Deeper Commentary
"After these things" refers to the 58 year gap between the events at the end of Ezra 6, during the first return under Zerubbabel, to this second return under Ezra. And there was to be a third return under Nehemiah, the three returns matching the three deportations of the Jews.
A call to flee Babylon was made by Zechariah in the second year of Darius, at the time of Ezra 5 when the exiles were forbidden to continue rebuilding the temple and Zechariah and Haggai prophesied to them. So now, there was another return led by Ezra as recorded in Ezra 7. This may well have been in direct response and obedience to the call to "flee from the land of the north!" made in Zech. 2:6,7. Although Babylon had fallen to Cyrus, he left the city intact. The total destruction of the city envisioned in the prophets didn't happen at that time- perhaps because God's people weren't ready to leave as they should have done. For the exit of the Jews from Babylon was envisaged as preceding Babylon's total destruction. Although the people hadn't left Babylon, God in Zech. 2:6 gives another scenario- they could leave now, and then Babylon would fall as predicted. Ezra leads another group from Babylon in response to this call (Ezra 7), but again there was very limited response to his efforts to get the Jews to leave. We marvel at God's desire to somehow make it all work out...
Seraiah was High-priest in the days of king Zedekiah and was slain at
Riblah by Nebuchadnezzar (2 Kings 25:18-21). So immediately we see that
generations are omitted here, as often in the Biblical genealogies.
Ezra 7:2 the son of Shallum, the son of Zadok, the son of Ahitub-
Ezra 7:3 the son of Amariah, the son of Azariah, the son of Meraioth-
Ezra 7:4 the son of Zerahiah, the son of Uzzi, the son of Bukki-
Ezra 7:5 the son of Abishua, the son of Phinehas, the son of Eleazar, the
son of Aaron the chief priest- Ezra's great grandfather had been High
Priest (:1), and he could trace his descent right back to Aaron. He was
really well qualified to be the next high priest. The fact he wasn't could
imply there was some degree of internal politics going on, or he failed to
rise up to the call; and so the prophecies of a Messianic high priest in
the restored Kingdom were left unfulfilled.
Ezra 7:6 this Ezra went up from Babylon: and he was a willing scribe in
the law of Moses, which Yahweh, the God of Israel, had given-
The
Hebrew word for "scribe" doesn't simply mean one who writes down or
copies. It carries the idea of publishing, teaching, openly declaring- and
is the word used in passages like Is. 43:21 "shew forth My praise". Ezra
was an enthusiastic teacher of the law of Moses, and he wanted the
returned exiles to be obedient to the old covenant and thereby be blessed.
We might note however that Jeremiah and Ezekiel had made clear that the
old covenant had been broken with Judah; and they had been offered a new
covenant with those who repented, involving the gift of the Spirit and
inclusion of any Gentiles who wished to accept it.
Ezra was
contemporary with Jeremiah and certainly Ezekiel; surely he was aware of
the new covenant, and surely he knew the prophecies of Isaiah relevant to
the exiles. They clearly offered a new covenant. But still God's good hand
was upon him, because he wanted to teach the old covenant (:9,10). God
will still work with those who have wrong theology and mistaken emphases,
if their heart is clearly for Him. This is something that denominational
Christianity can't cope with, as each denomination basically feels that
God is only working with those who share their positions.
So Ezra's passion for
the old covenant was to some degree zeal not according to knowledge. He
was missing the point of the wonderful offer of the new covenant, and not
giving due weight to God's statements in the prophets that the old
covenant was effectively over. And yet despite this wrong focus upon law
and traditional positions, God clearly worked with Ezra.
Ezra 7:7 There went up some of the children of Israel, and of the priests,
the Levites, the singers, the porters and the Nethinim, to Jerusalem, in
the seventh year of Artaxerxes the king- These are the same six
categories who had returned with Zerubbabel initially (Ezra 2:70). But the
order is different. Here, the first category is the ordinary people;
whereas before it was the priests and Levites who were listed first. This
may be read as positive, in that the ordinary people were now responding;
or negative, in that the priests were less responsive than they had been.
