Odds and Ends About Ezra and Nehemiah

When Ezra came to Judea to bring the Law of Moses the first thing that happened was that he heard a report of rampant sin… the intermarrying of Jews with the gentile people. He immediately dropped down to pray and to seek guidance on how to remedy the problem.

When Nehemiah heard a bad report about the people and Jerusalem, he also dropped down in prayer and resolved to remedy the situation by rebuilding the wall.

God was with Zerubbabel and King Darius and God was also with Nehemiah and King Artaxerxes. However, King Darius was much more active at protecting the Jews than King Artaxerxes was.

King Darius warned and threatened the surrounding governors with punishments like “impalement” while in King Artaxerxes time the surrounding Governors were given a free hand to intimidate and persecute the Jews. A discrepancy it seems.

Ezra was ashamed to ask King Artaxerxes for troops and protection on the trip to Jerusalem. But King Artaxerxes provided officers of the army and horsemen to accompany Nehemiah. Maybe because Nehemiah was an official of the court and Ezra was just a Jew?

Ezra (and others) successfully got the Jews to commit to only marrying other Jews and to get rid of their Gentile wives and children. You might think with that great cleansing of sin that God would make them prosper but alas it was not so.

Nehemiah came along and found that the Jews were again intermarrying with the Gentile girls and in addition found that the rich Jews were oppressing the poor Jews… charging them interest on loans, confiscating their properties and enslaving their children. Nehemiah was successful in correcting those sins and again you might expect with this turn to righteousness that the yoke of Persian domination might be cast off and Israel might be free and prosperous once again but alas… not so.

Ezra and Nehemiah were acting on the premise (faulty) that God was going to restore Israel to its former prominence and throw off the yoke of foreign domination and give them a King like King David. Their actions were to accomplish that goal. But it was never to be.

No one, including Ezra and Nehemiah, understood the great “mystery” that God was going to reveal. That there would be no earthly kingdom, there would be no earthly King and they would always be under the domination of foreign powers regardless of how “pure” (racially and spiritually) they were.

In the future they could marry whoever they wanted to. They could eat whatever they wanted to and they could worship wherever they wanted to (to name a few things). True freedom.

It becomes easier to understand the backlash against Jesus Christ and the Jews disappointment when you understand those deeply ingrained beliefs based on the Law of Moses… it’s blessings and its curses.

We all are depressed when our expectations come up short but must be resilient enough to change as God reveals new information to us and our understanding is clarified.