40 Minutes In The Old Testament - Ezra 6:1-7:6 (Episode 356)

Episode Date: April 17, 2023

Darius makes a decree that the temple rebuild continues and adds to what Cyrus decreed. Whatever you do, don't try to stop the construction. The Passover is celebrated with some interesting language. And we meet Ezra. Chad and Daniel discuss all of this. Have a listen! Donate 1517 Podcast Network 1517 YouTube

Welcome to another episode of 40 Minutes in the Old Testament. 40 Minutes in the Old Testament is a 1517 Podcast Network podcast. You can go to 1517.org slash podcast. Check out all the other podcasts that are living over there and while you're over there make sure you check out everything else that we are doing there's a lot of uh daily articles other podcasts obviously we're part of the whole network you can go check out all the other ones that 1517 is producing surely there will be other ones that you're interested in you know what you could check out you could check out chad bird's just lengthy speaking schedule you know you just go over to events and then just scroll and you know you could chad does a lot more speaking than i do you know because one he knows

more things than i do and two you know he doesn't have you know youth sports or a baby at the house so uh so him and stacy are able to just you know roam the country spreading the good news you know i got i got responsibilities you know so i can't come hang out with people all the time but i do sometimes you know you'll you'll see some stuff i get out every once in a while but but chad he's uh he's on the road so if you want to go and uh see if chad's going to be somewhere near you you can go to the events page and check that out. Chad, we are in Ezra chapter 6. We ended last episode with some guys saying, hey, there's a lot of work going on over here in Israel. What's going on? Is this supposed to be authorized? And sure enough, the authorities don't really know.

So they said, you know what would be good to do is let's get a historian in here and let's check out and see that the claim here by these guys is that cyrus said that this was all fine and good we better make sure that's that's correct and uh they go and they search and they find out lo and behold cyrus did in fact say yeah go uh go do that and gave them a bunch of the stuff that they would need to do it and so that's how we ended and and we're going to kind of get to see what darius response to this information that Cyrus did indeed authorize this reconstructing the temple

and all this stuff. Yeah, he does a lot of letters back and forth in Ezra. I wonder how much time it takes. This is something now you'd write an email, you'd pick up the phone and say, hey, can you look this up? Is this okay to do? And then, you know, 30 minutes later

they get back to you, oh yeah, yeah, it's fine. These are like letters going back and forth, decrees, like how long is this delay that they're having to like they have paused the work to figure this out it seems like it's probably like i mean it might not be like a crazy long amount of time but it's probably not an insignificant amount of sitting there waiting yeah yeah they're not sending these messages by carrier pigeon or something these are uh these are probably uh on a scroll in somebody's hand and they've got to make the journey from jerusalem back to the headquarters and find out

what the answer is going to be so yeah a lot of letters back and forth waiting for answers uh so we got the answer as you as you mentioned it's gonna be in ezra chapter six this is when darius probably not darius himself i mean he's gonna have of course officials that take care of these kind of matters but it's gonna officially come from darius and so uh they did they did some looking as soon as this came in and we'll see what darius finds out and what darius responds in ezra chapter 6 so darius the king made a decree and they did this search in babylonia went to uh the archive house where all the the documents are stored and in this place called ekbatana the citadel that's in the province of media they found the scroll and here's what was

written on the scroll a record in the first year of cyrus the king cyrus the king issued a decree concerning the house of god at jerusalem let the house be rebuilt the place where sacrifices were offered and let its foundations be retained its height shall be 60 cubits its breadth 60 cubits with three layers of great stones one layer of timber and so this whole thing who's going to pay for it he says let the cost be paid from the royal treasury and let the gold and silver vessels of the house of god it's all that stuff from the jerusalem temple which nebuchadnezzar that Babylonian king, which he took out of the temple in Jerusalem and brought to Babylon. So all that stuff, let it be restored and brought back to the temple in Jerusalem, eats to its place. You shall

put them in the house of God. So that's what they found that was on that, on the scroll when they did the search in the archives. And sure enough, hey, Cyrus actually did say the very thing that the Jews in Jerusalem told Tatanai, the governor, had been, you know, given to them, had been decreed by Cyrus. So Darius or his officials proceeds with the rest of the letter. So therefore, Tatnai, governor of the province beyond the river, Shethar, Bazanai, and your associates, the governors in the province beyond the river. So all you guys, he gives them a, first of all, starts out with a two-word command. Keep away. Don't try and stop this work. So stay away. let the work on this house of God alone. Let the government, the Jews and the elders of the Jews

