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 6-8.

    Yesterday’s passage told us how, after rebuilding the foundation of the Temple progress on the Temple halted, partially because of opposition to the rebuilding by outsiders and partially because of a loss of enthusiasm on the part of the Returned Exiles. At the end of the passage, a new generation was inspired to resume rebuilding the Temple by the prophets Haggai and Zechariah. When they claimed to the regional officials of the Persian government that Cyrus had authorized the rebuild of the Temple, those officials sent word to the capital for confirmation. In today’s passage they received that confirmation, plus fresh orders from the current emperor, Darius, to support the rebuilding effort. This resulted in completion of the rebuilding project.
    All of that was to set the stage for the item in this passage which I do not believe I have ever noticed before. Having completely rebuilt the Temple, the Returned Exiles rededicated it to use with a celebration which included many sacrifices. Shortly after this, they celebrated the Passover. And in chapter 6, verse 21 the passage tells us that, ” The Passover meal was eaten by the people of Israel who had returned from exile and by the others in the land who had turned from their corrupt practices to worship the Lord, the God of Israel.” This tells us that despite rejecting the assistance of those who wanted to include their own practices in the rebuilding of the Temple, they did not reject those who chose to abandon those practices and follow the practices laid out by God. The books of Ezra and Nehemiah take a hard line against accepting those who wish to join with the the people of God without turning from their sinful practices. But this verse shows us that the same people who took that hard line were more than willing to accept those outsiders who were willing to turn from their sinful practices. We should be the same.

    Finally in chapter seven we get to the beginning of the story of the eponymous character (the person after whom this book of the Bible is named), Ezra. Ezra was a scribe who clearly was politically connected. Not only did Ezra get an order from the King of Persia commissioning his expedition to Jerusalem, the king and many of his close advisors gave Ezra significant amounts of valuable objects. Further, when Ezra realized the extent of the wealth his expedition would be transporting he considered it a real possibility that the king of Persia would give him an armed guard. Of course, this is where it gets interesting. Ezra was embarrassed the ask the king for an armed guard because he had been bragging up God’s power to the king and his officials. Asking for an armed guard would have indicated that Ezra did not have faith in God’s ability and/or willingness to protect him and his expedition. Up until this point, Ezra’s faith did not require him to risk anything more than ridicule. Now, he had to choose whether he was willing to risk not only his own life and wealth, but that of those accompanying him and the wealth entrusted to him by others, on his belief in God’s power. Ezra chose faith and trusted God to protect him and his expedition, despite transporting enough wealth to make them a tempting target to bandits.