SCRIBE, in Hebrew ספר , sepher, is very common in Scripture, and has several significations.

It signifies, first, a clerk, writer, or secretary. This was a very considerable employment in the court of the kings of Judah, in which the Scripture often mentions the secretaries as the first officers of the crown. Seraiah was scribe or secretary to King David (2 Sam. viii. 17). Shevah and She-maiah exercised the same office under this prince (2 Sam. XX. 25). In Solomon’s time we find Elihoreph and Ahia secretaries to that sovereign (1 Kings iv. 4); Shebna under Hezekiah (2 Kings xix. 2); and Shaphan under Josiah (2 Kings xxii. 8). As there were but few in those times that could write well, the employment of a scribe or writer was very considerable.

Secondly, a scribe is put for a commissary or muster-master of an army, who makes the review of the troops, keeps the list or roll, and calls them over. Under the reign of Uzziah king of Judah, there is found Jeil the scribe, who had under his hand the king’s armies (2 Chron, xxvi. 11); and at the time of the captivity, it is said the captain of the guard, among other considerable persons, took the principal scribe of the host, or secretary at war, which mustered the people of the land (2 Kings xxv. 19).

Thirdly, scribe is put for an able and skilful man, a doctor of the law, a man of learning that understands affairs. Jonathan, David’s uncle by the father’s side, was a counsellor, a wise man, and a scribe ( 1 Chr. xxvii. 32). Baruch, the disciple and secretary to Jeremiah, is called a scribe (Jer. xxxvi. 26); and Ezra is celebrated as a skilful scribe in the law of his God (Ezra vii. 6). The scribes of the people, who are frequently mentioned in the Gospel, were public writers and professed doctors of the law, which they read and explained to the people. Some place the original of the scribes under Moses; but their name does not appear until under the judges. It is said that, in the wars of Barak against Sisera, “out of Machir came down governors, and out of Zebulun they that handle the pen of the writer” (Judges V. 14). But others think that David first instituted them when he established the several classes of the priests and the Levites. The scribes were of the tribe of Levi; and at the time that David is said to have made the regulations in that tribe, we read that six thousand men of them were constituted officers and judges (1 Chr. xxiii. 4), among whom it is reasonable to think that the scribes were included. For in 2 Chr. xxiv. 6, we read of Shemaiah the scribe, one of the Levites; and in Chr. xxxiv. 13, we also find it written, “Of the Levites that were scribes and officers.”

The scribes and the doctors of the law, in the Scripture phraseology, mean the same thing. And as the whole religion of the Jews at that time consisted chiefly in pharisaical traditions, and in the use that was made of them to explain the Scripture, the greatest number of the doctors of the law, or of the scribes, were Pharisees; and we almost always find them joined together in Scripture. Each of them valued themselves upon their knowledge of the law, and upon their studying and teaching it (Mat. xxii. 52). They had the key of knowledge, and sat in Moses’s chair (Mat. xxiii. 2). Epiphanius, and the author of the Recognitions imputed to St Clement, reckon the scribes among the sects of the Jews; but it is certain that they formed no sect by themselves, and were only distinguished by their study of the law.