rebuild this house of God on its site. So first of all, do not in any way try to stop the rebuilding of the temple. And what's more, verse eight, I make a decree, this is Darius speaking, I make a decree regarding what you shall do for these elders of the Jews for the rebuilding of this house of God. So not only are you supposed to not stop them, but I want you to help them. And here's what I want you to do to help them. The cost is to be paid to these men in full and without any delay from the royal treasury, the tribute of the province from beyond the river. Whatever they need, whether it's bulls, rams, sheep for the burnt offerings to the God of heaven,

or whether it's wheat, salt, wine, oil, as the priests of Jerusalem require, all the things that they need for sacrifice, let that be given to them day by day without fail, that they may offer pleasing sacrifices to the God of heaven and, and I find this very interesting, and pray for the life of the king and his sons. Yeah, so this next part is really wild, but let's just pause right there because we'll probably have lots of things to say.

We'll get to the if you don't do this in just a minute. This seems like a guy, I don't know, but Darius seems like, he's like, all right, And turns out Cyrus, not just any old Cyrus, Cyrus the Great did, in fact, say this. And so this is a guy who takes Cyrus' words very seriously and then says, you know what? Cyrus thought this was a good idea. He did, in fact, say it. I'm going to, like, triple down on, like, what Cyrus said.

Like, you think Cyrus was, like, about this? Well, let me tell you. I mean, he said, we're going to pay for it. And, you know, it's going to be this big. and we're going to have some timber, and hey, we're going to have these gold vessels and all that stuff. Tell you what, you know what else we're going to do? I'm talking about bulls and goats, and I'm talking about oil, and I'm talking about day by day for as long as they need it, this is what's going to happen.

And so he's giving them even more. So he's, you know, Cyrus was great. I'm going to take this idea Cyrus had and just add on to it. And not only that, but let me tell you what's going to happen if this doesn't happen. I mean, so think about discovering, like, you're having to go into the library, figure out if this thing is even real. You find out it is real, and then you decide that this needs to happen so badly that you're going to say what he says next, that if this doesn't happen, someone's going to pay for it. Yeah, they're going to pay a pretty serious penalty here. So this is verse 11.

So he's made all these decrees. He's going to make another decree now. Also, I make a decree that if anyone alters this edict, here's what's going to happen. They're going to pull a beam out of his house, and they're going to impale him on it, and they're going to turn his house into a dunghill. This is wild. This is wild. Not just like, you could just say, if anyone alters this edict, they shall be put to death.

No, no, no. Let me get real specific. Way too generic. No, we need a graphic description of what's going to happen. I'm going to take a piece of wood out of your house. Take a rafter out of your house. We're going to bury it in the front yard. And then in front of all your neighbors, we're going to impale you on that rafter.

And then we're going to tear your house down, and it's going to become a public restroom, basically. We're going to throw all the dung from the sheep and the cows on top of where your house used to be just as a further insult. That's a wild thing, man. Regarding a busy edict. Yeah, it's like either that was like meant seriously or this was like hyperbolic language

as a way of preventing anyone from going against the edict. Either way, it gets a point across. Yeah. Don't stop the builders and give them whatever they need. and then he wraps up this is verse 12 may the god who has caused his name to dwell there overthrow any king or people who shall put out a hand to alter this or to destroy this house of god that's in jerusalem i darius make a decree let it be done with with all diligence how'd you like to be tat and i you know you you went up to the jews in jerusalem you're like hey what are you guys

doing you have any authority to do this what are your names so don't you know when he received this He's like, thank God I didn't go any farther and, you know, try and tear the temple down or whatever it might, whatever it might be. He's probably he's probably sweating profusely as he was reading this letter from Darius. I feel like if I got this response, I'd be like, hey, can you that's great. Can you go back and tell him I was just asking. Yeah, I was just asking. I didn't mean this is a challenge whatsoever. I just was clarifying.

