Day 341: Ezra 7-10 | Read The Bible In A Year | Bible Study with Commentary by Dr. Manny Arango

Welcome to the Bible Department podcast, powered by Arma. We are walking through the entire Bible in a year. You can go to the description or thebobledapartment.com to download a reading plan and join the journey. (gentle music) - Family, welcome to day 341. We are in Ezra chapters 7, 8, 9, and 10, four chapters of the Bible for you to read today. All right, I'm super, super excited because Ezra's finally got to get to Jerusalem. Ezra has now entered the chat, all right? Ezra is now in the book of Ezra. So it can be a little odd, right? For the first six chapters of the book of Ezra, Ezra is nowhere to be found. And then we get to Ezra chapter seven, verse one, and what does it say after these things? Now, I'm gonna have to give you context for after these things 'cause a lot of things happen after these things. But anyway, after these things during the reign of Artaxerxes, King of Persia, Ezra, son of Sariah, the son of Azariah, the son of Hylkiah, the son of Shalom, the son of Zedok, the son of Ahotub, the son of Amoriah, the son of Azariah, the son, oh my gosh. This blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. The son of Aaron, the chief priest, okay?

It's important that Ezra is a descendant of Aaron, okay? The chief priest. This Ezra came up from Babylon. He was a teacher, well-versed in the law of Moses, which the Lord, the God of Israel had given. The king had granted him everything he asked for the hand of the Lord, his God was on him. Talk about a killer introduction. Some of the Israelites, including priests, Levite's musicians, gatekeepers, temple servants, also came up to Jerusalem in the seventh year of King Artaxerxes. Ezra arrived in Jerusalem in the fifth month of the seventh year of the king. He had begun his journey from Babylon the first day of the first month. That's important. First day of the first month, and he arrived in Jerusalem on the first day of the fifth month. For the gracious hand of his God was on him. For Ezra had devoted himself to the study and observance of the law of the Lord and to teaching its decrees and laws in Israel. And then you're gonna get a copy of King Artaxerxes' letter, verse 13. Now I decree that any of the Israelites in my kingdom, including priests and Levites who volunteered to go to Jerusalem with you may go, you are sent by the king and his seven advisors

to inquire about Judah and Jerusalem in regard to the law of your God, which is in your hand. So Torah observance. If Zerubbabel is there to build the temple, Ezra is there to get the Torah in the hearts of the people 'cause it does not do anyone any good to have a temple, but not have the Torah. And then last Nehemiah, which we'll learn about tomorrow, is there to rebuild the walls. Would they need rhythms? They need worship. They need a temple. They need to re-institute sacrifice, okay? But then Ezra's gotta get their hearts right. This is spiritual renewal. And then last, they need protection, okay? So remember, what's the big 30,000 foot idea? Return, rebuild, repent. Return, rebuild, repent. If you just look at the book of Ezra, okay? Ezra chapters one through three were all about return. Zerubbabel brought people back. They returned to Jerusalem. Then Ezra chapters four through six, they rebuilt. And now in Ezra chapters seven through 10, they are going to repent, okay? So that's the 30,000 foot context, repent. All right, Ezra comes to Jerusalem. Let me give you some context and we'll dive into some nerdy nuggets.

This is the second wave of return. Now here's probably the context that a lot of us need, all right? Now when was the temple, when did the temple get rebuilt? 515 BC, 515 BC. What year is Ezra returning to Jerusalem? 458 BC. So we're talking 57, maybe 58 years after the temple is rebuilt, okay? So there's a massive gap in between that first wave that came with Zerubbabel and this wave that's coming with Ezra. Also, all the events of the book of Esther happened between 483 BC and 473 BC, okay? What's the context for the intermarriage and divorce issue? Now, when Ezra gets to Jerusalem, the number one issue that he is going to encounter is the fact that people have married pagan women, and this is a complicated and complex problem. Now, it's complicated for two reasons. It's complicated because when we get to the New Testament, and we get to a place like 1 Corinthians 7 and 1 Peter chapter 3, the New Testament is going to say that if you're a Christian and you're married to someone who's not a Christian, that you should not divorce them. However, when Ezra gets to Jerusalem and he finds that there are people who have intermarried, they've married non-Jews, Ezra's going to essentially have a mass divorce. Like leaders and Levites and priests are all going to divorce their pagan wives. And this is the repentance. Now, this is controversial because the Torah never says, "Don't marry people of different races." Okay? This is tension, it says, "Don't marry pagans." Like, let's just think about it, right? We've all just got done reading a book like Ruth, okay? And we have a Moabite woman who's then made a vow, "Your God will be my God, your people will be my people.

