Ezra 7:8

“This Ezra” points back to the man whose priestly descent has just been traced (Ezra 7:1–5). He comes from Babylon, once the place of Israel’s exile and by now a large centre of Jewish life and learning. He is a priest, and verse 6 names him by his other calling as well, a scribe.

“Ready scribe” is sopher mahir in Hebrew. The scribe, çâphar, was a man skilled in writing and recording, and the word was used for secretaries and scholars who held real authority. Scribes of Ezra’s day copied the law, and they also interpreted it, taught it and applied it. Mâhîyr, “ready”, means quick, skilful or expert. Ezra knew the law of Moses thoroughly and could handle it with skill, and verse 10 shows the devotion that lay behind that skill.

The verse adds at once where the law came from: “which the LORD God of Israel had given”. The law of Moses is God’s own revelation to his covenant people, and that is where Ezra’s authority as a teacher came from. Moses had set these statutes before Israel as their wisdom in the sight of the nations (Deuteronomy 4:5–8). Ezra stands in Scripture as a leader whose strength lay in knowing the word of God, a scholar and teacher sent to a people who needed that word.

“And the king granted him all his request.” Ezra had asked the most powerful ruler of his day for permission to travel, for resources and for authority to set things in order, and he received all of it. The royal decree that follows spells out how much he was given: silver and gold, supplies for the temple, and authority to establish the law of God and to administer justice in Judah (Ezra 7:11–26). That a Persian king should be so generous to a Jewish scribe has one explanation in this verse: “according to the hand of the LORD his God upon him.”

The Hebrew word for hand, yâd, often stands for power, means or help, and “by the hand of” someone marks the person through whom a thing is done. When the hand of Yᵉhôvâh, the LORD, is upon a man, God himself is at work for him, giving him strength, direction and protection for the task he has been given. Ezra’s skill was real, and the king’s decision was his own, yet the credit for the outcome belongs to God, who moves even the hearts of rulers to serve his purposes. Scripture speaks of God’s hand in human terms so that we can grasp how near and how direct his working is.

Verse 9 says it again and adds one word: “the good hand of his God upon him.” Ṭôwb, “good”, tells us that God’s power was turned toward Ezra’s welfare. It was kind as well as strong, and it supplied what the journey needed. “His God” is ʼĕlôhîym, plural in form and, when it names the true God, read as a plural of majesty. With “his” in front of it, the name becomes personal: the God of all the earth was Ezra’s own God, keeping faith with his servant.

This phrase runs like a thread through Ezra and Nehemiah. Ezra uses it again when God provides Levites for the journey (Ezra 8:18) and when he looks back on the safe arrival (Ezra 8:31), and Nehemiah gives the same reason when Artaxerxes grants his requests (Nehemiah 2:8). The rest of Scripture says the same of God’s care for those who trust him. “The steps of a good man are ordered by the LORD” (Psalm 37:23), the LORD directs the steps of the man who plans his way (Proverbs 16:9), he directs the paths of those who trust him with all their heart (Proverbs 3:5–6), and Paul could say that he was able to do all things through Christ who strengthened him (Philippians 4:13).

“And there went up some of the children of Israel.” The verb ʻâlâh means to go up or ascend, and it fits the road exactly, because Babylon lay low in the river plain and Jerusalem stands high on a plateau. “Children” is bên, the word for a son, used more widely for descendants or for the members of a group. “Children of Israel” is the people as a whole, the descendants of Jacob, and “some of” them chose to leave a settled life in Babylon to return to the land.

The list that follows names every order of people that the worship of the temple needed. The priests offered the sacrifices and kept the house holy. The Levites assisted them, cared for the temple, led worship and taught the law. The singers, who were Levites, led the music of worship, and the porters, also Levites, kept the gates of the temple and kept order there.

The Nethinims, Nâthîyn in Hebrew, were “given ones”, people given to the service of the temple. They helped the Levites with the heaviest work, such as drawing water and cutting wood. They were probably descended from non-Israelites who had been dedicated to this service, perhaps from the Gibeonites, whom Joshua made hewers of wood and drawers of water for the house of God (Joshua 9:27). Their place in this list means that the humblest work in God’s house was as much a part of the return as the work at the altar.

This return answered what God had promised through his prophets. He had said he would visit his people after seventy years in Babylon and bring them back (Jeremiah 29:10–14), that he would gather their children from the east and the west (Isaiah 43:5–6), and that if they turned to him he would gather them from the uttermost part of the heaven to the place he had chosen for his name (Nehemiah 1:9).

Verse 8 gives the arrival in a single plain sentence: “And he came to Jerusalem in the fifth month, which was in the seventh year of the king.” The verb bôwʼ means to go or come, here the end of a long road. The word for month, chôdesh, means the new moon and so the month that begins with it. The king, melek, is Artaxerxes, named in verse 7.