Just wondering. I was just wondering. like i can tell him tell him i got guys helping them out as we speak but yeah i was just making sure yeah yeah this is uh this is one of those letters this is the kind of this is the kind of letter i i feel like maybe uh not quite the same but like when the pastors in corinth like the scroll from paul showed up they're like oh man here we go really don't want to read this you you know it's not going to be good so a couple things about this i think that are uh fascinating kind of the the bigger uh the bigger issue the bigger subject this brings up is the fact that

you know say what you want about the persians and there's plenty of you know very uh critical things we could say about the persians and their theology and everything else you know at least They, number one, were supportive of what the Jews were doing. And number two, not just supportive, but like overwhelmingly supportive. I mean, they're providing. I mean, this is like, put it in modern terms, this would be like, you know, the government completely financing the building of some cathedral. Yeah.

You know, down to like paying the salary of the priests or pastors and making sure they pay for all the communion wine and wafers and on and on and on. I mean, they're like they're rolling out the dough for for all this to be done. And then notice, too, how they want these sacrifices to be offered to the God of heaven, which is just kind of their way of tipping their hat toward to the Jews, to your God. But they also want them to pray for the life of the king and his sons. It's like, hey, why are you doing this? And one of the reasons we actually want you to do this is we want you to pray for pray for King Darius and pray for pray for his sons. And this, by the way, this kept going on. We know that even into the first century, the Jews were still offering prayers as part of the temple liturgy for the Roman authorities.

You know, they weren't worshiping Roman gods, but this was kind of part of the, I don't know what you want to call it, the piety of the Jews, that they were praying for the non-Jewish leaders who had authority over them. And in that way, I mean, I love the fact that this is a decree from Darius, but in some ways it really describes kind of what the church, life of the church is still like. You know, every Sunday in my church, we pray for the president. And since I'm in Texas, we pray for the governor, governor of Texas. So we pray for the leaders of our church by name. And we also pray for the leaders of our nation by name. That's what Paul says, right? That first Timothy, you know, pray for everyone who's in authority.

Regardless of who is in office. Yeah, regardless of who's in office, regardless of whether they're in your political party, regardless of whether you like them or not, it doesn't matter. They're still, that's a great distinction between person and office. You're praying for the person who occupies the office of president, occupies the office of governor, occupies the office of mayor, whatever it might be. So you might detest the person as an individual or you might admire the person as an individual. Either way, they're still occupying an office through which God is at work in a lot of different ways in order to kind of try and uphold society so that in that society, his church can do its gospel work. It does seem like the Persians are very much like also, hey, because you could see something like them doing something similar to some other people group that had some other God or whatever and deciding to do the same thing. And it seems like the Persian kings are like, hey, I don't really know, you know, if I'm like overly religious or anything, but it doesn't hurt to have, you know, everybody praying to their God for you because, you know, you never know, one of them might be real.

Yeah. Or maybe they're all real. I'll just have everybody praying for me. Yeah. I mean, if you're a polytheist, that's great. You know, you want people of worshiping all kinds of gods and goddesses praying for you. But, yeah, politically, that's kind of what they're looking for. They're looking for as much support as they can get.

And if they can get this particular people's gods on their side, so much better for the Persians. But from the Israelite perspective, as well as from the Christian perspective, yeah, we pray for our Darius, you know, whoever he might be. so um anyway that's that's the letter that came back from darius uh basically saying hey uh let it happen and fully support the work of the jews and if you get in the way woe betide you and your uh your house soon to become a dunghill so the the letter arrived and we pick it up here with verse 13 of ezra chapter 6 then according to the word sent by darius the king tat and i the governor of the province beyond the river shathar shathar baz and i and their associates so these guys who received the letter from darius they did with all diligence notice i didn't drag their feet

with all diligence they did exactly what darius the king had ordered and uh verse 14 picks it up the elders of the jews built and prospered through the prophesying of haggai the prophet and zechariah the son of iddo those two uh that rank among the the minor prophets we we talked about them last time so just see how god is orchestrating all these events he's got darius who's fully on board with us you know he put cyrus in office isaiah had long ago prophesied that cyrus was going to be the one that god used to free his people so you got cyrus doing what god in god ordained now you have darius doing what god ordained so god is working through uh what some people call kind of the left-hand kingdom. He's working through the political sphere, as it were, to make sure this

happens for his people. But at the same time, he's working through what? The prophesying of Haggai and Zechariah. So he's got preaching going on. He's got politicking going on. He's not, in the words, bound just by one particular narrow channel to accomplish his will. He's using all of this together. He's got preaching. He's got politicking, prophesying. And as a result, what happened? they finished their building by the decree of the god of israel and i love the and here so by the decree of the god of israel and by the decree of cyrus and darius and artaxerxes king king of persia so you got god vertically decreeing this happened and you got uh these guys these persian rulers horizontally decreeing that that this happened and as a result what was what was the

