Welcome to Bible Fiber. I am Shelley Neese, president of The Jerusalem Connection, a Christian organization devoted to sharing the story of the people of Israel, both ancient and modern.
This week we are studying chapter 8, the continuation of the Ezra memoir. Before the caravan of returnees sets out, Ezra recruits volunteers to join him, especially Levites and temple servants. The chapter also describes a bit about their travel preparations and reveals Ezra’s main concern. While the actual journey is not the chapter’s focus, the narrator highlights the particulars of their departure and arrival.
Once again, the book incorporates a list into the narrative. Ezra is slowly killing us with these lists, but in this case he writes the list in first-person. Ezra introduces the record: “this is the genealogy of those who went up with me from Babylonia, in the reign of King Artaxerxes” (8:1). The first names recorded are two priests, descendants of Phinehas, the priest forever celebrated for his zealous defense of Israel’s purity in the wilderness wanderings. God promised Phineas a “covenant of a lasting priesthood, because he was zealous for the honor of his God and made atonement for the Israelites” (Num. 25:13). Later in the book, Ezra demonstrated a Phineas-like zeal for protecting the holy seed of Israel.
Next on his list of volunteers, Ezra added Hattush, a descendant of David. Like Ezra’s own impeccable ancestry (7:1-5), his leadership team included exiles with the proper lineage. Ezra’s returning party had the credibility of priestly and royal status. However, Hattush’s name does not come up again in the rest of Ezra or Nehemiah. Hattush never took over any leadership roles in the restored community or succeeded Zerubbabel.
The long genealogical record grouped the rest of the laity by family name. In all but one case (the clan of Joab), the families were the same pilgrims listed in the first journey to Jerusalem (2:3-15). After 80 years, the families were reunited in Judah.
Ezra named twelve extended families joining the pilgrimage. Possibly, there were more families who joined but the editor wanted to highlight the number twelve. Twelve symbolized the full representation of all twelve of Israel’s tribes. The number of male travelers tallied up to 1,500 returnees. By most estimates, adding women and children brought the total to approximately 5,000 travelers. While the caravan was large enough for Ezra’s liking, the number hardly approached the 50,000 included in Zerubbabel’s initial party.
With two priests, one descendant of David, and twelve clans, Ezra’s assembly looked to be in good shape. All the travelers gathered by “the river that runs to Ahava” which was likely a canal near Babylon that ran off from the Tigris or Euphrates river toward a town called Ahava (8:15). They camped at the canal for three days. After conducting a rollcall, Ezra discovered that among the substantial number of priests in his party, there was not a single Levite (8:15). The Levites were no-shows.
Levites were necessary for guarding the temple, keeping the gates, and playing music. The Kohanim, a subsect within the tribe of Levi, administered the sacrifices. Ezra’s journey was useless if he was not delivering additional Levites to serve in the Jerusalem temple. Even to make the journey, Ezra needed Levites to transport the holy ritual vessels. Since the days of the wilderness wanderings, only Levites were permitted to handle sacred worship items (Num. 4:4).
How is it that out of 1,500 men, none of them were descendants of Levi? The first caravan that left fifty years before with the permission of King Cyrus suffered the same void. Though Zerubbabel’s group had 4,000 priests, only 74 Levites made the journey (2:40).
The narrator made clear in Ezra’s opening that all those who joined the first pilgrimage responded to God’s stirring up of their spirits to obey and return (1:5). That reality begged the question: why were so many Levites resisting God’s call? Why were they difficult to persuade? Where was their stirring?
Levites had been set apart by God since the days of Moses on Mount Sinai. They were the ones who rallied with Moses when the whole of the camp was engaged in worshiping the golden calf. When Moses came down Mount Sinai and witnessed the tragedy of the golden calf, only the Levites volunteered to obey Yahweh and take down the offenders (Ex. 32:28-29). Since that moment, God upheld the Levites as the firstborn sons of Israel, commissioned as the religious leaders of the people and custodians of the temple.
While their role in the community was an honor and privilege, their vocation also denied them family land and private income. They depended on the generosity of the temple worshipers for their daily food and provisions. Of all the returnees, it would be the Levites whose lifestyle would change the most by leaving Babylon and returning to the land of Israel. If the first wave was short on Levites, it is logical that by the next generation the Levites were even more hesitant to upend their lifestyles. They were aware of their priestly heritage but had no experience with the reality of temple service.
Ezra surely knew that Jerusalem was already suffering from the lack of Levites to service the temple. In fact, an inadequate number of Levites plagued the Second Temple period all the way up to the Roman era. Ezra’s own mission was to appoint magistrates and judges who could teach and interpret the laws of Yahweh. For that tall task, Ezra needed Levites. Religious instruction was part of the Levite’s duties. He would not be able to revive Torah adherence in the community all on his own.
Since Ezra could not accept the absence of Levites, he sent a delegation of eleven hand-picked wise men on a recruiting mission. The delegation went to a place called Casiphia which was apparently a mainstay for Levites and temple servants (8:16-17). Casiphia is an unidentified historical location, but from the description in Ezra it almost sounds like an early version of the synagogue, a place where educated Jews gathered and studied Torah.
