I am using the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.
Today, I am reading and commenting on Ezra 1-2.
The first thing I want to note about the Book of Ezra is something which I learned earlier this year (perhaps I had read or heard this earlier, but, if so, I did not remember it). The books of Ezra and Nehemiah had been one book in the Hebrew Bible. They become separate books as a result of the fact that in the 2nd Century BC there were two separate, differing translations of the book into Greek. I don’t want to spend more time on that today, but the way in which they became separated fascinates me.
Chapter One is consistent with the inscriptions which were discovered on what is known as the Cyrus Cylinder, a clay cylinder inscribed with a declaration from Cyrus declaring his support for the repatriation of peoples the Babylonians had taken into exile. It also calls for the restoration of the temples of numerous gods throughout the territory which had been the Babylonian Empire and the return to those temples of the sacred objects which had been taken to Babylon. While neither the Jews nor Jerusalem were mentioned on the Cyrus Cylinder, the inscription on the Cyrus Cylinder is consistent with what we find recorded here. In fact, the Cyrus Cylinder makes a similar statement about Cyrus’ relationship to the chief god of the Babylonians as this passage says that he proclaimed about his relationship with God. What is written in this passage is consistent with everything we know about the Persian Empire and how it dealt with the peoples under its control. The Cyrus Cylinder was discovered at a time when many doubted that any of the events recorded in the Old Testament had actually happened.
The second chapter is a list of those who returned as part of Cyrus’ repatriation. The important part about this was that they brought documents with them. These documents included genealogies. Those who could trace their ancestry to the genealogies of priests and Levites which they brought back were allowed to serve as such. Those who could not were provisionally prevented from doing so. However, those who returned acknowledged that their records were incomplete and allowed for asking God to guide them on whether these people should be allowed to serve. At the time of the writing of this passage they had yet to restore the method if inquiry described in the Law of Moses, but they made a record of the people who thought they were descended from priests or Levites for whom confirmation could not be found.