The book of Ezra

At a glance

Chapters

10

Author

Anonymous; incorporates first-person memoirs attributed to Ezra

Written

Likely fourth century BC

Written for

A small returned community rebuilding under Persian rule

Themes

return, rebuilding, opposition, identity

What it is about

Ezra covers the return from Babylon in stages and the rebuilding of the temple against local opposition and administrative delay. It is a book about small-scale, discouraging, bureaucratic work, which makes it unusual company in the canon.

The scene that defines it is in chapter 3: as the foundation is laid, the young shout for joy and the old men who had seen the first temple weep aloud, and the text says the noise could not be distinguished. That is an unusually precise description of what restoration actually feels like.

The final chapters concern intermarriage and are genuinely difficult, ending with mass separations that the book presents as faithfulness and that most modern readers find troubling. It does not soften them.

Where to start

Chapter 3, for the foundation scene, which is the emotional centre of the whole return.

The chapters worth knowing

• Ezra 3 — The foundation laid, the young shouting and the old men weeping, indistinguishably.
• Ezra 4 — Opposition by letter and legal delay, which is how most rebuilding actually gets stopped.
• Ezra 9 — Ezra's prayer of confession, and the beginning of the book's most difficult section.

What people get wrong about it

That the return was a triumph. The book is candid that it was small, contested and disappointing to everybody who remembered what had been there before.

Questions