Artaxerxes grant Ezra permission to journey with his brethren to Jerusalem, but he also gave him letters to the satraps of the countries through which he passed, and to the authorities of Palestine. He would also have sent an escort to protect the travellers from hostile tribes, but Ezra declined it, assuring the king that the God to whom they prayed would protect them. The arrival of Ezra with his numerous companions must have caused much surprise in Jerusalem (459-458). They came provided with letters from the king, laden with gifts, and imbued with enthusiastic feelings. Without doubt, Ezra's name as an instructor and expounder of the Law had already penetrated as far as Judæa, and he was received with every mark of consideration. No sooner had he assumed the ecclesiastical function, than the men of strong convictions who condemned intermarriages with the surrounding peoples brought their complaints before him. Ezra was dismayed when he heard of these occurrences. The representatives of the people and of the Temple had, in contempt of the Law, connected themselves with the heathen. Ezra held this to be a terrible sin. For the Judæan or Israelitish race was in his eyes a holy one, and suffered desecration by mingling with foreign tribes, even though they had abjured idolatry. According to Ezra's reading of the Law, heathens who had accepted the Law might enter into the community; they were, however, not to be put upon a footing of equality with Israelites by birth, but were to live as a group apart. The Gibeonites, in former days the slaves of the Temple, who had accepted the Israelitish doctrines more than a thousand years before, were still kept distinct, and were not permitted to intermarry with the Israelites; and in Ezra's opinion, the new proselytes from the heathen nations were to be treated in a similar manner. The connection with them ought not to be of an intimate character; such was Ezra's opinion, based, not on ancestral pride, but on religious and social grounds. Some dim presentiment warned him that the reception of proselytes or half-proselytes into the community--of such elements as had not been tried and proved in the furnace of suffering, as the seed of Abraham had been--would give undue preponderance to the foreign element, and would destroy all the moral and religious advantages which the Judæans had acquired. This fear seized upon his whole soul; he rent his clothes, plucked the hair from his head and beard, and refusing all nourishment, sat until the afternoon, sorrowing and desolate because of this danger which threatened the life of the nation. Then he entered the court of the Temple, and throwing himself upon his knees, he poured forth a confession full of deep contrition, lamenting that the people had not improved by their bitter experiences, but had relapsed into their former evil ways. This keenly-felt penitence, uttered amid sobs and tears, powerfully affected the bystanders, men, women and children,