Conclusion, verse 15, this house was finished, that is the temple, was finished on the third day of the month of Adar in the sixth year of the reign of Darius the king. So we're looking at around 515, 516 B.C. So they went into captivity. Well, there were stages, of course, as we talked about on those concluding episodes of 2 Kings. that were second state in several stages of exile but the big exile the destruction of jerusalem demolition of the temple was 586 so now we're looking at uh 515 516 about 71 72 years after the temple was destroyed now the uh the new temple the temple that will remain with additions

and improvements made by herod until 70 a.d so it's it's rebuilt and uh we'll see what happens after it was rebuilt kind of finishing up this little section verse 16 says the people of israel the priests levites all the rest of return exiles they celebrated the dedication of this house of god with joy they offered at the dedication of this house 100 bulls 200 rams 400 lambs sent offering for all israel of 12 mil goats according to the number of the tribes and they put the priest and their divisions the levites and their divisions for the service of god at jerusalem as it is written in the book of book of moses i mean it must have been must have been quite the day i mean they this had been delayed for a while because all the various problems we've

we've been talking about and you know that as long as the temple was in ruins it was kind of iconic of this past failure on the part of their forefathers. The reason the temple was a rubble, a heap of rubble, was because their forefathers had rebelled against God to varying degrees for centuries until finally God said, all right, I'm going to vacate this house, which you have polluted with idolatry. It's going to be torn down by the Babylonian bulldozer. And then there's going to be a period of waiting. The land is going to have a rest. And I'm going to bring you back and then you can rebuild the temple but you know until the temple was rebuilt it's kind of sitting there as a reminder of the stain of the past so the rebuilding of it had to have been yeah cause

of great joy i mean this is a this is a big moment for israel and it's and it's a big moment for for salvation history this is the temple will stand until the new covenant is arrived is inaugurated The temple will stand until the one who replaces the temple comes, whose body will be the temple. So it's going to be there for several more centuries as a place where you've got atonement for the people of Israel. You've got a place for them to gather as a community. You've got the place for the promises to be read and taught through the Torah and the prophets and the writings. So, yeah, it's not just a building of the words. It represents so much more for the salvation plan.

Yeah, well, I mean, this is the temple that Jesus gets left in as a boy, right? This is the temple that Jesus says, hey, didn't you know where I'd be to his parents? I'd be right here. This is that place. His father's house, yeah. This is that place. This is the place where he goes and flips some tables over. And all over the place, you know, you see in the Gospels, you see Jesus at the temple, teaching at the temple, doing this kind of stuff.

And yeah, this is it. I mean, it's a pretty big deal in the salvation story. Yeah, and you know, if you go to Luke's Gospel, it's pretty well known, but where does the Gospel begin? In the temple. And where's it in? Also at the temple. So there is a period of transition in the New Testament between when when Christ comes and he inaugurates the new covenant and he has his death and resurrection and ascension. And then finally, the temple is destroyed. In fact, it's about a it's about a 40 year period between the end of the earthly ministry of Jesus and the destruction of the temple, which is it's kind of a transition period. So the Christians continued to to meet at the temple and the temple courts because it was a big meeting place for for various groups. It's where rabbis taught. It's where the early Christians gathered.

But eventually you got God brings about what Jesus had predicted, prophesied. He destroys the temple and yeah, never been rebuilt because it's no longer needed because we have we have we kind of have a twofold temple, right? we've got the christ is our temple and then we as living stones are built into his body as individual members of his of his temple so temples rebuilt uh and let's you know what if we got a temple why don't we celebrate the passover so that's what we're going to do in verses 19 through the end of the chapter passover and the celebration of feast of unleavened bread so on the 14th day the first month the return exiles kept the passover they did the passover literally for the priest and the Levites had purified themselves together and all of them were clean, clean here,

just meaning they were, they were in a ritually pure, ritually pure state. So they had done the necessary things and avoided the necessary things in order to make sure that they were in a state of ritual purity. And so in that state of ritual purity, they were able to actually do their job. And their job was they slaughtered the Passover lamb. I kind of like the fact, I really just noticed this this morning. It doesn't say, it doesn't say they slaughtered the Passover lambs. Just say they slaughtered the Passover, which, of course, a lot of lambs would have been slaughtered. I mean, that's what happened at Passover.

