EZRA WRAP-UP
Joyce VoyseyMary Baker Eddy says in her Miscellaneous Writings: “Scarcely a moiety, compared with the whole of the Scriptures and the Christian Science textbook, is yet assimilated spiritually by the most faithful seekers, yet this assimilation is indispensable to the progress of every Christian Scientist.” Therefore, as we read the Bible, we are always on the look-out for something that will forward that spiritual assimilation.
However, the last two chapters of Ezra
have not proved to be a fertile source for me. They are all about the sin of the previous returnees having married and given their sons and daughters in marriage to people who had taken over Jerusalem while the Jews were in exile in Babylon. There were priests and Levites among the “sinners”. After a good talking to by Ezra (and much prayer on Ezra’s part) the people finally agreed to divorces from these “unclean” people. Ezra and some of the clan leaders attended to the divorces and it took them from December 15 till March 15. What a recorder Ezra was. To me, there is something punctilious or pedantic (not ideas I use every day) about Ezra’s records – fancy the proceedings starting on the 15th and ending on the 15th!
Ezra could see that the Jews
suffered when they disobeyed God’s laws. Hadn’t this very fact sent them
into exile? The golden thread of the Christ through Biblical history is
rather thin, it seems, though we do find that there has always been a remnant
of Godly people to carry on His work. Ezra was glad to see evidence of
God’s mercy in the very deliverance from exile of which he was part right
now. He expressed gratitude to God for that big blessing.
From Wikipedia
The following table is a guide to major events in the region during the period covered by the Book of Ezra:
King of Persia
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Main events
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Correlation with Ezra-Nehemiah
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Fall of Babylon, 539
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Directive to the Jews to rebuild the Temple - first return of the
exiles to Jerusalem (taken as 538, as Babylon fell in October 539)
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Conquest of Egypt, 525
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Secures the throne in 520/519 after fighting off various rivals
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Temple rebuilt, sixth year of Darius (515)
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Failed attempt to conquer Greece, beginning of struggle with Greeks
for control of the eastern Mediterranean
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Successful suppression of Greek-supported revolt in Egypt, 460-456;
revolt of Megabyzus, governor of the territory which included Judah, 449
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Currently most widely accepted period for arrival of Ezra in the
"seventh year of Artaxerxes" - second return of the exiles to
Jerusalem (458 if the king is Artaxerxes I, or 428 if the year is read as his
thirty-seventh instead of his seventh); mission of Nehemiah, 445-433 (return
before the death of Artaxerxes)
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Egypt regains independence, 401
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Alternative period for arrival of Ezra and second return of exiles
to Jerusalem (398 if the king is Artaxerxes II)
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Egypt reconquered
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Persia conquered by Alexander the Great
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Ezra-Nehemiah
The oldest texts of the Bible treat Ezra-plus-Nehemiah as a single book. It was divided into two separate works by the time of the 3rd century Christian scholar Origen, and the separation became entrenched in Christian Bibles in the Western European tradition when this was followed by Jerome in his Latin translation. It was not until the Middle Ages that the two became separated in Jewish Bibles.
I had been looking forward to hearing about Ezra’s reading to the people the scroll of Moses’ laws – the only thing I had really remembered about Ezra. But it seems that one has to get into Nehemiah, Ezra’s companion book, for that story.
The combined book of
Ezra-Nehemiah represents the final chapter in the historical narrative of the
Hebrew Bible.
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