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Ezra

Ezra

Ezra the Priest

Ezra was perhaps the most influential person in the post-exilic community. His activities earned him the title “Father of Judaism”.

Ezra was a priest and scribe in Babylon who had devoted himself to intense study and teaching of the Mosaic Law. He is represented as the first in a long line of distinguished rabbis who were decisive in forming and preserving Judaism.

The Book of Ezra

The book of Ezra pictures the difficult conditions that prevailed in the post-exilic community of Judah. Judah at this time was a small part of the vast Persian empire. The Persian emperor authorizes Ezra to reorganize the restored Judean community according to the principles of the Mosaic Torah. To prevent assimilation with the Gentile population, Ezra forbids intermarriage between Judeans and foreign women.

The book opens with Cyrus’s proclamation allowing the return of the Jews from Babylon to Jerusalem and allowing them to rebuild Yahweh’s Temple. Chapter 3 describes the first sacrifices on a rebuilt altar “set up on its old site” and the laying of the foundations for a second Temple. The second Temple is dedicated in about 515 BCE.

Chapter 7 introduces Ezra. Emperor Artaxerxes sends Ezra to Jerusalem to supervise the Temple, to evaluate conditions in the Judean province according to Mosaic standard, and to appoint scribes and judges who would administer civil and moral order for the whole Judean population.

Ezra’s Reforms

Ezra was raised in exclusively Judean circles in Babylon, where strict adherence to legal and ethnic exclusiveness was observed. Therefore, when he came to Jerusalem, he introduced important reforms.

  1. The problem of foreign wives (Ezra 9:1-10:44). Discovering that many of the Jews, including priests had married non-Jewish women, Ezra tore his clothes, pulled his hair, and went into a state of mourning. For him, this condition represented a great sin by the people. Led by Ezra, the people made a covenant that they would divorce all non-Jewish wives. All those who had married non-Jewish women divorced them and sent them away, along with any children born to them.
  2. The renewing of the covenant (Nehemiah 8:1-9:38).  Ezra called the people together for the purpose of covenant renewal. First, there as the reading of the Torah, or Law. By this time, that probably included essentially what we know as the Pentateuch today.

As Ezra read the Law, it had to be put into the language of the people, which now was Aramaic, not Hebrew. This, then, was the first recorded attempt to paraphrase the Scriptures. The Aramaic paraphrase in later years was known as the Targumin.

While reading the Law, it was discovered that the seventh month (when this was taking place) was also the time for the celebration of the Feast of Tabernacles or Booths (Sakkoth in Hebrew). The people went into the hills, cut tree limbs, and built shelters. They lived in the shelters for seven days to remind them of Israel’s wilderness years.

During those days, they spent their time studying the Law. The festival was followed by a great day of repentance and confession. They alternated hearing the Law read with confession of sin. The solemn day was climaxed by Ezra’s prayer of confession. As a token of their repentance, they entered into a solemn covenant, signed by the princes, Levites, and priests. This was the last mention of the work of Ezra.