Ezra 8:23
So we fasted and petitioned our God about this, and He granted our request.
BSB
ASV
So we fasted and besought our God for this: and he was entreated of us.
KJV
So we fasted and besought our God for this: and he was intreated of us.
So we fasted, and besought our God for this,.... Sought the Lord by fasting and prayer for a good journey, and preservation in it: and he was entreated of us; accepted their prayer, as Jarchi, so that they came safe to Jerusalem.
Note, Our prayers must always be seconded with our endeavours; the care of Christ's gospel, his church, and ordinances, must not be so left with him but that it must also be committed to faithful men, 2 Tim. ii.
Really, Ezra had two alternatives there: the carnal or the spiritual. He could have resorted to the carnal and asked for that band of soldiers and horsemen; it would not have been sinful, but it would have been on a low level of faith.
Rare words are the text's own signal of a deliberate thread: the fewer the occurrences, the more the places it appears belong together.
The walk8
Follow this verse’s cross-references two steps out. Each card is a verse this one points to, and beneath it the verses that one points to in turn. Where several different paths arrive at the same place, that place is listed first: the text keeps returning to it. Every stop shows its own words, and every stop is a page.
Through
Deuteronomy 4:29But if from there you will seek the LORD your God, you will find Him if you seek Him with all your heart and with all your soul.
leads to
Blessed are those who keep His testimonies and seek Him with all their heart.
Then you will call upon Me and come and pray to Me, and I will listen to you.
But in their distress they turned to the LORD, the God of Israel, and sought Him, and He was found by them.
Seek the LORD while He may be found; call on Him while He is near.
With all my heart I have sought You; do not let me stray from Your commandments.
Through
Ezra 8:31On the twelfth day of the first month we set out from the Ahava Canal to go to Jerusalem, and the hand of our God was upon us to protect us from the hands…
leads to
And there by the Ahava Canal I proclaimed a fast, so that we might humble ourselves before our God and ask Him for a safe journey for us and our children, with all our…
He had begun the journey from Babylon on the 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…
Now I assembled these exiles at the canal that flows to Ahava, and we camped there three days. And when I searched among the people and priests, I found no Levites there.