I'm going to go wherever you go." And because she vows to be, to attach herself to the covenant of the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, she can marry an Israel. And that's totally fine. There are multiple examples like people like Rahab who's a total Canaanite who gets grafted in. Why? Because she's going to be Torah observant, okay? So, Ezra is doing something that is completely new. And to be honest, pretty unique in the entire canon of Scripture. But no point before this were different races of people, not eligible for marriage, and at no point after this, okay? So there's a massive shift that's going to take place, and I'm going to actually walk you through exactly like what that shift is. I want us to turn to Ezra chapter 9 verse 2, okay? Ezra chapter 9, actually I'll just start reading like chapter 9 verse 1 and we'll get to verse 2. It says, "After these things had been done, the leaders came to me and said, 'The people of Israel, including the priests and the Levites, have not kept themselves separate from the neighboring people with their detestable practices.'" All right, so the people are now going to get compared to the Canaanites because essentially what Ezra's going to do is Ezra's going to make a claim that they need to be treated like Canaanites, okay? They're going to be equated to the Canaanites based on behavior, practices like those. So it doesn't say that they are those, it says that they are like those. Like those are the Canaanites, Hittites, parasites, Jebusites, Ammonites, Molobites, Egyptians, and Amorites. They have taken some of their daughters as wise for themselves, and their sons have mingled the holy race with the peoples around them, and the leaders and officials have led the way in this unfaithfulness.

All right, this marks a new moment in what's going to be like the standard for like biblical holiness because remember, what the people do when they come back from exile and then what is going to happen in the 400 years of silence leading up to the New Testament is actually going to create the world of the New Testament that we have, okay? So the word that's now used for the first time in the Bible is holy race, holy race, when Hebrew, holy seed, now up into this point, the Torah has said that the people of Israel are to be a holy people. That's actually the words that have been used for the entire Bible, holy people, holy people, holy people, and how do they act holy by keeping Torah, by worshiping Yahweh, by not having idols. So intermarriage prior to this moment has been less about race and more about religion, which is why a Moabite could, you could marry a Moabite as long as that Moabite is loyal to Yahweh and faithful to the covenant, okay? because there has not been a... introduces the idea that in order to keep the religion pure, the race has to be kept pure. And this is a new idea, this a brand new idea. And what is going to happen now from this moment on is the Jewish world is going to become way more focused on race than it is religious ideology. And I know this is so nuanced, but I want everyone to really realize that the vision that Yahweh has always had from Abraham is that all the nations of the world will be blessed through you, Israel, and the the commands to not intermarry have never been about race. They've always been about religion. And for the first time we see where Ezra's making it about race and this one decision by this one leader is going to carry consequences into the 400 years of silence and into the New Testament. By the time we enter into the New Testament, Paul is going to be radical in terms of his acceptance of Gentiles and the gospel going to Gentiles, radical. So if anyone's ever been like reading the Old Testament and you got people in the Old Testament like Rahab and like Ruth who are clearly not Jews and it's not a big issue, Zopora, like literally Moses' wife, Zopora, not a Jew, and it's like not an issue. And then you get to like the gospels and there's this clear like racial issue, like Peter for all attempts and purposes, up until like a pretty deep into the book of Acts, have some racist like ideologies. If you're kind of wondering like where did this come from? The seed of that is like really literally right here, Ezra chapter 9 verse 2.

