Scripture Daily

Context No. 1023 of 4322 · Ezra

Context · Reflection

Ezra 4:7-11: in context

7In the days of Artaxerxes, Bishlam, Mithredath, Tabeel, and the rest of his companions wrote to Artaxerxes king of Persia; and the writing of the letter was written in Syrian and delivered in the Syrian language. 8Rehum the chancellor and Shimshai the scribe wrote a letter against Jerusalem to Artaxerxes the king as follows. 9Then Rehum the chancellor, Shimshai the scribe, and the rest of their companions, the Dinaites, and the Apharsathchites, the Tarpelites, the Apharsites, the Archevites, the Babylonians, the Shushanchites, the Dehaites, the Elamites, 10and the rest of the nations whom the great and noble Osnappar brought over and settled in the city of Samaria, and in the rest of the country beyond the River, and so forth, wrote. 11This is the copy of the letter that they sent: To King Artaxerxes, from your servants, the people beyond the River.

The exiles have returned to rebuild Jerusalem, and opposition organizes. This passage introduces a formal letter written to King Artaxerxes of Persia by the officials of the surrounding provinces, Rehum the commander, Shimshai the scribe, and a long list of resettled peoples, accusing the Jews and their rebuilding of the city. The text preserves the bureaucratic detail, the languages, the signatories, the address, To King Artaxerxes, from your servants, before it will give the letter's slanderous contents in the verses that follow.

What this passage shows is the machinery of opposition to God's work. The enemies of the rebuilding do not attack with swords; they attack with paperwork, a carefully composed official letter, the right languages, the proper channels, a coalition of local powers all signing on. It is a reminder that resistance to what God is doing often comes not as open violence but as respectable, procedural, well-connected opposition, people who know how to work the system to stall and discredit. And notice the coalition: a whole roster of resettled peoples with competing interests uniting for one purpose, to stop Jerusalem from rising again. Opposition to good work has a way of making allies of groups that agree on nothing else. The rebuilders were not facing a single obvious foe but a whole apparatus arrayed against them, using legitimate-looking means. It is worth remembering, when a good and God-given work stalls under a pile of official resistance, that this is an old pattern, and that in Ezra's story the work, halted for a time, finally went forward because God moved the very kings the letters appealed to.

When a good work I am part of meets organized, respectable, procedural opposition, do I lose heart, or trust the God who in Ezra's day moved even kings to let his work go forward?

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