Ezra 7:8 He came to Jerusalem in the fifth month, which was in the seventh
year of the king- This was according to Yahweh's "hand" (:6).
Ezra 7:9 For on the first day of the first month began he to go up from
Babylon; and on the first day of the fifth month came he to Jerusalem,
according to the good hand of his God on him- The continual reference
to the hand of God in Ezra is another way of saying that God was acting
through His Spirit. There was (and is) a power higher than that of human
endeavour, a hidden hand, which alone makes our way to the Kingdom
ultimately prosperous; and our salvation therefore by grace rather than
our own device.
Ezra 7:10 For Ezra had set his heart to seek the law of Yahweh, and to do
it, and to teach in Israel statutes and ordinances-
We have here a powerful pattern: A heart set, seeking God's word, personally doing it- and then teaching it to others. Ezra definitely presents as sincere. However, his message should have been of the new covenant. He was surely aware of the prophetic position on this, but instead sought to return Israel to the old covenant. This is the problem with getting 'doctrine' wrong; we can end up going down rabbit holes, wasting our life ministry, misguiding others into irrelevancies, and in the worst cases, "The time shall come when he who kills you will think he does God's service". Indeed, a focus on God's law and devotion to teaching it didn't stop Israel from murdering God's Son.
Ezra 7:11 Now this is the copy of the letter that the king Artaxerxes gave
to Ezra the priest, the scribe, even the scribe of the words of the
commandments of Yahweh, and of His statutes to Israel- It could be
that Ezra was a "scribe" in the court, but more importantly he was a
scribe or proclaimer of the words and commandments of Yahweh, and His
statutes- as well as those of the king. The word for "scribe" can
mean a court secretary, and the word is used like that in describing the
reigns of David and others. It is also the title used in the Persian
empire for someone who would assist the colonization process, teaching the
subject people the civil laws of Persia. "The scribe, even the scribe" may
be trying to say that although he was a scribe of the Persian empire, he
was also a scribe of God's law. Possibly he was the scribe in the sense of
a Persian secretary, maybe 'Secretary of State for Jewish Affairs', as
well as a Jew, a priest who in fact could have been the High Priest. If
indeed Ezra was a senior Secretary, this would explain his ease of access
to the king. We know that the Jews had assimilated into Babylon,
Ezra 7:12 Artaxerxes, king of kings, to Ezra the priest, the scribe of the
law of the God of heaven, perfect peace and so forth- Ezra 1:2
records Cyrus originally defining Yahweh, Israel's God, as "the God of
heaven". This was in allusion to the Persian belief in Ormuzd as the
mightiest god, in contradistinction to Ahriman, who was lord of the lower
regions. The proclamation of Cyrus was effectively a denial of the Persian
view of the gods and Ormuzd, although it seems Cyrus didn't maintain that;
but Artaxerxes is more vague, leaving it open to interpretation as to
whether the "God of heaven" is Yahweh or Ormuzd.
Ezra 7:13 I make a decree, that all those of the people of Israel, and
their priests and the Levites, in my realm, who are minded of their own
free will to go to Jerusalem, go with you-
Ezra 7:14 Because you are sent of the king and his seven counsellors, to
inquire concerning Judah and Jerusalem, according to the law of your God
which is in your hand- The book of Esther (Esther 1:14) likewise
mentions these seven counsellors. "To inquire" doesn't necessarily mean
here 'to find out information'. The idea could be that he was sent there
to pray for Judah and Jerusalem according to the law of God. For this is
how prayer must be- according to God's word.
Ezra 7:15 and to carry the silver and gold, which the king and his
counsellors have freely offered to the God of Israel whose habitation is
in Jerusalem- The king clearly sees "the God of Israel" as the local
god of Jerusalem, who as it were lives there. He doesn't use the term
Yahweh, as Cyrus did.
