By the end of the book, Israel had renewed its covenant with God and had begun acting in obedience to Him.Įzra also contains one of the great intercessory prayers of the Bible (Ezra 9:5–15 see Daniel 9 and Nehemiah 9 for others). Later, after the original remnant had stopped work on the city walls and spiritual apathy ruled, Ezra arrived with another two thousand people and sparked a spiritual revival. In the book of Ezra we witness the rebuilding of the new temple, the unification of the returning tribes as they shared common struggles and were challenged to work together. Through his narrative, Ezra declared that they were still God’s people and that God had not forgotten them. The book of Ezra provides an account of the Jews’ regathering, of their struggle to survive and to rebuild what had been destroyed. When their king was dethroned and captured and the people exiled to Babylon, Judah as an independent nation ceased to exist. The book of Ezra provides a much-needed link in the historical record of the Israelite people. The returning exiles were able to populate only a tiny portion of their former homeland. The events in Ezra are set in Jerusalem and the surrounding area. The book could not have been completed earlier than about 450 BC (the date of the events recorded in 10:17–44). Ezra 7–10 picks up the story more than sixty years later, when Ezra led the second group of exiles to Israel (458 BC). Ezra 1–6 covers the first return of Jews from captivity, led by Zerubbabel-a period of twenty-three years beginning with the edict of Cyrus of Persia and ending at the rebuilding of the temple in Jerusalem (538–515 BC). The book of Ezra records two separate time periods directly following the seventy years of Babylonian captivity. His zeal for God and God’s Law spurred Ezra to lead a group of Jews back to Israel during King Artaxerxes’s reign over the Persian Empire (which had since replaced the Babylonian Empire that originally exiled the people of Judah).
In the Hebrew Bible, the two books were considered one work, though some internal evidence suggests they were written separately and joined together in the Hebrew canon (and separated again in English translations).Įzra was a direct descendant of Aaron the chief priest (7:1–5), thus he was a priest and scribe in his own right.
He plays a major role in the second half of the book, as well as in the book of Nehemiah, its sequel. Ezra 8 includes a first-person reference, implying the author’s participation in the events. Jewish tradition has long attributed authorship of this historical book to the scribe and scholar Ezra, who led the second group of Jews returning from Babylon to Jerusalem (Ezra 7:11–26).
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