You had a lot of lambs that were slaughtered. I love the fact, though, that it says the Passover lamb. Because all those lambs were really representative of one lamb, and that one lamb is representative or predictive or typological, however you want to phrase it, of Christ himself. So they slaughtered the Passover and the Passover lambs. All the lambs throughout all the Passovers in all the centuries were really just individual pictures of that one Passover lamb who is to come, the one who takes away the sin of the world. Well, I mean, if you look at it too, I mean, so you have this singular Passover lamb. They slaughtered the Passover lamb for all the returned exiles, for their fellow priests, and for themselves. And then you have this also singular, it was eaten by the people of Israel who had returned from exile,

and also by everyone who had joined them, and separated himself from the uncleanness of the peoples of the land to worship the Lord, the God of Israel. So you have the lamb and then it, not they, not the lambs or whatever. It was eaten by who? Everybody. Everybody. Yeah. So, yeah, I mean, so literally, did everybody consume the same lamb?

No. I mean, there's a lot of people. There's not that much meat on one lamb. but theologically the point is getting across is hey this this is for everybody one lamb will be for everyone yeah so the very way it's phrased is uh is is the spirit tapping us on the shoulder saying hey you know what this is pointing to the lamb of god the lamb of god who takes away the world the lamb of god who says uh in the upper room on the night when he's betrayed take eat this is my body.

And what do you make of this, Chad? So you have like, it was eaten by the people of Israel who returned from exile. Okay. And also by everyone who had joined them and separated himself from the uncleanness of the peoples of the land to worship the Lord, the God of Israel.

What is this? Maybe I don't understand it, but so you have, it was eaten by the people of Israel who had returned from exile, and also by everyone who had joined them. Oh, so possibly non-Jews, is that what you mean? Yeah, I mean, it was eaten by the people of Israel who returned from exile,

and also by—who are these—who's everyone else that had joined them and separated himself from the uncleanness of the land to worship the Lord? And now, are these just people that were left behind and still live there and decided to come back? Probably. That's probably some of it. But is it only them? I don't know. I it's this language seems um or the statement seems like there's a lot of potential in there like and it's intentionally telling you that there was the people that had returned and then there was like a bunch of other people and were they just the people that were left there you know

the poor people and stuff and they they were joined up I'm sure that was some of it but there seems like there's a room there I guess what I'm saying like there's a yeah yeah there is room I I mean, there was room throughout Israel's history for people who were non-physical descendants of Abraham to join with him. I mean, we saw that when we talked about Ruth. We have multiple examples of people who show up in Israel's history, Uriah the Hittite, right? Hittites aren't Israelites. These people joined themselves to Israel. uh so i mean there is kind of this idea sometimes that you know israel was uh the israelites

throughout their history were so concerned about pedigree you know so uh uh against outsiders it was very kind of insular society there's no evidence of that i mean there's evidence of all sorts of people becoming part of israel and then you know joining in the in the participation of the passover and and other all the other elements of the worship life of israel so we Well, also, isn't it interesting that if you're going to have this language, which is like a single lamb that was slaughtered, a single lamb that was eaten, which is obviously there's more than that, but we decided we're going to phrase it this way. And then we also are going to say that it was the people that returned from exile, and also everyone who will join them and separate themselves from the uncleanness of the land to worship the Lord, the God of Israel. It's like the language of the lamb becomes very narrow, but the language of who's consuming it, like, suddenly just got, like, really broad. Yeah, yeah.

It's this beautiful contrast that we have between what's sometimes called the scandal of particularity, you know, where our life, our salvation, our forgiveness is found only in one very, very extremely narrow place in the lamb. and yet because it is the lamb who takes away the sin of the world it's also universal so it's it's for everybody but it's only one place in one place but it's for everybody yeah so it's that narrowness and that universality that are that are pulled together in in one narrative yeah it's pretty cool yeah it just seems like the author here is like well i'm gonna i'm gonna paint a picture here and as long as i'm going to narrow something down to a single lamb uh then i better make it for everybody who's willing to come and take it so uh it's for everybody who had separated themselves from the uncleanness of the peoples of the land these peoples of the land are

