In the pre­vi­ous chap­ter, we saw the devel­op­ment of a severe spir­i­tual prob­lem among the Jews who returned to Jerusalem from their cap­tiv­ity in Baby­lon. After the kings of Per­sia released them and granted per­mis­sion for the rebuild­ing of the Tem­ple, the Jews–and even their priests–took for them­selves wives from the “peo­ples of the lands,” i.e., […]

Ezra 9 begins with an account of how Ezra learned of a seri­ous spir­i­tual prob­lem in Jerusalem. There was wide­spread inter­mar­riage between Jews and non-Jews: When these things were done, the lead­ers came to me, say­ing, “The peo­ple of Israel and the priests and the Levites have not sep­a­rated them­selves from the peo­ples of the lands, with […]

Ezra 8 begins with the rec­ol­lec­tions of Ezra him­self speak­ing in the first per­son. He first offers a list of the cap­tives who were to accom­pany him out of exile in Baby­lon to Jerusalem in verses 2–14. A care­ful read­ing reveals that these cap­tives com­prise twelve unique fam­i­lies, which brings our minds back to the twelve tribes of […]

The begin­ning of Ezra 7 tells us that Ezra, after whom the book is named, was raised in a priestly fam­ily in Baby­lon dur­ing the sev­enth years of Artax­erxes. There is some debate as to the dat­ing of Ezra’s life, with a range from 458–398 B.C. offered by dif­fer­ent schol­ars. The tra­di­tional view is that Ezra comes around […]

In the last chap­ter, we wit­nessed the Jews who returned from cap­tiv­ity peti­tion the Per­sian king Dar­ius con­cern­ing the rebuild­ing of the Tem­ple of Solomon in Jerusalem. Dar­ius’ pre­de­ces­sor, King Cyrus, had decreed that the Tem­ple be rebuilt, but after two decades passed by dur­ing which the Jews were divided and under ques­tion­able lead­er­ship, the […]

In Ezra 5, we encounter two prophets who rose up among the Jews who returned from the Baby­lon­ian cap­tiv­ity, Hag­gai and Zechariah. Both started their min­istry around 520 B.C. The focus of both prophets was crit­i­cism of the Jew­ish lead­er­ship, which had not effec­tively guided the peo­ple who were then suf­fer­ing from poverty and a difficult […]

Ezra 4:1–5 tells us that cer­tain adver­saries of the Israelites wanted to help them rebuild the Tem­ple, but the Israelites refused and said, “You may do noth­ing with us to build a house for our God; but we alone will build to the LORD God of Israel.” Scorned, these adver­saries plot­ted against the Israelites and interfered […]

Ezra 3 begins by telling us that the Israelites are in Jerusalem by the sev­enth month “as one man” (verse 1). In the Jew­ish cal­en­dar, the sev­enth month is Tishri, which cor­re­sponds to September-October in the Gre­go­rian cal­en­dar we use today. On the fif­teenth of this month, the Jews cel­e­brated the Feast of the Taber­na­cles (Lev. […]

Ezra 2 is a unique chap­ter, because the whole of it is repeated in Nehemiah 7. It speaks about the return of approx­i­mately 50,000 Jews in cap­tiv­ity from Baby­lon to Jerusalem. We can essen­tially divide the chap­ter into three parts: the first part, from verses 2–20, list the names of indi­vid­u­als who left Baby­lon for Jerusalem; the […]

The Book of Ezra begins by telling us that the great Per­sian king, Cyrus, who had ruled since 557 B.C., now reigned over the Baby­lon­ian Empire in 539 B.C. This is inci­den­tally the year in which the cap­tiv­ity of the Jews in Baby­lon came to an end. King Cyrus issued a remark­able decree com­mand­ing that the Jewish […]