Old Testament Survey - Lesson 24

Dr. Daniel Block 
Old Testament Survey
ot300-24
Ezra and Nehemiah
Lesson Transcript

We're continuing our discussion of evidences of Yahweh's glory and grace in the Persian period, that is the post-exilic period, but this time we are moving back to Jerusalem. The previous lesson was on Esther and it took place in Persia. Now we're going to Jerusalem where we will look at the work of Ezra and Nehemiah.

What can we say about these two books? Actually, probably only one. The post-exilic community in Jerusalem produced two historiographic documents, I and II Chronicles and Ezra and Nehemiah. Esther was written in this period as well, but the author's place of residence is unknown.

In any case, those events happened, took place in the diaspora, not in Jerusalem and its environs. The names of the books of Ezra and Nehemiah derive from the principal characters in the respective documents. Originally, these books were composed as a unity, one book.

In the Masoretic text, in the Benasher tradition, the books run together, and the word count at the end includes both books, so they treated it as a single volume. The earliest attested division in the Hebrew canon comes from the 15th century AD from these manuscripts, undoubtedly under Christian influence. The division seems to have been the invention of origin, AD 185 to 253.

It's continued in Jerome's Vulgate of the 4th century. But we need to begin by talking about the relationship of Ezra and Nehemiah to Chronicles. Ezra and Nehemiah is often lumped together with those books, as I mentioned earlier, and treated as the Chronistic history as opposed to the Deuteronomistic history.

We may summarize the arguments for this approach as follows. One, Ezra begins by quoting the last two verses of 2 Chronicles 36, so these are stitched together with that identical quotation. Second, the apocryphal work 1 Esdras, a Greek work, includes 2 Chronicles 35 to 36, all of Ezra and Nehemiah 7, 73 to 8, 12, all as a single document.

Third, these books share a common vocabulary. Fourth, they share a common outlook and theology, interest in the temple and cultic religious affairs, the post-exilic community as the people of God, a narrowing nationalism, priestly interests in genealogies and religious rituals, cultic affairs. And fifth, together these two books represent the last narrative writings of the first testament.

If not the last writings overall, it depends on where we date the book of Malachi. Scholars have proposed three different conclusions regarding the relationships between Chronicles and Ezra and Nehemiah. First, they were written by a common author, and some people have argued Ezra was that person.

Second, 1 and 2 Chronicles, Ezra and Nehemiah were written by three different authors. These are possibilities on their relationship, so that not even Ezra and Nehemiah are together. And the third option, Ezra and Nehemiah were written by a common author, but he was not the author of Chronicles.

So, these are the possibilities. As we've mentioned before, biblical books, first testament books, are never signed by the author. Apparently, that was not as important as the message of the book.

It's interesting that in the ancient Near Eastern world, scribes would regularly sign the documents that they had copied as they were copying literary texts, but the authors didn't often give their names. When were these books written? To date the composition of Ezra and Nehemiah, it is necessary to summarize the historical events described in the books as we have it in a chronology like this. In 586 BC, Jerusalem fell to Babylon.

The exiles were taken away. In 539, Babylon fell to Cyrus II. In 538, Cyrus II issued the decree recorded in Ezra 1. In 538 to 37, the Jews returned to Jerusalem under Zerubbabel and rebuilt the altar for the temple.

In 536, they laid the foundation for the temple. In 536 to 20, the building of the temple was disrupted. The people were so discouraged that they didn't have the heart and the spirit and the energy to keep building.

520 to 515, the temple was completed, largely under the inspiration of the prophetic preaching of the prophets in the Bible, Haggai and Zechariah, who are mentioned in these books. In 485 to 60 approximately, opposition arose against the Jews in Jerusalem and in the empire. In 458, Ezra came to Jerusalem.

In 445, Nehemiah returned to Jerusalem. And then 433 BC, Nehemiah traveled to Babylon for a short visit, presumably to consult and report back to the authorities, and then he came back to Jerusalem. The last date, 433, provides the terminus a quo for the composition of the book, the earliest possible date.

