Ezra 1
About EzraWritten by AI
Ezra tells how God brought His people home after the exile in Babylon. It picks up exactly where 2 Chronicles ends, with the decree of Cyrus, and covers roughly eighty years in two parts. Chapters 1 to 6 follow the first return and the long, interrupted work of rebuilding the temple. Chapters 7 to 10 follow Ezra himself, a priest and teacher of the Law, about sixty years later.
Ezra and Nehemiah were counted as one book in early Jewish tradition, and Ezra is traditionally credited with writing it, using lists, letters, and his own first-person memoirs. Some scholars think a later editor gathered the material. Parts of chapters 4 to 7 are written in Aramaic, the language of the Persian empire's letters.
Watch for the hand of God working through foreign kings, for opposition that slows but cannot stop His work, and for a people learning again to live by His word. Ezra “had set his heart to study the Law of the LORD, to practice it, and to teach.”
Before you read Ezra 1Written by AI
Cyrus king of Persia, stirred by the LORD, lets the Jews return to Jerusalem to rebuild the temple. Neighbors help with gifts, and Cyrus gives back the temple vessels Nebuchadnezzar had carried off. Notice that this fulfills what God had promised through Jeremiah.
The Proclamation of Cyrus
In the first year of Cyrus king of Persia, to fulfill the word of the LORD spoken through Jeremiah, the LORD stirred the spirit of Cyrus king of Persia to send a proclamation throughout his kingdom and to put it in writing as follows:
“This is what Cyrus king of Persia says:
‘The LORD, the God of heaven, who has given me all the kingdoms of the earth, has appointed me to build a house for Him at Jerusalem in Judah.
Whoever among you belongs to His people, may his God be with him, and may he go to Jerusalem in Judah and build the house of the LORD, the God of Israel; He is the God who is in Jerusalem. And let every survivor, wherever he lives, be assisted by the men of that region with silver, gold, goods, and livestock, along with a freewill offering for the house of God in Jerusalem.’”
So the family heads of Judah and Benjamin, along with the priests and Levites—everyone whose spirit God had stirred—prepared to go up and rebuild the house of the LORD in Jerusalem.
And all their neighbors supported them with articles of silver and gold, with goods and livestock, and with valuables, in addition to all their freewill offerings.
Cyrus Restores the Holy Vessels
King Cyrus also brought out the articles belonging to the house of the LORD that Nebuchadnezzar had carried away from Jerusalem and placed in the temple of his gods. Cyrus king of Persia had them brought out by the hand of Mithredath the treasurer, who counted them out to Sheshbazzar the prince of Judah. This was the inventory:
30 gold dishes,
1,000 silver dishes,
29 silver utensils,
30 gold bowls,
410 matching silver bowls,
and 1,000 other articles.
In all, there were 5,400 gold and silver articles. Sheshbazzar brought all these along when the exiles went up from Babylon to Jerusalem.