Ezra 7:16 and all the silver and gold that you shall find in all the
province of Babylon, with the freewill offering of the people, and of the
priests, offering willingly for the house of their God which is in
Jerusalem- "That you shall find" doesn't mean he was to just grab
whatever silver and gold he could; rather the idea is that he should take
with him whatever silver and gold people were willing to give him. This is
the king's way of repeating the essence of the decree of Cyrus (Ezra
1:4,6).
Ezra 7:17 therefore you shall with all diligence buy with this money
bulls, rams, lambs, with their meal offerings and their drink offerings,
and shall offer them on the altar of the house of your God which is in
Jerusalem- The king appears to have some detailed knowledge of the
law of Moses; as an eager scribe or proclaimer, Ezra apparently had shared
the details of Yahweh with the king. And he is to be commended for this;
for religion is always a difficult subject with powerful employers who
have their own religious views.
Ezra 7:18 Whatever shall seem good to you and to your brothers to do with
the rest of the silver and the gold, do that after the will of your God-
We note the parallel between the will of God, and what Ezra willed or
thought good. The king thus accepts that the will of Ezra is that of his
God; they were aligned. He perceives congruity between what he preached and what he really
stood for himself.
Ezra 7:19 The vessels that are given to you for the service of the house
of your God, deliver before the God of Jerusalem- Although the king
appears to have seen Israel's God as merely a local entity, he also seems
to recognize He had some real presence there in Jerusalem. The original
temple vessels taken away from Jerusalem had been restored there already,
but there was apparently the need for many more, which were offered
voluntarily (:15; Ezra 8:25-28). Perhaps some had been stolen before they
were taken into captivity; or some which had been returned had been
stolen. Or again, perhaps Ezra wished to operate worship on a far grander
scale than previously.
Ezra 7:20 Whatever more shall be needful for the house of your God, which
you shall have occasion to grant, grant it out of the king’s treasure
house- The treasure house was presumably that in Jerusalem, into
which the local taxes were paid.
Ezra 7:21 I, even I Artaxerxes the king, do make a decree to all the
treasurers who are beyond the River, that whatever Ezra the priest, the
scribe of the law of the God of heaven, shall require of you, it be done
with all diligence- The king seems to have foreseen that the God of
Ezra was alive and real enough to give Ezra more commandments which would
require material to fulfill them.
Ezra 7:22 to one hundred talents of silver, one hundred measures of wheat,
one hundred baths of wine, one hundred baths of oil, and salt without
prescribing how much- The taxes paid to the local treasure house in
Jerusalem (:20) would have been paid partly in kind, and wheat, wine and
oil were all local products of Judah (2 Kings 18:32). The king had clearly
been told about the exact nature of the Jewish sacrifices, including the
command to always offer with salt (Lev. 2:13).
Ezra 7:23 Whatever is commanded by the God of heaven, let it be done
exactly for the house of the God of heaven; for why should there be wrath
against the realm of the king and his sons?- It
would appear that
about this time, the Persians had been driven out of Egypt, and their
records describe it in these terms, as "wrath against the realm of the
king". But after Ezra returned, Persia recovered Memphis.
Ezra 7:24 Also we inform you, that concerning any of the priests and
Levites, the singers, porters, Nethinim, or servants of this house of God,
it shall not be lawful to impose tribute, custom, or toll on them-
The Persians didn't exclude their own priests from taxation, so this was
all the more a wonderful kindness. But the lesson from it all is that God
was providing absolutely everything for His work to go ahead. And to this
day, lack of resources has never been a barrier for the progress of any
project which God wills to happen. He will always provide, most
generously.
Ezra 7:25 You, Ezra, after the wisdom of your God which is in your hand,
appoint magistrates and judges who may judge all the people who are beyond
the River, all such as know the laws of your God; and teach him who
doesn’t know them- This was giving a huge amount of power to Ezra. We
get the impression that there were Jews still scattered through the whole
area west of the Euphrates. They had not returned to the land. Ezra was
empowered to preach to them, and also to those who didn't know Yahweh.
This was a huge commission; but there is no evidence Ezra fulfilled it.
