God's Perfect Plan to Prepare Ezra - and YOU!
Ezra returns to Jerusalem from Babylon in order to teach God's people [c. 458 BC]
7:1–10. The man and his wisdom
These ten verses give an outline of the story which will be unfolded in detail and with many a personal touch in the rest of this chapter and chapter 8.
1a. The phrase, Now after this, puts nearly sixty years between this chapter and its precursor. Indeed some chronologies make the span considerably longer by identifying this Artaxerxes not with the first king of that name (464–423) but with the second (404–359), making Ezra’s mission, in the seventh year (verse 7), take place not in 458 BC (as I hold) but in 398.
1b–5. The genealogy vouches for Ezra as a priest (cf. 2:62); and the length at which it is given prepares us to meet a man of considerable importance. His name stands very high in Jewish tradition, where he came to be regarded as a second Moses;3 and indeed it was he, more than any other man, who stamped Israel with its lasting character as the people of a book.
6. With Ezra the picture of a scribe takes on more and more the features of a scholar and an expert in the sacred law. In his case it is emphasized by the word skilled, or literally ‘rapid’ (cf. Ps. 45:1 [2, Heb.])—suggesting a quickness of grasp and ease of movement amid this complex material which was the fruit of the devoted study described in verse 10. Incidentally the present verse shares none of the doubts of some modern criticism over the antiquity (Moses) or the authority (the Lord) of the law, nor does it see Ezra as a reviser or compiler. He is concerned with it as something given.
The last sentence of this verse supplies a detail which is absent from verses 11ff.: the fact that in God’s prompting of the king, mentioned in verse 27, Ezra himself had a part to play (all that he asked). The courage it demanded can be gathered from Nehemiah’s story of another such ordeal (Neh. 2:2ff.); but we are left in no doubt of the decisive factor: the hand of the Lord. That phrase becomes almost a refrain in these chapters (7:6, 9, 28; 8:18, 22, 31; Neh. 2:8, 18).
7–10. This little summary of the expedition gives no hint of the initial disappointment and delay, the fasting and prayer, and the dangers of such a journey, which will emerge in the full account. Here, however, we learn the length of time involved (four months, verse 9), and in verse 10 the secret of Ezra’s lasting influence. He is a model reformer in that what he taught he had first lived, and what he lived he had first made sure of in the Scriptures. With study, conduct and teaching put deliberately in this right order, each of these was able to function properly at its best: study was saved from unreality, conduct from uncertainty, and teaching from insincerity and shallowness.
7:27, 28. A personal interjection
We are suddenly aware of Ezra the man, his own voice breaking into the narrative with a grateful delight which time has done nothing to diminish. He will take up the history himself to the end of chapter 9; and Nehemiah, like him, will do most of his own narrating in the next book, sprinkling his story with even more vivid interjections and asides.
While verse 6, as we have seen, reveals that Ezra had to ask for all that he obtained, this doxology goes straight to what determined the issue: the inward work of God, who turns ‘the king’s heart … wherever he will’ (Prov. 21:1). Verse 28, however, recalls the formidable array of courtiers which Ezra had had to brave, and the corresponding assurance that nothing less than the hand of the Lord was in this matter. On this expression see the final comment on verse 6. He would need this help just as much for the next task, for a powerful signature is sometimes easier to get, and to give, than the volunteers to take advantage of it.
1b–5. The genealogy vouches for Ezra as a priest (cf. 2:62); and the length at which it is given prepares us to meet a man of considerable importance. His name stands very high in Jewish tradition, where he came to be regarded as a second Moses;3 and indeed it was he, more than any other man, who stamped Israel with its lasting character as the people of a book.
6. With Ezra the picture of a scribe takes on more and more the features of a scholar and an expert in the sacred law. In his case it is emphasized by the word skilled, or literally ‘rapid’ (cf. Ps. 45:1 [2, Heb.])—suggesting a quickness of grasp and ease of movement amid this complex material which was the fruit of the devoted study described in verse 10. Incidentally the present verse shares none of the doubts of some modern criticism over the antiquity (Moses) or the authority (the Lord) of the law, nor does it see Ezra as a reviser or compiler. He is concerned with it as something given.
The last sentence of this verse supplies a detail which is absent from verses 11ff.: the fact that in God’s prompting of the king, mentioned in verse 27, Ezra himself had a part to play (all that he asked). The courage it demanded can be gathered from Nehemiah’s story of another such ordeal (Neh. 2:2ff.); but we are left in no doubt of the decisive factor: the hand of the Lord. That phrase becomes almost a refrain in these chapters (7:6, 9, 28; 8:18, 22, 31; Neh. 2:8, 18).
7–10. This little summary of the expedition gives no hint of the initial disappointment and delay, the fasting and prayer, and the dangers of such a journey, which will emerge in the full account. Here, however, we learn the length of time involved (four months, verse 9), and in verse 10 the secret of Ezra’s lasting influence. He is a model reformer in that what he taught he had first lived, and what he lived he had first made sure of in the Scriptures. With study, conduct and teaching put deliberately in this right order, each of these was able to function properly at its best: study was saved from unreality, conduct from uncertainty, and teaching from insincerity and shallowness.