@ezra.book · 20 posts
Home from Babylon. Building again.
The story of the Jews coming home after seventy years in exile in Babylon, and rebuilding God’s temple in Jerusalem. Jewish tradition says Ezra the scribe wrote this book, and from chapter 7 he tells part of it himself. The first six chapters happen before he was born. Some of it is copied straight from Persian royal letters, and those parts were written in Aramaic, the language the empire ran on.
Jerusalem, after the exileFirst seen Ezra 1:1
First year of Cyrus, king of Persia. Babylon has fallen to him, and the Jews have been exiles there for a lifetime. Jeremiah said this day would come. Now the LORD moves Cyrus to act, and the king sends an announcement round his whole empire. In writing.
Then Cyrus brings out the dishes and bowls from the LORD's house. The ones Nebuchadnezzar looted from Jerusalem and put in his own gods' temple. Counted out by the treasurer to Sheshbazzar, the prince of Judah: 1. 30 gold dishes 2. 1,000 silver dishes 3. 29 silver utensils 4. 30 gold bowls 5. 410 silver bowls 6. 1,000 other pieces 5,400 in all. Every one of them going home.
The book stops here for a long list of everyone who came home, family by family, town by town. Totals: 42,360 people, 7,337 servants, 200 singers. And 736 horses, 245 mules, 435 camels and 6,720 donkeys.
Replying to @ezra.book
Three priestly families went looking for their family records and couldn't find them. So they're kept out of the priesthood, and the governor says they can't eat the holy food until there's a priest who can ask God with the Urim and Thummim, the sacred lots.
Seventh month. Everyone gathers in Jerusalem as one. Jeshua the priest and Zerubbabel rebuild the altar of the God of Israel on its old foundation, so the offerings can start again the way the Law of Moses says. Morning and evening. They're scared of the people living round them. They build it anyway.
The festivals are back on, the Feast of Shelters and all the rest. Still no temple, not even a foundation. Just an altar in the open air. Meanwhile, money for masons and carpenters, and food and oil to Sidon and Tyre for cedar logs from Lebanon, floated down the coast to Joppa. Cyrus signed off on all of it.
Replying to @asaph.family.singer
Nobody could tell the shouts of joy from the crying. It was one huge noise, and it carried a long way.
So the people of the land set out to wear them down and frighten them off. They even pay advisers at court to work against them. It goes on through the rest of Cyrus's reign and into Darius's.
Jumping ahead a few kings here, because it's the same story. Years later, under Artaxerxes, the Jews are rebuilding Jerusalem's walls, and Rehum the commander writes to the king about it.
Back to the temple. Work on God's house has stopped, and it stays stopped until the second year of Darius, king of Persia.
Then two prophets, Haggai and Zechariah, start speaking to the Jews in the name of the God of Israel. Zerubbabel and Jeshua get up and start building again, and the prophets are right there with them, helping.
Replying to @tattenai.gov
And nobody makes them stop while the question goes to the king. Their God has his eye on the elders.
They search in Babylon. It turns up somewhere else entirely: a scroll in the fortress at Ecbatana, in Media. Cyrus's memo from his first year. Rebuild the house of God. Pay for it from the royal treasury. And send back the gold and silver Nebuchadnezzar took.
Cyrus, king of Persia@cyrus.persiaThe LORD, the God of heaven, has given me every kingdom on earth, and he's put me in charge of building him a house in Jerusalem.
If you're one of his people: go. Go up and build it. And whoever's staying behind, help them on their way with silver, gold, goods and animals, plus a gift for God's house.Finished. The house of God is complete on the third day of the month of Adar, in Darius's sixth year. Built the way the God of Israel commanded, with Haggai and Zechariah prophesying the whole way.
Many years later, under Artaxerxes. Meet Ezra. A priest whose family line goes all the way back to Aaron. He comes up from Babylon. He's a scribe who knows the Law of Moses inside out, and the king gives him everything he asks for, because the LORD his God is looking after him.
Replying to @ezra.book
Why? Ezra had made up his mind to do three things: study the LORD's law, live it, and teach it in Israel.
Ezra is face down in front of God's house, praying and crying. A huge crowd gathers round him, men, women and children, and they're all crying too.
Replying to @shecaniah
So Ezra gets up and makes the leaders swear to do it. Then he goes off to a room on his own and won't eat or drink. Still mourning.
Only four men speak against the plan. Ezra picks family heads to look into it, and three months later every case has been dealt with.
The book ends with the list of the men who had married foreign women, priests first. And a last, quiet line: some of them had children with them.