Let’s remember that the exiles were representative of us. They failed, and so these things in essence are reapplied to ourselves. We in this life are passing through “the time of our exile” (1 Pet. 1:17 RSV). They were commanded to spread the knowledge of Israel’s God to all in the dominion of Babylon (Ezra 7:25 LXX), and thus they would have fulfilled Isaiah’s prophecies about the spreading of the Gospel to all peoples. Yet we have a similar commission, and God will provide for us likewise, as He did for Ezra. But we have to learn the lesson of the exiles; for the exiles who returned became so caught up with their own lives that they again failed to be a light to the nations.
It is hard to understand whether the mission Ezra was given was to literally all people "Beyond the River", or just to teach Yahweh's laws to all those who were already under them, i.e. the Jews. It could be that the king was telling Ezra to bring literally all people "Beyond the River" under Yahweh's laws, and under the civil laws of "the King" of Persia (:26). And Ezra decided this was a good deal. The apparent massive generosity from the Persian side was surely done with an agenda in mind- the cementing of their own colonial power. There is no evidence that Ezra's mission succeeded. Had it succeeded, the prophecies would have been fulfilled about the conversion of the surrounding nations in the land promised to Abraham, up to "the River". Ezra isn't mentioned again in Scripture apart from some years later in Nehemiah. "All" we read is that he returned, taught God's law, lamented how far the people were from it (Ezra 9) and made them divorce their Gentile wives, thus breaking up many families (Ezra 10). And that is all he's recorded as achieving. Isaiah's prophecies were that repentant Jews, marvelling at the grace of the new covenant, would be such an example of God's grace that the Gentiles would come with them to Jerusalem to worship Yahweh. Ezra instead maxes out on teaching them the old covenant, divorcing their Gentile wives, and pushing obedience to the Persian empire in return for being funded in his religious mission. No wonder he apparently got nowhere, and by Nehemiah's time, the temple and walls were broken down again and Jerusalem was depopulated. And yet Ezra's prayer of Ezra 9 reflects genuine spirituality and relationship with God. He admittedly ignored a large chunk of Bible teaching, Isaiah - Daniel, and the wonderful message of grace in the new covenant that was being offered. He was a legalist and very small minded in his spiritual worldview, and his ministry was ultimately not very fruitful. But still he had relationship with God. And this is how it is with very many such believers today. If God is willing to walk with and save such legalists, ignoring large chunks of His word, then it cuts the other way too- those who may be more liberal, at the other end of the spectrum, also ignoring large parts of God's revelation, may well still be in relationship with Him. It's not for us to judge, but simply to reflect upon the implications of Ezra.
Ezra 7:26 Whoever will not do the law of your God, and the law of the
king, let judgement be executed on him with all diligence, whether it be
to death, or to banishment, or to confiscation of goods, or to
imprisonment- The law of God and that of the king are paralleled,
just as the decree of the king was effectively the fulfilment of God's
decree and commandment. But we see here the politics behind the
Persians allowing Ezra to go to Palestine and teach God's law (see on
:23). If he was to be the teacher, he was to teach the secular / civil law
of the Persians even if he was allowed to teach the law of Moses as
religious law. He was to set up teachers and judges according to Moses'
religious law, and also Persian civil law. Rather like a 19th century
missionary being funded by a Government to establish Christianity, and
also to establish colonial political hegemony. And it seems he agreed to
this deal. The ethical issues here are left open to our reflection! For
obedience to Yahweh and His vision for Israel precluded, surely, obedience
to Persian civil law. If indeed Ezra 7 comes right after the Esther story,
we recall that Haman in Esther 3:8, claimed that the Jews followed their
own religious laws and not the civic laws of the king. But now Ezra
appears to be teaching both of them. Whereas God's people were to be
governed exclusively by His
law because they were
His
Kingdom. We see in Ezra's compromise the beginnings of the idea of
separation between church and state, whereby man is supposed to live under
God's law but also under the law of the state. Peter of course spells it
out, that man can only be obedient to secular law in so far as it doesn't
contradict the Lord's law. Quite possibly we are to assume Ezra taught the
same; but all the same, for a theocratic nation, who stood on the brink of
the possibility of being re-established as God's Kingdom, it seems this
was a compromise too far.
