Ezra Arrives with a Prepared Heart and a Royal Commission

“After these things” skips about fifty-seven years, from 515 to 458 BC, the gap in which the events of Esther fall. Seraiah was the high priest executed at Riblah in 586 (2 Kings 25:18-21), so “son” here means descendant. Hilkiah is the high priest who found the book of the law under Josiah.

Zadok was high priest under David and Solomon, and his line held the office from Solomon’s day onward; Ezekiel 44:15 gives the sons of Zadok sole charge of the altar. Shallum appears as Meshullam in 1 Chronicles 9:11, the same man under a variant form.

Between Meraioth and Azariah, 1 Chronicles 6:7-10 lists six more generations that are skipped here. The genealogy is telescoped, a common practice, keeping the names that anchor a claim rather than every link in the chain.

Zerahiah, Uzzi and Bukki belong to the obscure centuries of the judges, known only from priestly lists (1 Chronicles 6:5-6). Their inclusion shows the line was being traced back link by link through the dark stretch of Israel’s history.

The line ends at Aaron, “the chief priest”, through Phinehas, whose zeal at Peor won “the covenant of an everlasting priesthood” (Numbers 25:13). Sixteen generations are named in these five verses to cover roughly a thousand years. Ezra was of high priestly descent without holding the office himself.

“A ready scribe” uses the Hebrew mahir, skilled or quick, the word of Psalm 45:1, “my tongue is the pen of a ready writer”. “The hand of the LORD his God upon him” is the phrase that recurs through Ezra and Nehemiah to explain royal favour.

The seventh year of Artaxerxes I is 458 BC. The list repeats the categories of chapter 2, Israelites, priests, Levites, singers, porters and Nethinims, as though a second return is being counted with the same columns as the first.

The fifth month, Ab, is midsummer, July to August. The verse gives the arrival first, before the next verse explains how long the journey took, as if the destination mattered more than the road.

Four months exactly, from the first of Nisan to the first of Ab, for about nine hundred miles, much of it on the long loop up the Euphrates and down through Syria. The Hebrew “began he to go up” reads literally “that was the foundation of the going up”, perhaps the date the departure was fixed.

The three verbs come in a significant order: to seek, to do, to teach. “Prepared his heart” is the phrase used of Jehoshaphat’s good reign (2 Chronicles 19:3) and denied of Rehoboam, who “prepared not his heart to seek the LORD” (2 Chronicles 12:14).

The Hebrew word for “copy” here is nishtewan, a Persian loanword for an official document. The heading gives Ezra his double title, priest and scribe, and then adds that he is a scribe specifically of the commandments, as if the title needed explaining to Jewish readers.

From this verse to verse 26 the text is again in Aramaic, the language of the decree. “King of kings” was the formal Persian royal title. “Perfect peace” may instead qualify Ezra’s title, “a scribe of the law of the God of heaven, perfect”, since the Aramaic word is simply “complete”.

“Of their own freewill” makes this a voluntary emigration, as in the Cyrus decree. The king names the categories, people, priests and Levites, which Ezra will struggle to fill when he finds no Levites at the river Ahava (8:15).

The seven counsellors appear also in Esther 1:14, “the seven princes of Persia and Media, which saw the king’s face”. The law “in thine hand” is a physical scroll. Ezra goes to investigate Judah by its own law, not by Persian standards.

The king and his counsellors give silver and gold of their own. “Whose habitation is in Jerusalem” is how an imperial court naturally described a god, by the city of his temple; it is the Persian way of placing him.

“All the silver and gold that thou canst find” amounts to a licence to collect throughout the province of Babylon, among the Jewish communities and presumably beyond them. The freewill offering of priests and people is kept distinct from what the empire gives.

“Meat offerings” in 1611 English meant food offerings in general; the Hebrew minchah is a grain offering, which went with each animal sacrifice (Numbers 15:1-10). The drink offering was wine poured out beside the altar. The decree knows the details of Israel’s rites.

The discretion is wide: “whatsoever shall seem good to thee, and to thy brethren”. The only limit is “the will of your God”, which puts the Mosaic law above the king’s own treasurers in deciding how the silver is spent.

These vessels are new gifts, not the returned plunder of chapter 1; Ezra weighs them out in 8:25-27. “The God of Jerusalem” is again the imperial way of naming a deity by his city.

This is an open line of credit on the royal treasury, subject to the limits verse 22 will set. “Which thou shalt have occasion to bestow” leaves the judgement of need to Ezra himself.

“I, even I Artaxerxes” is emphatic; the decree now turns from Ezra to the officials who must honour it. The treasurers beyond the river are the same provincial officials whose predecessors wrote against Jerusalem in chapter 4.

A hundred talents of silver is over three tonnes, a very large sum. A hundred measures of wheat (kors, each about 220 litres) and a hundred baths of wine and oil are capped. Salt is unlimited: it was cheap, and every offering required it.

“Diligently” translates adrazda, another Persian loanword meaning precisely or correctly. In 458 BC Egypt was in revolt against Persia with Athenian support, and a king anxious about wrath on his realm had reason to court every god of the western provinces. That connection is an inference.

Exempting temple staff from tax was Persian practice. A Greek inscription records Darius I rebuking his satrap Gadatas for taxing the sacred gardeners of Apollo. The same three taxes, toll, tribute and custom, are those the accusers of 4:13 claimed Jerusalem would withhold.

“The wisdom of thy God, that is in thine hand” equates wisdom with the scroll Ezra holds. His judges were to govern those “such as know the laws of thy God”, that is the Jews of the province, and to teach those who did not know them.

Four penalties are listed: death, banishment (literally “uprooting”), confiscation and imprisonment. “The law of thy God, and the law of the king” are joined, so that in the province the law of Moses carried the force of imperial law.

The Hebrew resumes, and so does the first person: from here the Book of Ezra quotes Ezra’s own memoir. “To beautify” is the verb of Isaiah 60:7, “I will glorify the house of my glory”, and the praise goes to God for what was in the king’s heart.

“I was strengthened” is reflexive: Ezra took courage. He credits the courage to the LORD’s hand, the phrase that framed verses 6 and 9. His first act on receiving the king’s authority is to gather other leaders, not to set off alone.