Ezra

This is the biblical figure Ezra. For the canonical book of the Old Testament, see Book of Ezra.

Ezra was a priest and scribe descended from Aaron through Eleazar and Phinehas (Ezra 7:1-5) who led a second group of Jewish exiles from Babylon to Jerusalem under a commission from King Artaxerxes I of Persia, and whose reforms there are narrated in the Book of Ezra that bears his name.

Life and ministry

Ezra is introduced as “a scribe skilled in the Law of Moses that the LORD, the God of Israel, had given” (Ezra 7:6), a description Elijah Porter Barrows took as the ground of the confidence later ages placed in his work: Ezra was “a ready scribe in the law of Moses, which the Lord God of Israel had given.”¹ Decades after the first return under Zerubbabel, Ezra obtained a sweeping commission from Artaxerxes authorizing him to teach the Law, appoint judges, and carry gold and silver for the temple’s service, then led a second company of exiles to Jerusalem (Ezra 7:11-8:36). On arriving, Ezra learned that the people, including priests and Levites, had intermarried with the surrounding pagan nations; he tore his garment in grief, confessed the sin publicly before the temple, and led the assembly to covenant that the foreign wives and children would be sent away (Ezra 9:1-10:17). Portions of the narrative shift from the third person into Ezra’s own first-person voice (Ezra 7:27-9:15), a feature also found in Jeremiah’s prophecy and not itself grounds for denying his authorship of the record.²

Ezra and the Hebrew canon

Jewish and Christian tradition has long credited Ezra with a formative role in fixing the text of the Hebrew Scriptures after the exile. Barrows argued that the trustworthiness of the Hebrew Bible as it has come down through later ages rests substantially on this work: “in the fidelity and skill of Ezra, who was ‘a ready scribe in the law of Moses, which the Lord God of Israel had given,’ as well as in the intelligence and deep earnestness of the men associated with him, we have a reasonable ground of assurance that the sacred books which have come down to us through their hands contain, in all essential particulars, the primitive text in a pure and uncorrupt form.”¹ Benedict Pictet likewise placed Ezra among the chief priests of the restoration period, noting the tradition that credits him with instituting the “great synagogue,” the body Jewish tradition associates with the prophets Haggai, Zechariah, and Malachi that oversaw the temple’s restored worship and the rejection of the unclean Samaritans from it.³

Related Doctrines

• Book of Ezra
• Nehemiah
• Priest
• Development of the OT canon
• Providence of God

References

1. Elijah Porter Barrows, Companion to the Bible (New York: American Tract Society, 1867), 175-182: “But in the fidelity and skill of Ezra, who was ‘a ready scribe in the law of Moses, which the Lord God of Israel had given,’ as well as in the intelligence and deep earnestness of the men associated with him, we have a reasonable ground of assurance that the sacred books which have come down to us through their hands contain, in all essential particulars, the primitive text in a pure and uncorrupt form.” ↩ ↩²

2. Barrows, Companion to the Bible, 260. ↩

3. Benedict Pictet, Christian Theology, trans. Frederick Reyroux (Philadelphia: Presbyterian Board of Publication, 1845), 236: “Among the priests also of those times must be reckoned Ezra, the scribe, to whom some ascribe the institution of the great synagogue, in which were the prophets Haggai, Zechariah, Malachi… Under these persons the church was reformed, the temple and altar and service restored, the unclean Samaritans rejected, and many other good things performed.” ↩