the folks that we've encountered uh a few times in the previous chapters those who were opposed to the israelites and uh no doubt worshiping maybe worshiping yahweh but trying to worship him also alongside other other gods so there's a separation that takes place the the hebrew verb for separate is badal it's the one that occurs lots of different places in the old testament for like separating that which is clean from unclean or holy from unholy or the israelites were to the reason these israelites ate kosher was to separate themselves from the peoples around them so there was a a clear demarcation that that took place but as long as you were on the Yahweh side of the demarcation, then you were part of that community and thus welcome to consume

the body of the lamb that had shed its blood for you. And by the way, this word, it says the ones who had separated to worship the Lord God of Israel. That's the ESV translation. Other translations have seek. The verb is darash. In fact, in a few more verses in chapter seven, we're going to hear about Ezra, who had set his heart to study the Torah. The verb for study is also derash. So it has the idea of seeking, inquiring, worshiping, all that's kind of baked into this one word. So they're seeking God, that is to say they're worshiping him, just like Ezra was going to seek the Torah, that is he's going to inquire, search, and worship the god who gave who gave the torah so the worshiping the lord the god of israel and of course uh if

you know your israelite calendar you know that after immediately after passover you have the feast of unleavened bread so this goes back all the way to exodus 12 and 13 and that's what they have that's what they did afterwards so they had the celebration of passover and then they kept the feast of unleavened bread seven days with joy because the lord had made them joyful so the same hebrew words there it's a joy and made them joyful so they somebody with joy well why were they so joyous because god had caused them to be joyful made them joyful and had turned the heart of the now this is a this is a strange strange phrase had turned the heart of the king of assyria to them so commentators including me don't really know what to do with that it's it's anachronistic

because the Assyrians are long gone now. I mean, as far as being the major rulers of the world, you had the Assyrians who gave way to the Babylonians, who gave way to the Persians. So why it says he had turned the heart of the king of Assyria instead of the heart of the king of Persia to them, nobody really knows. Yeah, this seems like something that was probably a mistake.

I'm not saying I'm not saying that the Bible as originally given has like a bunch of mistakes in it I'm saying this seems like the copies

that we have someone someone jotted down Assyria and they meant Persia because if this says you know had turned the heart

of the king of Persia to them you'd be like yep yep yeah either that or it's either

it's a copyist error and of course the Bible has those anyone who's studied kind of textual criticism knows that we don't have the original manuscripts and so you yeah there's inevitable copyist errors and those have been seen and pointed out uh by by scholars for centuries but it could be that

the only other option is maybe this is sort of a proverbial kind of saying you know like just just like uh sometimes in the new testament you have rulers uh referred to under kind of the umbrella of Babylon, meaning Rome, but Babylon. So maybe this is some sort of phrase that was used at the time, and we're just not familiar with the fact that it was an idiom. And so by the king of Assyria, that actually meant the top dog, as it were, meaning the king of Persia. But anyway. Either way, you know this, it was certainly not the king of Assyria who aided them in the work of the house of God. Certainly not. No, the king of Assyria would never have done that the Assyrians were not people who typically aided conquered peoples in rebuilding their

temples. No, they were, the Assyrians were the kind who would take you. And if they didn't kill you, they would send you into exile and then forget about you pretty much. Yeah. So anyway, and then wraps up this chapter wraps up so that he aided them in the work of the house of God, the the god god of israel and that wraps up chapter wraps up chapter six so uh we've got the letter back from darius saying hey i want this stuff to be done just like cyrus uh said it should be done so they do it temples rebuilt passover lamb slaughtered passover celebrated feast of unleavened bread celebrated everything is kind of is kind of coming together and with that we we wrap up the first major section of the book of ezra so chapters one through six are

are a whole lot of history a whole lot of correspondence uh one thing that we don't hear about you know interestingly is well the guy after who after whom the book is named ezra right so we're finally uh we're finally going to meet ezra it'd be like you know reading the first six chapters of first samuel like who's this samuel we that the book is named after i've never heard we don't even know who this guy is well now we're going to be introduced to our friend, Ezra. And, uh, well, we got, we got about five minutes left here, so we can at least kind of get into who he is and, uh, what his role is going to be. I mean, he's a, it's got, it's really hard to, if you know Israel's history after this, and if you know the new Testament, you have a