And scholars are divided on this, okay? If you do a deep dive on this, you'll find there are certain scholars who are like, I think Ezra made the right call. There are other scholars who are like, I think Ezra was being a little racist. Also, because at no point in the Torah does it say to add a new sin on top of the original sin. So if marrying people who are pagans or inner marriage is a problem, that's what's an even bigger problem. Divorce! Literally Paul is going to have to like clean this up when we get to the New Testament. Because when we get to first Corinthians 7, Paul's essentially going to be like, hey, have you married a non-Christian? No, no, no, no, no. You're not going to divorce them and then remarry some cute Christian girl. No, no, no, no, no, no. Jesus and Paul are really going to come down on the line of even if this person wasn't God's will for you, the moment you married them, they now became God's will for you. So there is no like, hey, I'm going to go re-nig on this whole marriage situation because I was unsaved when I got married and I married an idiot and now I'm saved and there's better options. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. First Peter 3 and first Corinthians 7 are going to really push back on that idea as a whole. So why is Ezra doing this? Now, some people would say he had to do it, the tough call, but he had to do it. And he had to do it because the purity of, it's why genealogy is so important in Ezra's book. Genealogy is important because there's some people who literally, they can't even be priests because there is no proof that they are from the line of Aaron. So the reason that Ezra gives us all full genealogy is because genealogies are the proof that you actually can't even serve in the temple. So a lot of scholars will make an argument that Ezra had to do this or else it would jeopardize whether or not Jesus was fully Jewish. But that doesn't line up because in Matthew's genealogy of Jesus, there's multiple non-Jewish ancestors that Jesus has. Jesus's blood is not 100% pure Jew. It's not. It's not that it's just not true. David is part Moabite, okay? That's the whole point of the book of Ruth is to like show that King David is not 100% Jewish. is not a godly idea. That is a very secular idea. Even if Ezra was right or it's like, he's definitely interpreting scripture, which means he's taking the Torah, he's interpreting it, and he's applying it to a scenario that's unprecedented,

which honestly is gonna start what's called a rabbinic tradition. And the entire group of the Pharisees are gonna come from this discipline of taking the Torah, looking at new life scenarios and applying the Torah to scenarios that are unprecedented. And I just wanna put into perspective how big of a deal Ezra's gonna be. Ezra is going to be the person who edits, compiles, the final version of the Torah. Ezra is the reason that we have an Old Testament. Ezra is this, like Ezra's a teacher of the law, okay? And I know in the New Testament, this group is like kind of vilified, but that's what Ezra is. And honestly, this movement towards Torah observance is what's gonna start the group of the Pharisees and post 70 AD after 70 AD, rabbinic Pharisaical Judaism is the only form of Judaism that survives. So, Ezra's legacy is huge. And this is a big moment of what it means to be rabbinic. It means to take the Torah, which is not in a literal way, but can be outdated, quote unquote, and apply that law to life scenarios that we haven't encountered before. Tambly, "The weight is over, my brand new book, "Crushing Chaos is out now." And available everywhere books are sold. Literally, today, I walked into a Barnes & Noble

and I signed a bunch of copies at a physical location. So, you can grab this book at a physical Barnes & Noble or you can go to a books a million or Amazon or anywhere books are sold and grab a copy. If you enjoy reading the Bible from an ancient perspective, if you understand that the beauty of scripture is actually knowing it in context, then you'll love this book. And if there's any chaos in your personal life, I think that reading the Bible from an ancient perspective can actually help to crush the chaos in your life. I think this book is gonna be a New York Times bestseller. I really do. I think we wrote a good one. I think you should get a copy today. All right, back to the episode. One of the things that I don't want you to miss is that Ezra is talking to a new generation of God's people. That's very easy to miss, which is the same thing happened in the book of Deuteronomy. It's easy to kind of miss the fact that Moses is having to give the law a second time, aka Deuteronomy, because there's a new generation that wasn't there when the law was giving it not Sinai. So again, not only is this a new Exodus, but Ezra is being set up as a new Moses. There's actually a couple of things that connect Ezra as a new Moses, okay? And one of them is the time

