Week 28, July 7–13: Ezra 4–Nehemiah 11

• Sun      7/7       Ezra 4–5
• Mon     7/8       Ezra 6–7
• Tue      7/9       Ezra 8–10
• Wed     7/10     Neh 1–3
• Thu      7/11     Neh 4–6
• Fri        7/12     Neh 7–8
• Sat       7/13     Neh 9–11

 Ezra and Nehemiah were combined as one book originally. Only later, sometime in the Middle Ages, they were separated into two separate books. Together Ezra-Nehemiah records the latest events of the OT from a chronological standpoint. It tells the story of the first groups of Judahite/Jewish exiles who go back to the land of Judah to begin a rebuilding project there. Ezra and Nehemiah are two of the key figures who lead this project, one as a priest and the other as a governor of sorts, but it’s about the whole community working on the project together. As they carry on the work of rebuilding the walls of Jerusalem and building a new temple where Solomon’s temple had been, they face opposition from various leaders from among the people of the land around them.

This book has some unique characteristics among other books of the Bible, including the first-person perspective of the writer. Nehemiah especially expresses his own thoughts and feelings as he narrates the events. The perspective shifts back and forth between Nehemiah’s first-person account and the narrator’s third-person account, which invites us as readers to compare the two viewpoints. At times Nehemiah can sound a bit self-aggrandizing, and the narrator seems to want to downplay that perspective. Regardless of what we make of this interplay between the first and third-person perspectives, the overall focus is on the life of the entire community of returned exiles rather than on one or two individuals.

One theme to notice as we read through Ezra-Nehemiah is that this return from exile is portrayed with hints of a second exodus. When Israel had left Egypt, as we read in Exodus, they plundered the Egyptians, taking their vessels of silver and gold (Exod. 3:21-22; 11:2; 12:35-36). In a similar way, when the Judahites return to the land of Judah after Cyrus’s edict, they take with them vessels of silver and gold, which they use later to rebuild the temple (Ezra 1:4, 6, 9-11; 2:69; 7:16-18; 8:25-34; Neh 7:70-71).

This motif of God delivering and blessing his people is reflected in an exodus motif that appears all throughout Scripture. And here it ties together the experience of Israel in slavery in Egypt with their experience of exile in Babylon, as it also links the exodus with the return from exile. Together these repeated motifs foster a sense of hope for another, final “exodus” to come in which God’s people will finally be delivered from their ultimate enemy and brought safely into the peaceful experience of rest in God’s presence.

As the temple is being rebuilt, it is also helpful to remember the eventual fate of this temple, which is often referred to as the second temple, the first being the one Solomon built centuries earlier. In the coming centuries after Ezra and Nehemiah’s time, the second temple would be abandoned and desecrated as different empires come and go. Then the king known as Herod the Great would build it into the ornate structure it was in the first century. This is the temple of Jesus’ time. Not long after Jesus, however, the temple would be destroyed by Rome, just as Jesus predicted when he said, “There will not be left one stone upon another that will not be thrown down.” (Luke 21:6) Going back to the tabernacle God instructed Moses to build in the wilderness, the history of the Lord dwelling with his people in a man-made structure is a complicated story. The presence of the transcendent God dwelling with his people was never fully possible with the tabernacle in the wilderness or the temple in Jerusalem, whether it was Solomon’s temple or the temple Zerubbabel built that Ezra helped furnish and Herod expanded upon later. None of this lasted.

But when Jesus came, the very presence of God came and dwelt among us (John 1:14). And when he ascended to the Father after his death and resurrection, he sent his Spirit to establish his church as the dwelling place of God (Eph. 2:11–22). One day he will recreate a new heavens and new earth where he will dwell with us and us with him forever. In the new creation there will be no temple, for we will experience Almighty God’s unmediated presence fully through Christ the Lamb (Rev. 21:22).