400 BC is therefore a reasonable date for compiling the sources incorporated in the book, though some would date the book in its final form as late as 300 BC. What's the purpose of these books? What's the point? Well, on the one hand, we could say the purpose of Ezra-Nehemiah is to complete the history of Israel and to prove that the returned exiles represented a continuation of the people of God that existed before the exile. In the process, the book reflects the opposition of the returnees to non-exilic residence.

The Jews who hadn't gone into Babylon and those who came back from Babylon were not friendly toward each other. One group was viewed as native and the other as foreign. But it also demonstrates the effectiveness of Ezekiel's preaching.

And you say, what has Ezekiel got to do with this? Isn't he long gone? The last dated prophecy of Ezekiel is about 560, somewhere in there. What has Ezekiel got to do with 538 and beyond? Well, it's interesting that when Ezekiel and the 10,000 people from Jerusalem are schlepped into exile in Babylon in 597, they went there as a thoroughly paganized and syncretistic people. They were the problem.

They were not spared the judgment that was coming on the city in 586 because they were more righteous. They were not. They were exactly of the same ilk.

And the audience that Ezekiel faced in his book was a hard, hard audience, and he's preaching only to his Jewish countrymen and country folk. In fact, God tells him, if I wanted you to have a lot of response to your preaching, I'd make a foreign missionary of you, but I'm sending you to your own people who have foreheads harder than flint. And there's no hint anywhere in the book of Ezekiel that anybody ever responded favorably to the prophet's mission and his preaching, despite all the crazy antics he performed.

And sometimes awful oracles that he proclaimed with his radical rhetoric, very offensive in many places. But within the book of Ezekiel, three or four times you hear the phrase, when these things happen, and they surely will, then they will know that a prophet has been in their midst. Well, I have a feeling that when the exiles woke up after Ezekiel was gone, it dawned on some of them that the Lord, Yahweh, was in fact behind all the events that they had experienced.

They recognized the justice of their judgment. They confessed their sins. They cast themselves upon Yahweh for his mercy, and they were spiritually revived.

There must have been a whole group of these who by 538, when the decree is issued, you can go home and rebuild the temple and start a new community. 40,000 people went home, and they went home with their hearts in the right place, determined to create another community true that was structured as a true theocracy. This is reflected in Ezra's reforms later on and in Nehemiah's methods as governor.

They are working with a community that on paper at least is orthodox. There must have been a revival in Babylon already so that when the decree came to go home and rebuild the city, there were thousands of them that went and heeded not only the call of Cyrus to go back if you want, but also the call of God to rebuild this community. What else can we say about the books of Ezra and Nehemiah? Well, it's evident that the author of Ezra and Nehemiah used a great variety of sources.

Some of them are official. Some are unofficial. We can classify these, first of all, identifying early sources like letters.

In Ezra 1-7, the author incorporates numerous letters and official correspondence which represent authentic historic documents from the Persian period. So those letters are quoted in the text. Second, in 1-4, we have a version of Cyrus' decree.

This looks like a version of a written record, and of course, decrees were always, by this stage in political history and administrative history, decrees would always be composed in writing and then sent to the population and read to the people. We have other documents like this. In 4-11-16, it looks like we have Rehom's accusation, a written copy of it.

In 4-17-22, we have Artaxerxes' reply, a written version. In 5-7-17, we have Tetoni's report. In 6-2-5, we have a memorandum of Cyrus' decree.

And then in chapter 6-6-7, we have Darius' reply to Tetoni. Now those are older sources, sources that were older than Ezra, who lived a long time, decades, if not a century or more, after this decree had been issued. But then there are also some contemporary sources.

We have, for instance, Artaxerxes' authorization for Ezra in 7-12-26. Again, a quoted text. Also, we have lists.

To some people, the books of Ezra and Nehemiah are boring because there are so many lists. We have lists of temple vessels, 1-9-11. You have a census list of the returnees in 5-38.

It's in Ezra 2 and repeated in Nehemiah 7. We have Ezra's lineage, a list of his predecessors, ancestors. In 1-14, we have the returnees' census a second time. In chapter 10, we have a list of marital offenders, that is Nehemiah 10, 18-43, people who had committed offenses in their marriages.

