Ezra1chapter 1

Ezra 1:1-2

The book opens by repeating the last two verses of 2 Chronicles almost word for word, the canon's own splice: Chronicles ends with the summons and Ezra begins the same sentence again, one story handed from one scroll to the next. The Lord stirs up the spirit of Cyrus so that the word of the Lord by the mouth of Jeremiah is fulfilled, the seventy years of Jer 25:11-12 and 29:10 counted out to the year. Isaiah had named Cyrus by name more than a century before his birth, Isa 44:28 and 45:1, one of only two men in the Old Testament named in prophecy ahead of their lives, the other being Josiah at 1 Ki 13:2. Cyrus's own decree calls the God of Israel the God of heaven, the court title of the Persian era that recurs through these two books far more than anywhere else in Scripture.

Ezra 1:3-4

Cyrus's proclamation turns from praise to summons: whoever among the Lord's people wishes may go up to Jerusalem and build the house of the Lord God of Israel, and his God be with him. Those who stay behind are given a role of their own, to help their neighbors who go with silver, gold, goods and beasts, besides whatever is freely offered for the house of God. The command falls on conscience rather than compulsion, for Cyrus commands no one, he only opens the road and asks the ones who remain to fund the ones who take it.

Ezra 1:5-6

The chief fathers of Judah and Benjamin rise, with the priests and Levites and all whose spirit God had raised, the same stirring that moved Cyrus in verse one now moving the remnant. The king's decree and the exile's will act by one hand, an empire's word and a captive people's readiness meeting in a single sentence. Their neighbors who stay behind strengthen their hands with vessels of silver and gold, goods and beasts and precious things, besides all that was willingly offered, so those who remain in Babylon fund those who leave it.

Ezra 1:7-8

Cyrus brings out the vessels of the house of the Lord that Nebuchadnezzar had carried off and set in the house of his own gods, the temple vessels that survived seventy years in pagan storage. Mithredath the treasurer hands them over by count to Sheshbazzar, the prince of Judah, so the return begins with an inventory rather than a sermon. The list answers the list at 2 Ki 25:13-17, where the same vessels are catalogued going out of Jerusalem broken and carried away; here they are catalogued coming home.

Ezra 1:9-11

The inventory itemizes gold chargers, silver chargers, knives, basons and other vessels before the record totals five thousand four hundred pieces of gold and silver in all. The individual numbers listed do not sum to the stated total in the Hebrew text as it stands, a detail the commentators note without pretending to settle it. Sheshbazzar brings up every vessel with the exiles who come from Babylon to Jerusalem, the chapter closing where it began, a king's decree turned into a counted, carried, delivered inheritance.