Day 268 (Ezra 7-10) - Year 8

Tara-Leigh Cobble (0:01)

Hey, Bible Readers, I'm Tara-Leigh Cobble, and I'm your host for The Bible Recap.

Today we finished our 36th book of the Bible, and it took us seven chapters, but we finally met Ezra, the man who this book was named after. He's a scribe descended from Aaron, the high priest. He lived in Babylon turned Persia until he left to return to Jerusalem during the reign of King Artaxerxes of Persia. Remember King A from the Book of Esther? His full name was Ahasuerus, but he was also known as Xerxes, and Artaxerxes is the king who came after Xerxes. So this is all happening after Esther's husband dies. But a quick sidebar, this new king is almost certainly not Esther's son. Most scholars don't attribute any children to Esther. The events starting in Chapter 7 are taking place roughly 60 years after the first six chapters of this book. Today opens with a letter to Ezra from King Artaxerxes of Persia. He's sending Ezra and a bunch of other Jews in Persia back to Jerusalem. But he's not sending them back dismissively. He's sending back anyone who wants to go, and he's sending them with massive blessings and provisions. He says he'll take care of basically everything Ezra needs. He also tells Ezra to appoint magistrates and judges who will teach and enact the laws of Yahweh. And as if all this weren't enough, the king tells him that the temple gets a pass on paying taxes. This is a really exciting commissioning for Ezra because he's a Torah scholar and he's gonna get to teach the scriptures to all the exiles in Jerusalem. And by most accounts, this will be Ezra's first time in Jerusalem. He's probably only about 22 years old at this point, which means he was born in exile. This is a huge assignment with a lot of authority for such a young man. He's not even old enough to be a priest, but he knows where the assignment has ultimately come from and he knows where his strength lies.

After he gets the letter from King Artaxerxes, he praises God for putting these plans into the king's heart and he says, I took courage for the hand of the Lord my God was on me.

The awareness of God's nearness banishes fear and imparts courage.

In Chapter 8, they set out on their months long journey. It was roughly a 900 mile trip. As he's counting all his men along the way, he realizes that, oopsie, they forgot to invite any Levites and those are kind of vital in running the temple. So he sends a crew to rally some Levites and they come back with a bunch of top notch temple servants. Hooray, that was a close one.

But again, he says they were provided for by the good hand of our God on us, according to verse 18

Then he has another, uh-oh moment. He realizes that this is a very long journey through potentially hostile territory and he's actually maybe kind of scared. The king had offered to send bodyguards with them, but he was like, no thanks, God will take care of us.

He realizes that he may have stated it as though it were a fact, but he never actually asked God for it. So here they all are at the river with a leader who is barely old enough to vote, and he does the only thing he knows to do. He fasts and asks God for help, which is exactly where his hope lies.

Next, he divides out the holy vessels among the priests and gives them responsibility over their portion until they get to Jerusalem. This is probably not only helpful for making sure nobody's luggage is over the checked bag weight limit because the stuff weighs over 70,000 pounds, but it also serves to protect against theft.

They did encounter some thieves along the way, but Ezra says God protected them. In verse 31, he says, the hand of our God was on us and he delivered us from the hand of the enemy and from ambushes on the way.

When they arrive at Jerusalem safely and all the holy vessels are accounted for, they make offerings to Yahweh. All is well in Jerusalem, right? Nope. Chapter 9 opens with some of the locals spilling the beans that things are seriously out of hand here, even though they've only been back for a few decades. The main issue, they say, is that the returned exile started marrying a bunch of the locals who don't know or love Yahweh, which, if you recall, was one of the big problems in the past. For the most part, marrying people of other nations wasn't a problem if they were followers of Yahweh, it's just that so few of them were. There were the occasional outliers like Ruth, but most of them were pagans. God forbid marrying people of other religions because He warned them that it would lead them to worship gods, which it did. To make matters worse, the priests and leaders among the people are the ones who led the way in this.