In reality, Ezra didn't put to death
those disobedient to God's law. Thirteen years after his coming to
Jerusalem, the people had again intermarried and were breaking the Sabbath
(Neh. 8,10). His hard line "Obey or die" approach just didn't work. His
hard line on 'marriage out of the faith' likewise didn't work; the people
divorced their wives as he asked, and just did it all again. Ezra's
approach is the classic evidence that hard core legalism just doesn't
elicit long term transformation nor personal spirituality. In those 13
years, the walls of Jerusalem had been broken down- implying some sort of
judgment from God. His "back to the Bible" message on his first arrival in
Jerusalem had simply not brought forth much fruit. Indeed, the returned
exiles had apparently turned further away from God. Hence his memoir
finishes so otherwise strangely, with the lament that many of those he
made divorce their Gentile wives had children by them. He had broken
families in his initial zeal, but it achieved nothing spiritually. In fact
quite the opposite. The situation in Nehemiah 8, when Ezra reads the law
to the people, is very similar to that in the book of Ezra. The people had
married Gentile wives and were asked to repent; and they seemed ignorant
of God's law. Higher critics therefore argue that Nehemiah 8 has been
misplaced and is really part of the Ezra story. But that requires viewing
the book of Nehemiah as having its dates totally wrong, and the rest of
the book loses coherence. I suggest rather that the close, intentional
similarities are to show how Ezra's ministry was a failure. It achieved
nothing. He came to Judah zealous to teach the Torah, when he should have
been teaching the people Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel and Daniel, with the
great possibilities of a new covenant. Instead he teaches the Torah, the
old covenant which they had already broken, and makes them divorce their
Gentile wives, leading to massive family breakup. And that's all he's
recorded as doing. Over the next 13 years until Nehemiah's time, the walls
of Jerusalem were broken down, Jerusalem was depopulated, and the people
went even further away from God's law. Ezra was clearly sincere in his own
way and displays much genuine spirituality, but his zeal and ideals were
misplaced. He was the first "scribe". Despite their location in the Bible,
Ezra and Nehemiah are at the very end of the Hebrew Biblical history,
around the time of Zechariah and Malachi. Ezra was the first scribe... and
we know that his spiritual descendants crucified the Lord. He himself was
not of that spirit, but his legalism spawned that. All Ezra is recorded as
doing is returning to Jerusalem, forcing mass divorces of Jews married to
Gentiles, breaking up families... and then 13 years later reading the
Torah and doing the same again. That's all. No fruit in that. And human
life is judged by the fruit we bore, when all is aid and done. The lesson
of Ezra has gone unheeded in so many churches, denominations and families.
Especially those who have insisted that divorced and remarried couples
must separate in order to have communion in the Lord's body.
Ezra 7:27 Blessed be Yahweh, the God of our fathers, who has put such a
thing as this in the king’s heart, to beautify the house of Yahweh which
is in Jerusalem- See on :2.
Ezra
was enabled to “beautify” the temple (Ezra 7:27), the very same word used
in Is. 60:7,9,13 about how God would “glorify” [s.w.] His temple with
merchandise from throughout the Babylonian empire- all of which was
willingly offered by Cyrus and Darius.
Ezra 7:28 and has extended grace to me before the king, his counsellors
and before all the king’s mighty princes. I was strengthened according to
the hand of Yahweh my God upon me, and I gathered together out of Israel
chief men to go up with me- The extension of grace, or 'gift', was in
terms of God working directly upon the king's heart (:27- see too Neh.
2:12; 7:5; 1 Kings 10:24). And this too is how God's grace can work today-
the insertion of ideas into the human heart, intended to bring us to
obedience to Him and the advancement of His glory. We note
Ezra's repeated awareness of the hand of God upon him (Ezra 7:6,9,28;
8:18,22,31); another way of saying that the Spirit was upon him. His
contemporary Ezekiel had felt that hand even lifting him up and
transporting him to and from Jerusalem from Babylon.
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