Category: Ezra

It is difficult to be less politically correct than Ezra in chapter nine.

Think about it. How often do you hear mourning, prayers of desperation and see much hand-wringing when Christians marry non-Christians? If we did that sort of thing, how do you think it would be seen and received?

Is there a prohibition against marrying non-Christians?

I cannot find such a specific reference and even the law of Exodus 34:11-16 and Deuteronomy 7:1-4 (alluded to in this chapter) were not directly applicable in Ezra’s day. After all, the whole point of those laws was that Israel was to exterminate the Canaanites. You cannot exterminate them and inter-marry with them. But the days of extermination were far past and there was no indication that this law was intended to be an eternal command.

But inter-marriage did something else (as can be clearly seen in the case of Solomon): It weakened the dedication of Israel to the Lord. It still does.

As we read Ezra’s prayer, notice that though he is not guilty of this offense, he lumps his lot in with the people, he is one of them and one with them. He shares their guilt. There is no individual relationship with God. Our relationship with God is through the people of God.

Notice also that what Ezra is mourning is not so much just a violation of a command, but a seeming wholesale inattentiveness to threats against spirituality. When the spiritual dangers of marrying outside the community of faith never enter our mind, it is time, like Ezra, to mourn.

Chapter two of Ezra looks very much like those other not-so-inviting chapters of genealogy in the Bible. But just like them, it is not there for decoration. It has purpose.

The return from seventy years of Babylonian captivity was not a hodge-podge “olly olly oxen free,” “whosoever will” can go home kind of return. It was organized, and you had to be qualified to return. You had to prove that you were of Jewish heritage. Sometimes that was done by proving your connection to your ancestral town (2:21-35), but even that connection could not qualify you for everything. To serve as a Levite or priest, you also had to come up with ancestral records (2:36-58).

The chapter begins with mention of eleven specific leaders. One is missing, likely due to a copyist’s error. The twelfth (Nahamani) is mentioned by Nehemiah (7:7) and this brings up a matter of reliability. When you compare this list with the same list in Nehemiah, you will see that there is very little variance between the names listed. There are, however, huge differences between the numbers. In the transmission of the text, numbers are the most difficult to transmit – which is why critics of the Bible so often point to number variances. It does not, however, materially alter the meaning of the text.

Notice how God has blessed His people even in captivity! These 43,360 people have among them a servant for every family (perhaps more than one per family) and are able, upon arrival in Jerusalem, to give God 1,100 pounds of gold and three tons of silver.

One final point, and it’s not a pretty one: It is significant that of the twenty-four families of priests designated in the time of David, only four families are willing to return. The majority of those entrusted with ministering before the Lord fell in love with Babylon and would rather live there than serve the Lord. Never underestimate the allure of the world.

    Chapter ten of Ezra presents us with an interesting ethical problem.

    Israel’s main problem throughout her history has not been idolatry or faithlessness.  Israel’s problem has been her integration, assimilation, and syncretism with her non-Israelite neighbors.  Remember, for example, that she wanted a king so she could be “like the nations” around her.  In doing so, she rejected God as king.  In her desire to be like and accepted by her pagan neighbors and friends, she left the ways of God for the ways and subsequent ethics of those friends.

    This comes to prominence in a specific way in chapter nine when we discover that Israel has been inter-marrying with the non-Israelite people of the land.  Deuteronomy 7:3 specifically forbade these unions.  But now that they were made, what was to be done?

    The solution is not specified in scripture, and though a solution is offered in Ezra 10, there is nothing there to suggest that this is God’s solution.

    A temptation arises just here to approve of what was done, but the careful reader should note that God gives no such approval.  In the whole enterprise, God is silent.  So are we to use this text as an example for us today?  If someone marries “out of the faith,” or someone has a spouse who makes it difficult to live in the faith, does this passage provide precedent to approve of divorce?

