Old Testament · History
Home again, the temple rebuilt over opposition, and a scribe who set his heart on the Law.
The return, and the discovery that going home is harder than being taken away. A remnant comes back under Persian permission, rebuilds the altar first and the temple slowly, and weeps when the foundation is laid because the old men remember something greater. Ezra himself does not appear until chapter seven, arriving generations later with a commission to teach the law. The part that troubles modern readers most is the ending, where foreign wives are sent away, and it deserves to be sat with rather than explained away; the community was small enough to disappear, and the remedy was severe. Notice that several chapters are in Aramaic, not Hebrew, because they reproduce imperial correspondence, which is the sound of a small province negotiating with an empire.
If you remember one thing
Restoration turns out to be slower, smaller, and more contested than anyone hoped, which is what makes the book useful to anyone rebuilding anything.
“For Ezra had set his heart to seek the law of the LORD, and to do it, and to teach in Israel statutes and ordinances.”
Ezra 7:10
Ezra 9 to 10
The dissolution of marriages to foreign wives. The book presents it as necessary for survival as a distinct people; readers have long noted the human cost, and that Ruth tells a very different story about a foreign wife.
Named here rather than skipped. Where Christians read a passage differently, we say so instead of choosing for you.
Everyone here has a write-up, drawn from the same records that explain the names while you read the text.
The Persian king whose policy was to send captive peoples home with their gods and their temple goods. For Judah that meant the end of exile. Isaiah names him as the LORD's shepherd and anointed, and a clay cylinder in the British Museum records his general policy in his own words.
A scribe who set his heart to study the law, to do it, and to teach it. He led a second group of exiles home and read the law aloud to the assembled people, with others explaining it so everyone could understand.
Aaron's third and fourth sons, who inherited the priesthood after the older two, Nadab and Abihu, were killed offering unauthorized fire. Eleazar succeeded Aaron as high priest and stood with Joshua to divide the land.
The register of those who returned from Babylon, given twice at length in Ezra 2 and Nehemiah 7 and a third time in 1 Esdras. Roughly fifty thousand people, listed by family, by town, and by temple office.
The rulers outside Israel who invade, extract tribute, or grant permission. Shishak of Egypt stripped the temple in Rehoboam's fifth year and left a relief at Karnak listing the towns he took. Necho killed Josiah at Megiddo. Tiglath-pileser III began the Assyrian deportations.
The sons and grandsons of Levi's three houses, named in the genealogies that open Exodus 6 and Numbers 3 and fill the Chronicler's registers. Libni and Shimei from Gershon; Amram, Izhar, Hebron, and Uzziel from Kohath; Mahli and Mushi from Merari.
The governor and the high priest who led the first returning exiles, laid the foundation of the second temple, and finished it under the preaching of Haggai and Zechariah.
Names that recur constantly through Chronicles, Ezra, and Nehemiah, often carried by several different men, and usually attached to the priestly and Levitical families. They are among the most common Hebrew names of the period, which is why the text so often has to add a father's name to tell them apart.
A quiz for Ezra is on the workbench. In the meantime, the games for the judges, the kings, and the prophets are open.