Ezra told the delegation exactly what to say. Apparently, the speech was persuasive (8:17). After a two-week ordeal, they succeeded in enlisting 38 Levites from two families and 220 temple servants.
Before they set out on their three-and-a-half-month journey, Ezra called for a fast. He asked, “we might humble ourselves before our God, to seek from him a safe journey for ourselves, our children, and all our possessions” (8:21). To this day, Jewish people pray the Tefilat HaDerech before imparting on a trip. If you have ever flown to Israel, you might see religious Jewish travelers reciting this prayer from their prayer books before takeoff. Christians as well are sensitive to praying for one another’s safe travels. A common Christianese is asking prayer for “travel mercies.”
Ezra was extra anxious about their safety during the journey because he had declined the option of armed guards from the Persian courts to escort their caravan. Ezra admitted, “I was ashamed to ask the king for a band of soldiers and calvary to protect us against the enemy on our way, since we had told the king that the hand of our God is gracious to all who seek him, but his power and his wrath are against all who forsake him” (8:22). To Ezra, it would be hypocritical to ask for Persian escorts if he genuinely believed that no power on earth could stop the will of God. He wanted to demonstrate to his followers, and to the king, that God was truly all they needed.
I love Ezra’s candid admission that he was too embarrassed to ask the king for protection. This personal insight testifies to the humility of the leader. And yet, Ezra had faith in the promises put forth in the prophets about the return and ingathering of the remnant in Jerusalem. Ezra surely knew the promises laid out in Isaiah that when the time came for the exiles to return to the land, God would watch over their every step. Isaiah prophesied, “the Lord will go before you; the God of Israel will be your rear guard” (Isa. 52:12). With the prophetic promise that God would go before and behind the remnant, Ezra believed he was not putting his people at risk by forgoing the Persian guards.
The heavy load of silver and gold made the caravan extra vulnerable to bandits and corrupt provincial administrators. The king and his advisors donated to the cause, as did the Jews who stayed behind and brought parting gifts to the travelers. If the weight of a talent in Ezra’s time was the biblical standard of 75 pounds, the amount of precious metal that was in the caravan’s possession was upwards of 20 tons.
Ezra charged twelve leading priests and Levites with the transportation of the temple’s returned sacred items (8:30). In a businesslike manner, they weighed and inventoried the valuables as they transferred the goods to the care of the priests.
Before the priests officially accepted responsibility for the treasures, Ezra reminded the priests of their sacred status saying, “You are holy to the Lord, and the vessels are holy” (4:28). He trusted them to be honest stewards of the dedicated treasures in their possession.
The group arrived in Jerusalem in 458 BCE. The 900-mile journey took three and a half months to complete. Ezra’s memoir did not provide any details about their experience, other than praising God for delivering them “from the hand of the enemy and from ambushes along the way” (8:31). From Ezra’s language, it is unclear if they overcame hostile attacks or if God spared them from any incidents at all.
The degree of accountability for the delivery of the items was quite impressive. The handing over of the donations to Meremoth, the temple treasurer, was an orderly professional process (8:33-34). After carrying such a heavy load for three months, the twelve priests had to feel relieved depositing the offerings in the temple storage rooms. (I am always thrilled just to check in my suitcase at the airport and be free of its burden during the layover.) According to the inventory, the honest priests did not lose a single item along the way (8:34).
Like the previous finales in the book of Ezra, the people celebrated their accomplishment with sacrificial worship at the temple. They used a portion of the funds from their journey to make sin offerings and burnt offerings. Sin offerings cleansed them from the contamination of a lifetime in exile and burnt offerings demonstrated their thankfulness for God’s deliverance.
In these two verses, the story switched from first person to third person with the we briefly becoming the they. Perhaps the book’s editor wanted the story to flow in the second half in the same way it had the first. He needed to insert his own transition from the journey period to the settlement period.
Or the editor, with his fondness for primary source documents, included an official temple document listing the sacrifices of the returnees.
Once the new arrivals deposited the temple offerings, the other matter of importance was “deliver the king’s commissions to the king’s satraps and to the governors of the province Beyond the River” (8:36). This is a reference to King Artaxerxes letters endorsing Ezra as the community’s new administrative leader tasked with teaching and enforcing Jewish law and the king’s laws.
Imperial officials got the message that Ezra had full permission to set up a religious judicial system.
Every time Ezra defied the odds, he credited the “good hand of our God upon us.” The guiding hand of God is the theological theme in all of Ezra’s firsthand accounts. He “took courage” when God saw to it that he won the favor of the king and his counselors (7:28). He saw God’s hand as guiding his recruitment of volunteers and the lobbying of the Levites (8:18). He praised God for the accomplishment of delivering the treasures and avoiding danger (8:31). Ezra was uniquely humble and genuinely appreciative of God’s provision during every step of the pilgrimage.
Thank you for listening and please continue to participate in this Bible Reading Challenge. Next week we are reading Ezra 9. Ezra takes on the role of Torah enforcer. For all the Biblical references each week, please see the show transcript on our blog or by signing up for our emails at www.thejerusalemconnection.us/
I do not say all the references in the podcast but they are all in the transcript.
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Shabbat Shalom