled in Judah, were also among those who returned (J. H. Mich. ad h. l.).
Verse 18
At the same time, the priests and Levites were appointed, according to their classes and divisions, to the service of the temple, that they might henceforth fulfil their office, each class in its week (2Ch 23:4; 2Ki 11:9). והקימוּ corresponds with the Hebrew ויּעמידוּ, Ezr 3:8, and elsewhere. As Bertheau
- ↑ Instead of the “third day,” which the lxx also has, in accordance with the Hebrew text, 1 Esdr. 7:5 gives the three-and-twentieth day of the month Adar, - a statement which Bertheau arbitrarily insists upon regarding as the original reading, because “the view that the compiler altered the third into the twenty-third day, because it seemed to him more fitting to assume an eight days' celebration of the dedication (comp. 1Ki 8:60; 2Ch 29:18), and to fill up therewith also the eight last days of the year, is rather far-fetched.” Such a view, however, would be entirely consistent with the whole spirit of 1 Esdras.