in which Ezra departs from Persia, okay? The timing of the departure from Babylon. Chapter seven, verse nine says on the first day of the first month was the founding of his going up from Babylon. This coincided with the Israelites departure from Egypt on the first day of the first month. You can see Exodus chapter 12, verses one through two. Number two, he made sure that there were Levites and priests carrying the sacred temple vessels, okay? Just as there were among the Israelites in the wilderness in Numbers chapter 10. His support from the royal treasury is an extension of the plundering of the Egyptians motif from Exodus chapter three. Ezra prays for a straight path, okay, back to Jerusalem. This phrase adopts the promise of Isaiah 40 and the wilderness prepares the way of the Lord make a straight path in the desert for our God. Ezra mentions a three day rest after arriving in Jerusalem, which imitates the three day rest of Joshua in the Israelites after crossing the Jordan. Ezra is to appoint judges and leaders who will teach in administer justice, which corresponds precisely to Moses appointment of the same after the Exodus. Ezra is a new Moses, okay? He's a hundred percent seen as a new Moses. If this is the new Exodus, the rubble is not the Moses.

It is Ezra. And as we are gonna see tomorrow, Nehemiah is going to be saved. - All right, that's enough context clues. That's enough nerdy nuggets. What is our timeless truth for the day? Our timeless truth is that all three movements are gonna end with an anti-climactic response. You get to the end of the book of Ezra and you're kinda like, I mean, I, ah, ha, ha, like, it's not like it ends on a high note. And the whole point of partial fulfillment of the prophetic words of Jeremiah and Isaiah and no permanent change, 'cause what's gonna happen is that the people in Ezra's generation, they're gonna be spiritually inspired and repented for 25 years or so. And then they're gonna go right back to their normal behavior, which these books are actually supposed to get you to the place of, I think we should be believing for something else. And that something else is Jesus. These books are a fulfillment of prophecies, but not the full fulfillment. They are a change, but they're not permanent change. Only Jesus can bring permanent change. And that's what the entire Old Testament is doing. And that's a lesson that all of us need to learn, that only the person of Jesus in the work of the Holy Spirit can bring permanent change,

permanent revival and real lasting change, which is why Paul is going to say, it's not the commands that bring change. It's a different heart that brings change. And I just wanna always challenge leaders, pastors out there, don't go for behavior modification. Always, always, always, as we lead God's people, let us actually go for heart transformation. And that can't be done outside of the power of the Holy Spirit in the person of Jesus being preached and exalted. That's a timeless truth. Ezra's spiritual renewal, Ezra's spiritual repentance, it takes the people so far, but like every book of the Old Testament, it's supposed to get us to the place of, we need God's Spirit to be poured out on all flesh. We need the day of Pentecost. We need a Savior to go to the cross and actually die so that we can become temples of the Holy Spirit. It's a partial fulfillment. It's a change, but it's not permanent. And now that we're living on this side or the opposite side of Calvary, the opposite side of Pentecost, we actually have the power to believe for full fulfillment and for permanent change. And I would say, don't stop until you see everything that God has for us. Permanent change and full fulfillment of the promises of God.

- All right, tomorrow we got day 342. We got a brand new book of the Bible. We're gonna be in the book of Nehemiah, chapters one, two and three. If you're on a streak, I'm so proud of you. If you're not on a streak, I love you. I love you, I love you. I wish you was on a streak though. We are getting down to the wire, guys. We got Nehemiah and then we're gonna head into the last couple of books of the Bible. I'm super, super excited. I love you guys. I see right here tomorrow, same time, same place as we start the book of Nehemiah. Peace. - Thanks so much for joining us on the Bible Department podcast. If this episode was helpful, how about you leave a comment? Share with a friend and subscribe so that you never miss an episode. To learn more about the show, head to thebobledepartment.com. We'll see you right back here tomorrow.