We also have, in Nehemiah 3, lists of builders of the walls, in 10-1-27, lists of the sealers of the covenant, 11-3-36, a list of the settlers in Jerusalem, and then in 12-1-26, a list of priests and Levites. Who's keeping all these lists, and for what reason are they all incorporated into this historiographic document? Obviously, the author of this book wants his readers to know that these are real events happening in real time to real people. We're not making this up.

This narrative, the skeleton of this narrative, consists of the lists of all sorts of things that are happening, entries and details that the people have to deal with. But there are other sources. A third class of source are the memoirs.

By a memoir, we mean a first-person autobiographical form. Whoever writing this is saying, I, the good hand of the Lord was upon me. Well, who is that? Well, when it's Ezra saying that, then it looks like he must have been the author of this document.

Much of Ezra and Nehemiah is quite exceptional within the First Testament historical narrative. You don't have much of this elsewhere. The author seems to have had access to, if the author isn't Ezra or Nehemiah, the author had access to the diaries of Ezra and Nehemiah, and he edited them and integrated them with the other sources.

Concerning Ezra's diary, it's preserved in two parts. In Ezra 710, he recounts his return to Jerusalem in first person. There are a few places where the third person is used, which suggests that the editor is tinkering with his diaries a little bit.

In Nehemiah 8-10, Ezra is prominent. In chapter 8 especially, where he reads the Torah before all the people. In chapters 9 and 10, his involvement is not so clear.

How about Nehemiah, the other guy in this pair of leaders? Nehemiah's diary is also preserved in two parts. Nehemiah 1-7, this is an account of Nehemiah's return to Jerusalem, which was separate from Ezra's. In Nehemiah 11-13, we have Nehemiah's reforms in first person.

Now, the author has not neutralized the differences in tone. Nehemiah is more personal, Ezra is more official. Ezra's memoirs were probably edited more severely.

The time of composition editing is reflected in Ezra 4. Verses 1-5 describe the opposition during the rebuilding of the temple under Cyrus and Darius. Verses 6, the opposition under Ahasuerus, that is Xerxes and then Artaxerxes, and then verse 24 reverts back to Cyrus. Compare that with verse 5. There's a fourth category of sources here, and that is the prose historical review.

The first six chapters of Ezra do not involve Ezra. These accounts are needed to link the two main characters at the end of Chronicles. Except for 5-4, they were written in third person.

The exception in 5-4 may point to perhaps a prophetic source. And then a fifth kind of text, this is Nehemiah 9, 5-38, a poetic historical review. We have here beautiful poetry remembering God's grace in Israel's history.

It's actually cast as a prayer, a corporate prayer. Then the Levites, Jeshua, Kadmiel, Bani, Heshab, Benaiah, Sherabiah, Hodiah, Shebaniah, Petahiah said, Arise, bless the Lord your God forever and ever. And then you have this magnificent prayer and blessing, and it's a beautiful composition, and it was incorporated in this document as well.

Well, let's end this discussion by just briefly outlining the book of Ezra-Nehemiah. I'm counting this as one book. The big outline would involve five sections.

First, reconstituting the people of Yahweh, that's Ezra 1, 1 to 6, 22. This is that prose part, prose historical recollection of how the people came back from exile in 538 B.C. The second part, the mission of Ezra, rebuilding the spiritual walls of Jerusalem, 7-1 to 1044. Four.

The third part, the mission of Nehemiah, rebuilding the physical walls of Jerusalem, Nehemiah 1 to 7. Fourth, the climax of Ezra's work, the magnificent renewal of worship. The people come to Ezra, and they say, won't you please read us the Torah? I love this chapter because it highlights, to me at least, it highlights to me the hunger these people had for the Word of God. And when this text talks about the Torah, there are some people who think that this was the first time the entire Pentateuch, which was later called the Torah, was read for the first time.

