Ezra and Nehemiah Overview

We now enter the post-exilic writings. The writings written after the exile. The first two are Ezra and Nehemiah. In our modern Bibles, Ezra and Nehemiah are separate books. However, the earliest copies we have were a single scroll. There some debate amongst scholars whether they were originally separate by two different authors, and brought together as one scroll by a later editor. There’s also some discussion around whether it’s the same author or editor that wrote 1-2 Chronicles, though it’s by no means conclusive.

Ezra starts roughly fifty years after the initial exile and depicts the story of a group of exiles returning from Babylon to the land to rebuild their community there. If we join Ezra and Nehemiah together, we read through three different leaders, Zerubbabel, Ezra, and Nehemiah, as they lead people to rebuild Jerusalem. Each leader is sent to Jerusalem by a Persian king and experience opposition while there.

Ezra 1-6 - Zerubbabel seeks to rebuild the temple

Ezra 7-10 - Ezra seeks to strengthen the community and teach the torah

Nehemiah 1-7 - Nehemiah seeks to rebuild the city walls

Nehemiah 8-12 - A fresh commitment to God

Nehemiah 13 - It falls apart

You may remember from Daniel 5:30 that Babylon was conquered by the Persians. While many Israelites were still in exile in Babylon, some moved into Persia and its capital city, Susa. We also get in Nehemiah, one of the earliest mention of the Jews. The majority of the Israelites in exile in Babylon and Persia were from Judah and so became known as Jews. Similarly, over time, the Israelites from the northern kingdom return to their land, and they also took on a new name. They named themselves after their capital city, Samaria, and became known as the Samaritans.

The post-exilic books seek to pick up the future hope that the pre-exilic and exilic prophets laid out. God will establish a future king (see Isaiah 11:1-10), his presence will dwell in a new temple (see Ezekiel 40-48), he will restore the kingdom (see Ezekiel 37:21-28), and that kingdom will be over all nations to fulfil the promise he made to Abraham (see Genesis 12 and Jeremiah 3:17).

But Ezra and Nehemiah in particular pick up what we read in Daniel, that the return from exile won’t be the moment this all happens (Daniel 9:25). Despite the leader’s best efforts, the flaws of the people flow throughout Ezra and Nehemiah, and Nehemiah ends in a place of disappointment. In short, these books pick up the future hopes as something they’ve sill not seen and look forward to.

Ezra 1-3

Cyrus has just conquered Babylon as king of Persia. God comes to him and inspires him to send the Jews home to rebuild the temple. This is good news and should inspire hope.

Many of the prophets we have read so far prophesied that God would bring his people back out of exile and return them to their land and rebuild their temple. This must be it! And so many of the Jews got up and headed back to their ancestral land.

As they were leaving, some of the people in the land around them offered them up silver and gold as a gift to send them off. This is very similar to when God first brought the people out of Egypt and the Egyptians gave them silver and gold as they left (Exodus 12:35-36).

The difference here is that while the Egyptians gave out of fear, the people living in Babylon gave to bless the Jews. King Cyrus also made sure to give them all the gold, silver, and artefacts that the kings of Babylon had stolen from the temple many years ago. We’re experiencing a second Exodus moment in Israel’s history. God was once again leading his people out of a foreign nation, back to the promised land.

We then get a whole chapter of names of peoples and families that left Babylon to return to Jerusalem. To us this may seem boring and unimportant, but to a people that were deeply attached to their ancestry this was important. God had protected them in exile. He had maintained their family lines and their sense of identity while in a foreign land. In total, including the servants that some of the people had acquired in Babylon, there were 50,000 people that returned to Jerusalem.

Out of these people rose two men as clear leaders, Jeshua and Zerubbabel. They realised that if the people are to succeed, then they needed God with them, and so the very first thing they do is set up the altar so they could make their offerings.

They reintroduced the regular feast and festivals to realign the people with God and his ways. Then they gave the craftsmen the money and resources that Cyrus had given them so they could start building the temple.

While the temple building was starting, Jeshua and Zerubbabel gathered some of the Levites together and set them in charge of the temple to make sure everything was being done properly. What’s noteworthy is that in Numbers 8:24, Levites had to be twenty-five before they could begin service. Numbers 4:3 had that Levites had to be thirty, but tradition suggests that twenty-five was apprenticeship and thirty was active service.

The point is that here in Ezra they accept all Levites who are twenty or older. One reason for this is because so few Levites remained and so they had to recruit them younger to make sure they had enough. They alter the rules that are set out in the Torah to meet the needs of the time.

As the builders finished the foundation, the priests and the Levites start to celebrate and praise God for his goodness. For many, seeing this initial foundation of the temple, this was a time of celebration. God was fulfilling his promise to his people.

But to others, this wasn't the case. Some of the older men, who could just about remember the old temple, and were wise enough to grasp fully what God has spoken over his people, were weeping. Looking at the foundation of this temple, it was nowhere near as grand as the old temple. It was also nothing like the temple that Ezekiel had prophesied.

And so we're left feeling a little cheated. This was meant to be the answer to God's promises. This was the thing that the people had been waiting on. But actually, maybe not.

Psalm 47

The psalm is attributed to the sons of Korah, and falls into the category of praise psalm. It can also, however, fit in the category of royal psalm, as it is recognises the rule and reign of God as king over all the earth.

Psalm 47:1 - A call to praise

Psalm 47:2-5 - God is a victorious king

Psalm 47:6 - A call to praise

Psalm 47:7-9 - God reigns over all the earth

The psalm opens with a call to praise God. What’s interesting is that this call is to ‘all peoples’ (Psalm 47:1). This includes those who are non-Israelites. The reason they are to praise God is because he has subdued all the nations underneath Israel.

This may seem strange to us. Why would a nation who has been defeated by the Israelites want to worship their God? This was actually a fairly common practice. Just as when a people are conquered they come under the authority of the conquering king, these people conquered by God through the Israelites, are now under God’s authority.

From this we see that Israel had a theology for the whole earth being reunited under God. They saw this coming about through military conquest. Jesus’ death and resurrection would ultimately come and wage war against the powers of death and sin, and unite the earth under God. In many ways, the Israelites weren’t wrong. But it wouldn’t look like anything they had been expecting.

The psalmist calls again for the people to praise God as their king, for he will reign over all nations. But now the idea is developed further. The people of different nations are not to remain subdued and conquered underneath Israel. They are to gather before God, just as the Israelites do.

In this psalm, we get to see this idea of God’s kingdom and the uniting of all the nations here in the Old Testament. Two ideas many people assume are unique to the New Testament.