Today, I am reading and commenting on  Ezra 3-5.

The first thing which struck me about this passage was the enthusiasm of the returned exiles for serving the Lord.  As soon as they had gotten settled into their new homes they gathered in Jerusalem to offer sacrifices to God and celebrate the Feasts He had mandated for the Israelites.  In fact the way I read the passage, they built a makeshift altar, or perhaps I should say they built an altar that was intended to be temporary, in order to begin making those sacrifices as soon as possible.  The other part of this which strikes me is that they did this “Despite their fear of the people around them,…”  We should share both their enthusiasm for worshiping God and their willingness to defy their fear of those around them in an open and explicit manner.

Later, the passage recounts something about which I am somewhat ambivalent.  When the people who had been living in the land before the exiles returned learned that they were rebuilding the temple, those people asked to be allowed to help them do so.  The returned exiles refused to allow these people to help them.  Which caused those whose assistance was rejected to slander the returned exiles to the King of Persia, who ordered a halt to the rebuilding.  On the one hand, I wonder if things might have gone better if the returned exiles had allowed the surrounding peoples to join in rebuilding the temple.  Perhaps if they had invited the surrounding peoples to join them, and not just in rebuilding the temple, but in full worship of God, Israel would have risen as a power dedicated to God.  On the other hand, perhaps the returned exiles were correct in rejecting this offer of assistance.  Perhaps, if they had accepted the assistance the surrounding peoples would have demanded that they include some of the pagan practices which they had adopted into their worship of God.

Both of these possible interpretations of this passage have lessons for us.  First, we should always welcome the help of those who will faithfully join us in worshiping God.  We should strive to avoid alienating those who genuinely seek to faithfully serve and worship God.  Second, we should be wary of those who offer to aid us in serving God so that they can lead us into accepting practices which God condemns.  We must be cautious of those who refuse to abandon practices which God has clearly spelled out as evil.  Much of the Church today fails to heed the second lesson.

I use the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.