Chapter One
The Providence of God
(Ezra 1—3)
Thank God He gives us difficult things to do!” said Oswald Chambers in My Utmost for His Highest.1
The first time I read that statement, I shook my head in disagreement, but I was young and inexperienced then, and it seemed smarter to do the easy things that made me look successful. However, I’ve lived long enough to understand the wisdom of Chambers’ statement. I’ve learned that when God tells us to do difficult things, it’s because He wants us to grow. Unlike modern-day press agents and spin doctors, God doesn’t manufacture synthetic heroes; He grows the real thing. “The hero was a big man,” wrote Daniel Boorstin; “the celebrity is a big name.”2
In God’s Hall of Heroes are the names of nearly 50,000 Jews who in 538 BC left captivity in Babylon for responsibility in Jerusalem. God had called them back home to do a difficult job: to rebuild the temple and the city and restore the Jewish community in their own land. This noble venture involved a four months’ journey plus a great deal of faith, courage, and sacrifice; and even after they arrived in the Holy City, life didn’t get any easier. But as you read the inspired record, you can see the providential leading of the Lord from start to finish, and “if God be for us, who can be against us?” (Rom. 8:31).
You see God’s providence at work in three key events.
1. THE RELEASE OF THE CAPTIVES (1:1–4)
More than a century before, the prophet Isaiah had warned the Jews that the people of Judah would be taken captive by Babylon and punished for their sins (Isa. 6:11–12; 10:11–12; 39:5–7), and his prophecy was fulfilled. In 605 BC, Nebuchadnezzar deported the royal family and took the temple vessels to Babylon. In 597, he sent into exile 7,000 “men of might” and 1,000 craftsmen (2 Kings 24:10–16), and in 586, he destroyed Jerusalem and the temple and exiled the rest of the Jews in Babylon, except for “the poor of the land” (2 Kings 25:1–21).
In 538, Cyrus the Great, king of Persia, conqueror of Babylon, issued a decree that permitted the exiled Jews to return to their land and rebuild their temple. This, too, had been prophesied by Isaiah (Isa. 44:28). What Cyrus did twenty-five centuries ago reminds us today of some important spiritual truths.
God is faithful to His Word. For at least forty years, the prophet Jeremiah had warned the leaders of Judah that the Babylonian exile was inevitable (see Jer. 20:4–6; 21:7–10). He pled with them to repent of their sins and surrender to Babylon. Only then could they save the city and the temple from ruin. The leaders didn’t listen—in fact, they called Jeremiah a traitor—and the Holy City and the temple were destroyed in 587–586.
But Jeremiah also announced that the captivity would be for seventy years (Jer. 25:1–14; 29:10; see Dan. 9:1–2). Bible students don’t agree on the dating of this period, whether it begins with the Babylonian invasion in 606 or the destruction of the city and temple in 587–586. From 606 to 537–536, when the remnant returned to Judah, is seventy years, but so also is the period from the fall of Jerusalem (586) to the completion of the second temple in 516. Regardless of which calculation you accept, the prediction and its fulfillment are astonishing.3 Whether He promises chastening or blessing, God is always faithful to His Word. “Not one thing has failed of all the good things which the LORD your God spoke concerning you” (Josh. 23:14 NKJV). “There has not failed one word of all His good promise” (1 Kings 8:56 NKJV). “Heaven and earth shall pass away,” said Jesus, “but my words shall not pass away” (Matt. 24:35).
God is faithful to His covenant. In spite of their sins, these exiles were God’s chosen people and children of the covenant He had made with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob (Gen. 12:1–3). The nation had broken the covenant, but the Lord had remained faithful to His word. He had called the Jewish nation to bring blessing to all the earth, and He would see to it that they fulfilled their mission. Through them, the world would receive the knowledge of the one true and living God, the written Word of God, and ultimately the Savior of the world. “Salvation is of the Jews” (John 4:22).
God is in control of the nations. It was the Lord who raised up Nebuchadnezzar—“My servant” (Jer. 25:9; 27:6; 43:10)—to chasten the people of Judah, and then He raised up Cyrus to defeat the Babylonians and establish the Persian Empire. “Who has stirred up one from the east, calling him in righteousness to his service? He hands nations over to him and subdues kings before him” (Isa. 41:2 NIV; see also v. 25). The Lord called Cyrus “my shepherd” (44:28) and “His anointed” (45:1), and Isaiah prophesied that Cyrus would liberate the exiles and enable them to rebuild their city and temple (v. 13).