pretty good idea actually. So if you know Israel's history after this first century kind of new Testament era, you know, that people who were skilled in the law. So the, the, the, the teachers who knew the law, the scribes, the lawyers, uh, well, the, the Pharisees, these people were really the, the, the lights in Israel. They were the, they were the leaders of Israel. So it wasn't the king. It wasn't political power that mattered. It was the people who knew the book and that will not, that will not decrease. It will actually increase in the kind of the post temples destruction era where you have what became modern judaism is is is kind of beginning so there's there's a there's a there's a huge leap between what you might call old testament israelite

religion and then judaism which began really after the destruction of the temple because the judaism began after the destruction of the temple of course it's no longer temple centered it's book-centered, no longer sacrifice-centered, no longer priest-centered, like everything was before then. So there's a major shift after the temple's destruction. And teachers of the law, teachers of the Torah, they rose to prominence, beginning with Ezra, and then certainly by the time you get to the second century AD, they are the leaders of Israel. And now Ezra kind of stands as the first of these. So we'll find out why, and more about him in these opening verses. so now after this so after after what well after the temples after the temples uh being rebuilt

and being rededicated about about 58 years have passed at this point so we're skipping a little bit over half a century so after this after the temple was rebuilt uh in the in the reign of artaxerxes the king of persia ezra the son of and now we have a whole string of names which i'm not all going to read, you know, the son of Sarai, the son of Azariah. It goes on, son of, son of, son of, son of, son of, son of, all the way, verse 5, to the son of Phinehas, the son of Eleazar, son of Aaron, the chief priest. So you got Ezra's pedigree, his genealogy, his genealogical tree traced all the way back to Aaron himself, brother of Moses, first high priest. So this is the way that the author is letting you know this guy is important. This guy has a pedigree that

is directly attached to Aaron himself. This Ezra went up from Babylonia. And who was he? Well, here's the description of him. He was, first of all, a sofer, which is translated as scribe. so someone who is educated and read can write uh just yeah it's what today we refer to as sort of a uh an an educated individual an intellectual if you will maybe an academic but anyway you get the point he's he can read he can write he uh he's educated he knows this stuff he was a scribe skilled in the torah of moses i know english translations have law there but it's not law it's Torah. He's skilled in the Torah of Moses. Which Torah? You sure it's not just the Ten Commandments? He really knows. This guy's got

all ten of them memorized. He's got them backward and forward. He knows everywhere the Ten Commandments. I'm pretty sure this is Genesis through Deuteronomy. So he's skilled in the Pentateuch, we might say, in the Torah. Which Torah? Well, the Torah that the Lord, the God of Israel, had given and the king granted him all that he asked for the hand of the lord his god was was on him so we'll get to more about him in the actually more of a description in in these next few verses but even in this opening we know that this guy is going to be he's going to be kind of a moses

figure first of all he knows the torah of moses he can read and write he's described like moses was and he's even he's related to moses right i mean he's aaron was the brother of of moses and he is in this long line that goes back to aaron the chief priest so even moses himself is in his is his family tree and what he does is sort of an exodus kind of thing because he's going to leave in the first month so we'll hear more about that in a few more verses but he's going to leave babylonia in the first month of course that was the same month that the israelites left egypt on their exodus so this is kind of like a new moses who's going to head a new group of of refugees who are leaving a new egypt known as babylonia and they're working their way back to to jerusalem

so uh we'll find out more about ezra as a person and what he's all about and the authority given to him in the rest of this chapter. But at least, hey, now we know a little bit about the guy that the book is named after. Yeah, I mean, this is important going forward, too. I mean, it's helpful to have a guy who, when you say he's skilled in the Torah of Moses, this means, I take this to mean sort of two things. One, that he is a guy who knows what God has said, so he's familiar with the words that God has spoke, he's also a man who is familiar with the history of his people, which might not seem like that big a deal, but is a big deal at that time, especially if you've been in exile for a long time. So this is a guy that can come forward and say, this is who we are.

Yeah, that's a great point, because identity is going to matter a lot. I mean, we've already kind of seen hints of that, you know, who are we? Back in this new and old place, surrounded by all these people who may or may not have our theological interest at heart. And so there's a lot of kind of fresh beginnings that are going on. And if you have a lot of fresh beginnings going on, it's good to have someone who knows the past, who knows the Word of God, and is going to be able to guide you forward as you craft that future based upon wisdom from the past. Yep. All right. Well, that is it. We will get into more of actual Ezra, not just the book, But the person coming up next episode, Chad, I'll see you then.

All right. See you then.