4. Going back now to the days of the _Restoration_ under Zerubbabel and his associates, about 536 B.C., we find that the very first act of the restored captives was to set up "the altar of the God of Israel, to offer burnt-offerings thereon, as it is written in the law of Moses the man of God." The narrative goes on to specify that "they offered burnt-offerings thereon unto the Lord, even burnt-offerings morning and evening. They kept also the feast of tabernacles, as it is written, and offered the daily burnt-offerings by number, according to the custom, as the duty of every day required; and afterwards offered the continual burnt-offering, both of the new moons, and of all the set feasts of the Lord that were consecrated, and of every one that willingly offered a free-will offering unto the Lord." Ezra 3:1-5. About ninety years afterwards, upon the completion of the walls of Jerusalem under Nehemiah, about 445 B.C., we find Ezra the priest--"a ready scribe in the law of Moses, which the Lord God of Israel had given," Ezra 7:6--on the occasion of the feast of tabernacles bringing forth "the book of the law of Moses, which the Lord had commanded to Israel," and reading in it "from the morning unto midday, before the men and the women, and those that could understand." In this work he was assisted by a body of men, who "caused the people to understand the law;" and the reading was continued through the seven days of the feast: "day by day, from the first day unto the last day, he read in the book of the law of God." Neh. ch. 8. It was not the book of Deuteronomy alone that they read. We might infer this from the extent of the reading, which was sufficient for all the preceptive parts of the Pentateuch. But here we are not left to mere inference. On the second day "they found written in the law which the Lord had commanded by Moses, that the children of Israel should dwell in booths in the feast of the seventh month;" and that they should "fetch olive-branches, and pine-branches, and myrtle-branches, and palm-branches, and branches of thick trees, to make booths, as it is written." Neh. 8:13-17. The precept concerning booths with boughs of trees occurs in Lev. 23:40-43, a passage which they might naturally enough reach on the second day. Ezra's assistants gave the sense not by labored expositions, but by interpreting the Hebrew in the Chaldee vernacular of the people. This would about double the time devoted to a given section. All that pertained to the structure of the tabernacle was superseded by the first temple, which served the returned captives as their model in the erection of the second. We may well suppose that this was omitted. There would then remain only four or five chapters in the book of Exodus. Thus the passage in question would naturally fall on the second day.