Today in God's Word—April 2023
East Tallassee Church of Christ
April 5, Ezra 2
Now these were the people of the province who came up out of the captivity of those exiles whom Nebudchadnezzar the king of Babylon had carried captive to Babylonia. They returned to Jerusalem and Judah, each to his own town. They came with Zerubbabel.... - Ezra 2:1-2
Ezra 2 is one of those chapters where we modern readers may want to observe our own sort of “passover." By that I mean we are tempted to pass over this long chapter of lists, strange names and places. There are lists of men (presumably heads of households and clans), lists of priests, list of Levites, of temple servants, sons of Solomon's servants. There’s also a list of some who could not prove their genealogy and were not counted as Israelites, and some men who claimed to be of the house of Aaron, but could not prove it. With the list of the temple vessels that Cyrus returned back in Chapter 1, it's easy to see why more than one third of the verses in Ezra are lists or registers. These names are mostly unimportant and uninteresting to us, but they were of vital interest and importance to the returning exiles. These people tied their identity to being verifiable blood descendants of Abraham and of Israel. The examples I mentioned about some who did not have proper papers show how important it was for them to be on the list.
These lists marked their place in the larger family of Israel, and their own families' place in the territory of Judah. The returning exiles needed this kind of documentation. Another third of Ezra is narrative, an account of what happened. The remainder of the verses contain letters of authority, proclamations, excerpts and prayers related to the return from captivity.
The fact that there was a return at all reminds me of something Jeremiah wrote in Lamentations: "For the LORD will not cast off forever, but, though he cause grief, he will have compassion according to the abundance of his steadfast love, for he does not afflict from his
heart or grieve the children of men.” God wanted to restore his people to their place. Their own stubborn refusal to return to him had led to their captivity. But it was not his heart's desire for them to be estranged or cast off.
Just about 50,000 people were in the first wave of exiles returning to Judah. The list here is almost the same as the one in Nehemiah, and is similar to lists in Chronicles. Not all the questions we might ask about the lists have easy answers. Some categories are clear, for instance, the priests and Levites. But who were the "sons of Solomon's servants" and why were they segregated from the other servants? That may be the descendants of some of the Canaanites that Solomon conscripted into service. They must have stayed among the people of Judah long after the time of Solomon.
Zerubbabel led the first wave of returning exiles. He was a great-grandson of Jeconiah, and therefore in the Davidic line of kings. He is listed in Matthew's genealogy of Jesus.
If we spoke in Chapter 1 about the sovereignty of God and the surety of his word, perhaps we could use the word “separate” for Chapter 2. These verses show the separation of Judah from Babylon, their separation as a nation from all other people and the separation of the priest and Levites from the general population. Later, Ezra will insist on separation from the mixed marriages that had become common among the people.
There's a good lesson for us as Christians today about the subject of giving in the closing verses of the chapter. We need the same spirit of willingness when we give that these people showed in their “freewill offerings.” Our object in giving is similar if not identical. They gave to support the “house of God” (the temple). We give to support the true house of God (the church). Their measure for making the freewill offerings is the same as ours in the New Testament—“according to their ability.” And the channel of giving then and now is similar, too.
They gave into the common treasure, and we give to a common pool of funds we call the treasury.
Even in these somewhat uninteresting chapters, there is valuable information we would miss if we passed over these verses. If a chapter or section of a Bible passage seems to have no discernible application to us, let's take it as a challenge to take a closer look and see what we can find in it. We just might be blessed for doing so.
Copyright © 2023 by Michael B. McElroy. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
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