Well, a major problem with this is that the Pentateuch, you couldn't read the Pentateuch in three hours, you know, from 9 o'clock in the morning till noon. You couldn't read the Pentateuch in that time. But there are a couple of other problems.

When it talks about the Torah, I think we should interpret the expression, the Torah, in the sense that this word with the article in the front generally had in the Psalms, in the Pentateuch, and in some of the prophets, at this point or to this point, that phrase, the Torah, as a written document, referred primarily to the book of Deuteronomy, the speeches of Moses in Deuteronomy. When the psalmist talks about how I love your Torah, O Lord, he's generally talking about that. The other reason for going this way is you can read Deuteronomy in three hours quite easily.

It makes good sense. But as you read on, you discover that in the context of this, they found written in the Torah how the Lord had commanded through Moses that the sons of Israel should live in booths during the of the seventh month. What? Really? The festival of booths? In Deuteronomy 31, verses 9 to 13, Moses, or the narrator says, then Moses wrote down all the words of this Torah, and he handed it to the elders and to the Levitical priests, and then he instructed the Levitical priests to read this to the people, the whole thing, every seven years at the festival of booths.

Well, it dawns on these people, it's time for the festival of booths. That's what we heard, and so the people celebrate the festival of booths in response to what they hear. This link to the festival of booths clinches it for me, in my mind, that what Ezra was reading that day was the original Torah, the book, well, the speeches of Moses in Deuteronomy, probably by now, as a single scroll.

This was a scroll that Josiah's men had discovered in the temple. This was the scroll that David had in mind when he told Solomon, don't forget to live according to all that is written in the Torah of Moses. That is what I think is involved in this one.

This is the my favorite part of these two books, to see how the worship is renewed, and it is worship that is centered in the hearing of the word. The scriptures were written to be heard in community, and at this moment, all the people gather, men, women, children, anybody who could understand, and to be sure they understood, Ezra also engaged a bunch of Levites to help him interpret it, because this text was written in Hebrew, but these people had come from Babylon, where Aramaic had become the language of the street, and so it had to be interpreted and translated into that language. In chapters 773 to 1027, you have the climax of Ezra's work, and then this book, Ezra Nehemiah, ends in 111 to 1331 with a description of further reforms of Nehemiah.

These are fascinating compositions for many reasons, not only for exploring how biblical authors wrote, but also for exploring how to revive a community, and in this case, we see it revived based on the hearing of the living and life-giving word of God. In the Torah of Moses, he had said in chapters 31, 9 to 13 especially, but he had reminded the people of this in several other places. He had instructed the Levites to read the Torah, that they may hear, that they may learn, that they may fear, that they may obey, that they may live.

The Torah is the key to life, and that's what these people experienced at this moment. Dr. Block, could I ask two quick questions? Yeah. One is, you use a phrase, historiographic.

Historiography and historiographic. What does that second one mean? Historiographic. That means that when you read this material, you read it not only for the facts of history, but for the point of the writing of this historical document.

Okay. They are historical documents, but it's not history for history's sake. Yeah.

Okay. The point of none of these texts is simply that you can reconstruct events. It's like the gospels.

The point is always theological, and on that count, in German, we have the distinction between historie, i.e., and Geschichte. Historie is the facts of history. Geschichte is the facts of history, along with interpretations of causation and significance and analysis.

The author is interacting, using the text for a purpose that is more than historical. That's how I use those words. All right.

The other question I had was, I'm wondering about the relationship between Ezra and Nehemiah. They seem to have slightly different functions, and do they come at different times? Do they overlap? Do they work together? It's not clear. They seem to have overlapped some, but they're involved in different kinds of issues.

Ezra is the priest. Nehemiah is, well, is he the governor? It's hard to tell. Nehemiah is an official and appointee from Persia.

So, he goes back to Persia at one point, apparently to give account. We never hear that of Ezra. Ezra is functioning as a priest in this community, and I think he is, there are those people who say that this is the first instance of synagogue worship, though they do later on bring their sacrifices according to the festival of Sukkoth, because by the time of Ezra and Nehemiah, the temple is there.

It's a small puny thing, but it is the temple. Thank you.