    No.  It only tells us what Ezra and the leaders did in trying to deal with a spiritually debilitating problem.  The results were horrible.  Homes broken up.  Women and children shuffled into poverty.  To keep the marriage however was to invite continual apostasy.  What to do?

    I think the real lesson here is this: When people decide to do what God has told them not to do, the consequences are always disastrous and there is no good way to fix the problem.  You do the best you can, but no solution will be a good one.  Better to stay on the right course in the first place.

    Ezra 7 picks up in the seventh year of the Persian king Artaxerxes, approximately the year 448 B.C., fifty-three years after the initial return of the Jews from Babylon to Jerusalem and thirty years after the completion of the temple in Jerusalem.

    Evidently, things have not been going well.  We might well have surmised that from Haggai and Zechariah.  What God’s people need is some encouragement, and a fresh dose of dedication.  Ezra and his companions were to provide that.

    Ezra and those who made the journey with him to Jerusalem, while family, were, of course, not a part of that initial return.  And now, half a century later, they would be seen somewhat as outsiders.  But that’s a good thing.  Outsiders often see us as we really are and we’d do well to remember that in our churches.  Asking a family who becomes a part of your church why they chose as they did can be important.  And just as important is asking those why they chose somewhere else.

    But one of the things that strikes me about chapter eight is who does not initially elect to go: Levites.  The Levites were given the task of serving the Lord at the temple.  That temple can only be established in Jerusalem.  Without going back, they are, in essence, abandoning their calling for God.  The first return had divided families (the family names mentioned here are, with one exception) all mentioned in chapter two.  This return would effect a unity of sorts.  But why had these people not returned before?

    Perhaps because they were guilty of the same thing their brethren in Judea were guilty of: making their home among the pagans.  Once you get settled, integrate yourself in a community, it is difficult to maintain a holy distinction.  These returnees under Ezra recognized that, and determined to do something about it.  Perhaps that is why they were so upset with their brethren who, in the holy land of their inheritance, had done the same thing.

    The Persian king Cyrus was a shrewd politician.  He knew his Babylonian predecessors had displaced untold numbers of people.  He could keep them displaced, and unhappy, or he could win their abiding allegiance by allowing them to go home.

    He chose the latter.

    And if one god was good, hundreds would be better.

    So he decreed that all captives might return to their homeland and rebuild their temples.  God’s temple was among them.

    God had not failed to prosper Judah during her captivity.  Some of her number had found a home in Babylon, but they had an allegiance to their homeland.  Some returned.  Some supported those who did.  All contributed to the cause of rebuilding the temple.  The amount of their contributions is staggering: 1100 pounds of gold and three tons of silver – over thirty million dollars in today’s valuation.

    It was a great beginning, but it was not to last.

    That’s the way it is with us all most of the time.  Great ideas generate great excitement, but someone has to carry them out, and that’s where things usually fall apart.  Faithfulness to God is not found just in a moment, but in the day to day, mundane, often difficult, routine of life.

    Over eighty years after the first wave of returning refugees to Judah, Ezra led another return from Babylon.

    Ezra was a direct descendant of Aaron, the first High Priest of Israel.  He was a good man, “well versed in the law of Moses.”  He was such a spiritual man that he caught the attention of the King of Persia who called him a “teacher of the Law of the God of heaven.”

    Ezra had so exalted the God of Israel to the king that when he led the return, he writes that he “was ashamed to ask the king for soldiers and horsemen to protect us from enemies on the road, because we had told the king, “The gracious hand of our God is on everyone who looks to him, but his great anger is against all who forsake him.” But their journey went without incident.

    The immediately impressive thing about Ezra’s return was how immediately, almost overnight, Israel’s situation was changed.  She went from being oppressed to being the ruling people of Canaan (called the “trans-Euphrates” people).  In fact, though they had been opponents of Judah for eight decades, Artaxerxes not only squelched the opposition, but required the Trans-Euphrates people to be obedient and supportive (financially) of the Jewish people.

    God is always present, but when He acts in a decisive way, it becomes obvious who His people really are.