God’s people need to remember that the Lord God is sovereign over all nations and can do what He pleases with the most powerful rulers. Nebuchadnezzar had to learn this lesson the hard way (Dan. 4:28–32), but then he confessed: “His [God’s] dominion is an everlasting dominion, and His kingdom is from generation to generation. All the inhabitants of the earth are reputed as nothing; He does according to His will in the army of heaven and among the inhabitants of the earth. No one can restrain His hand” (Dan. 4:34–35 NKJV).
God can do as He pleases with the rulers of the earth, and He has demonstrated this in His dealings with Pharaoh (Ex. 9:16; Rom. 9:17), Ahasuerus (The book of Esther), Sennacherib (2 Kings 19:28), Augustus Caesar (Luke 2:1), and Herod Agrippa I (Acts 12:20–24). King Jehoshaphat said it perfectly: “O LORD, God of our fathers, are you not the God who is in heaven? You rule over all the kingdoms of the nations. Power and might are in your hand, and no one can withstand you” (2 Chron. 20:6 NIV).
People don’t have to be Christian believers for God to use them. Whether a mayor, governor, senator, prime minister, ambassador, or president, God can exercise His sovereign power to accomplish His purposes for His people. This is one reason Paul exhorts believers to pray for those in authority, not that our political agenda might be fulfilled, but that God’s will might be accomplished on this earth (1 Tim. 2:1–8). “God can make a straight stroke with a crooked stick,” said Puritan preacher John Watson, and that’s what he did with Cyrus!
The king’s decree boldly acknowledged the Lord and called Him “the LORD God of heaven” (Ezra 1:2), a title that’s used seventeen times in Ezra, Nehemiah, and Daniel. The decree addressed two kinds of people: (1) those who wanted to return to their land and (2) those who preferred to remain in Babylon. The latter group was urged to give offerings to help finance the expenses of the journey and the restoration of the temple.4
The Jews also accepted gifts from their Gentile neighbors (v. 6 NIV). When the Jews left Egypt, they plundered the Egyptians (Ex. 12:35–36) and collected the wages the men should have received during their years of slavery. Now the Jews were making their “exodus” from captivity, so they collected wealth from their pagan neighbors and dedicated it to the Lord.5
2. THE RETURN OF THE REMNANT (1:5—2:67)
God not only stirred the spirit of Cyrus to grant freedom to the captives (1:1), but He also stirred the hearts of the Jews to give them the desire to return to Judah (v. 5). “For it is God who works in you both to will and to do for His good pleasure” (Phil. 2:13 NKJV). The same God who ordains the end (the rebuilding of the temple) also ordains the means to the end, in this case, a people willing to go to Judah and work.
The treasure (1:5–11). Not only did the travelers carry their own personal belongings, but they carried 5,400 gold and silver temple vessels which had been taken from Jerusalem by Nebuchadnezzar (2 Kings 25:8–17; Jer. 52:17–23; Dan. 1:2; 5:1–3). These items were carefully inventoried by the treasurer and delivered to Sheshbazzar, the appointed ruler of Judah.
Who was Sheshbazzar? He’s mentioned four times in Ezra (1:8, 11; 5:14, 16) but not once in any of the other postexilic books. He’s called “the prince of Judah” (1:8 KJV, NIV), a title that can mean “leader” or “captain” and often referred to the heads of the tribes of Israel (Num. 1:16, 44; 7:2; Josh. 9:15–21). The word “Judah” in Ezra 1:8 refers to the district of Judah in the Persian Empire, not to the tribe of Judah; so Sheshbazzar was the appointed leader of “the children of the province [of Judah]” (Ezra 2:1).
Many Bible students believe that Sheshbazzar was another name for Zerubbabel, the governor of Judah, who with Joshua the high priest directed the work of the remnant as they rebuilt the city and the temple. He’s mentioned twenty times in the postexilic books, and according to 1 Chronicles 3:16–19 was a grandson of King Jehoiakim and therefore a descendant of David.
Ezra 5:16 states that Sheshbazzar laid the foundation of the temple, while Ezra 3:8–13 attributes this to Zerubbabel, and Zechariah 4:9 confirms it. It seems logical to conclude that Sheshbazzar and Zerubbabel were the same person. It wasn’t unusual in that day for people to have more than one given name, especially if you were a Jew born in a foreign land.
When you add the numbers given in Ezra 1:9–10, they total 2,499, but the total given in verse 11 is 5,400. A contradiction? Not necessarily, for it was important that Zerubbabel and the leaders keep a careful inventory of the temple treasure, and it’s not likely they would make that big a blunder. The statement in 1:10, “and other vessels a thousand” suggests that verses 9–10 list the larger and more valuable items, while many smaller objects weren’t even listed in cate...