Verse 9 opens with “For” and fills in the dates. Ezra began to go up from Babylon on the first day of the first month, Nisan, in March or April, the month in which Passover falls. He came to Jerusalem on the first day of the fifth month, Av, in July or August. The journey took four months, from new moon to new moon. These dates tie Ezra’s coming to a real year and a real season in the reign of a known king, and they show what the journey cost in time and endurance. The verse then sets the whole four months under one statement, the good hand of his God upon him, so the plain record of verse 8 becomes a record of God’s care.

Verse 10 begins with “For”, and it gives the reason behind everything before it. Ezra’s skill, his commission and his journey all rest on what had happened in his own heart first.

The verb for “prepared” is kûwn, which in this form means to establish, fix, make firm or direct. Joined to “heart”, lêbâb, it describes a settled purpose. The heart in Hebrew is the whole inner person, the will, the mind, the affections and the moral core, so Ezra had fixed his whole self on God’s law and kept it there. The pairing kûwn lêbâb is the root of his whole ministry.

He set his heart on three things, in order:

• To seek the law of the LORD. The verb dârash means to seek, to inquire of, to require or to care for. To seek the law is to inquire of God through what he has said, studying it in order to know his will. The man in the first psalm is like this, whose “delight is in the law of the LORD” (Psalm 1:1–3).
• To do it. The small word “it” (in italics in the KJV) makes the law itself the thing Ezra set out to obey. His study led straight into a life of obedience. James says the same to the church: “But be ye doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving your own selves” (James 1:22–25).
• To teach in Israel statutes and judgments. Lâmad means to learn, and in the form used here it means to teach, instruct or train, that is, to cause another to learn. “Statutes” are God’s fixed decrees and “judgments” his rulings on what is right, and together they cover the whole of his law. Ezra taught so that the nation would know the law and live by it.

The order matters. Ezra learned the law for himself and lived by it before he taught it to others, and so his teaching carried the weight of a life that matched it. Moses had laid down the same order for every household in Israel: “And these words, which I command thee this day, shall be in thine heart: And thou shalt teach them diligently unto thy children” (Deuteronomy 6:6–7).

These verses also hold together two things that belong together. The good hand of God was upon Ezra (verses 6 and 9), and Ezra had prepared his heart (verse 10). God’s grace led the way and carried him, and Ezra answered it with deliberate devotion and hard work. God used a man who had given himself wholly to God’s word.

Ezra was a skilled scribe who sought, kept and taught the law. Jesus Christ is the one who kept it perfectly. He said, “Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets: I am not come to destroy, but to fulfil” (Matthew 5:17). He was tempted in all points as we are, yet without sin (Hebrews 4:15). He is the Word who was with God and was God, by whom all things were made (John 1:1–3), so he is the author of the law as well as its perfect keeper. He taught as one having authority, and the crowds were astonished (Matthew 7:29). And he bore the curse of the law for us on the cross (Galatians 3:13).

The Father’s hand was upon the Son through all his work. The Father spoke from heaven at his baptism and called him “my beloved Son” (Matthew 3:17), upheld him in the wilderness temptations (Matthew 4:1–11), gave him for the world’s salvation (John 3:16) as the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world (John 1:29), and raised him from the dead (Acts 2:24). Ezra came at the time God had set, and Christ came when the fulness of the time had come (Galatians 4:4).

Ezra brought a written law to a scattered people. Christ brings the new covenant that God promised, in which he writes his law in his people’s hearts (Jeremiah 31:33, Hebrews 8:6–13), and his Spirit enables us to live out what the law requires (Romans 8:4). He is the way back to the Father (John 14:6), and the true return from exile is the return from sin to God that he opened. The returning exiles came to serve at the temple, and Jesus spoke of his own body as the temple that would be destroyed and raised in three days (John 2:19–21). The varied company of priests, Levites, singers, porters and given ones also gives a picture of his church, where people of every background are fellow citizens with the saints and of the household of God (Ephesians 2:19–22), lively stones built into a spiritual house and a holy priesthood (1 Peter 2:5).

These five verses show us a God who rules over the kings of the earth and turns their decisions toward the good of his people. He keeps his promises across generations, bringing exiles home just as he said. He watches over his servants on long and dangerous roads, and his hand on them is good. He wants his whole people in his house, from the priest at the altar to the man drawing water. And he gives his law, then raises up men and women who give their hearts to seeking it, doing it and teaching it.

Ezra’s story rests on both halves of verse 9 and verse 10: the good hand of God, and a heart prepared to seek him. The same God who brought Ezra safely to Jerusalem has written his word for us and put his Spirit within us through Christ, and his hand is still good.