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Context No. 114 of 4322 · Ezra

Context · Reflection

Ezra 7:1-10: in context

1Now after these things, in the reign of Artaxerxes king of Persia, Ezra the son of Seraiah, the son of Azariah, the son of Hilkiah, 2the son of Shallum, the son of Zadok, the son of Ahitub, 3the son of Amariah, the son of Azariah, the son of Meraioth, 4the son of Zerahiah, the son of Uzzi, the son of Bukki, 5the son of Abishua, the son of Phinehas, the son of Eleazar, the son of Aaron the chief priest— 6this Ezra went up from Babylon. He was a skilled scribe in the law of Moses, which the LORD, the God of Israel, had given; and the king granted him all his request, according to the LORD his God’s hand on him. 7Some of the children of Israel, including some of the priests, the Levites, the singers, the gatekeepers, and the temple servants went up to Jerusalem in the seventh year of Artaxerxes the king. 8He came to Jerusalem in the fifth month, which was in the seventh year of the king. 9For on the first day of the first month he began to go up from Babylon; and on the first day of the fifth month he came to Jerusalem, according to the good hand of his God on him. 10For Ezra had set his heart to seek the LORD’s law, and to do it, and to teach statutes and ordinances in Israel.

Ezra arrives in Jerusalem about eighty years after the first exiles returned, sent by the Persian king Artaxerxes with authority and funds. This passage introduces him, and it does so twice over, in two different ways.

First by descent. A genealogy runs sixteen generations back through Hilkiah and Zadok and Phinehas to Aaron the chief priest. That establishes his standing by blood. Then the second introduction, which is what the book actually cares about: he was a skilled scribe in the law of Moses. The hand of the LORD his God was on him, and the king granted all he asked.

The summary sentence is verse ten, and it has three parts in a deliberate order. Ezra had set his heart to study the law of the LORD, and to do it, and to teach its statutes in Israel. Study, then practice, then teaching. The teaching comes third, after he has done the thing himself. A man with an unimpeachable pedigree is remembered for the discipline he chose rather than the ancestry he inherited. Which of those three am I skipping, and am I teaching something I have not yet put into practice?

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