The second postscript describes yet another source of danger to Nehemiah--one possibly remaining after the walls were up. Tobiah, "the servant," had not been included in the previous conspiracies. But he was playing a little game of his own. The intermarriage of leading Jewish families with foreigners was bearing dangerous fruit in his case. Tobiah had married a Jewess, and his son had followed his example. In each case the alliance had brought him into connection with a well-known family in Jerusalem. These two families pleaded his merits with Nehemiah, and at the same time acted as spies and reported the words of the governor to Tobiah. The consequence was the receipt of alarmist letters from this man by Nehemiah. The worst danger might thus be found among the disaffected citizens within the walls who were irritated at the rigorously exclusive policy of Ezra, which Nehemiah had not discouraged, although he had not yet had occasion to push it further. The stoutest walls will not protect from treason within the ramparts. So after all the labour of completing the fortifications Nehemiah's trust must still be in God alone.
The fragmentary nature of the chronicler's work is nowhere more apparent than in that portion of it which treats of the events immediately following on the completion of the fortifications of Jerusalem. In Nehemiah vii. we have a continuation of the governor's personal narrative of his work, describing how the watch was organised after the walls had been built and the gates set up.[210] This is followed by a remark on the sparseness of the city population,[211] which leads Nehemiah to insert the list of Zerubbabel's pilgrims that the chronicler subsequently copies out in his account of Zerubbabel's expedition.[212] Here the subject is dropped, to be resumed at Nehemiah xi., where the arrangements for increasing the population of Jerusalem are described. Thus we might read right on with a continuous narrative--allowing for the insertion of the genealogical record, the reason for which is obvious--and omit the three intermediate chapters without any perceptible hiatus, but, on the contrary, with a gain in consecutiveness.
These three chapters stand by themselves, and they are devoted to another matter, and that a matter marked by a certain unity and distinctive character of its own. They are written in the third person, by the chronicler himself. In them Ezra suddenly reappears without any introduction, taking the leading place, while Nehemiah recedes into the background, only to be mentioned once or twice, and then as the loyal supporter of the famous scribe. The style has a striking resemblance to that of Ezra, from whom therefore, it has been conjectured, the chronicler may have derived his materials.