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AnonymousBible: Old Testament: English Standard Version
Nonfiction | Scripture | Adult | Published in 1611A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Historical Books Part 3 (Ezra-Esther)Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Ezra Summary
After the Babylonian invasion, the traditional terminology for God’s covenant-people transitions from “Israelites” to “Jews,” as the remaining people are mostly composed of descendants from the southern kingdom of Judah. The book of Ezra, named after its main figure, narrates the transition to the next major epoch in Jewish history, the return from exile. The book of Ezra is divided into two main parts, narrating discrete periods in Jewish post-exilic life. The first period (Chapters 1-6) covers the initial return from exile and the dedication of the temple under a leader named Zerubbabel. The second period (Chapters 7-10) occurs decades later and tells of the arrival of Ezra the priest and his temple reforms (according to most dating schemes, Ezra arrives in Jerusalem in 458 BCE). This second part of the book is roughly contemporary with Nehemiah, who arrives in 445 BCE, and, in some ancient manuscript traditions, the two books appear as a single text. The jump from the earlier period in Ezra to the later period is easy to miss in the text, introduced only with the words “now after this” at the beginning of Chapter 7. The style of Ezra (as well as Nehemiah) consists of a combination of lists, memoirs, and letters. Ezra in particular is notable for the extensive political correspondence it records, including letters in Aramaic.
The initial group of returnees travel back to the area of Jerusalem, which now lay in ruins. These returned exiles work to reinstate the worship of God, encouraged by the prophets Haggai and Zechariah, and to do this they must rebuild the temple. They successfully put a temple up on the spot where Solomon’s temple stood, but it does not match the grandeur of the former temple. Later, during Ezra’s period, the priests and leaders need to address several further problems, including a widespread practice of intermarriage with people who had not been under God’s covenant. Intermarriage was contrary to God’s law, a rule meant to ensure that the practices of other nations would not infiltrate Israel’s worship. The returned exiles confess their failure to keep God’s law, and Ezra leads them in a process of recommitting themselves to the stipulations of the covenant.
Nehemiah Summary
The book of Nehemiah, like the book of Ezra, relates the history of post-exilic Jews who transition back from Babylon to Israel after the rise of the Persian Empire. It shares many similarities with Ezra and may at one time have formed a single text with that book, as together they represent an interwoven collection of lists, letters, and memoirs. Nehemiah is composed of three main sections: Chapters 1-7, which give portions of Nehemiah’s memoir (written, unusually for Old Testament histories, in the first person), narrating his arrival and rebuilding of the walls; Chapters 8-10, which relate a series of religious ceremonies and which some scholars identify as being a portion of Ezra’s memoirs; and Chapters 11-13, which offer substantial lists relating to post-exilic Jerusalemite society before returning to a final installment of Nehemiah’s memoirs.
Nehemiah is a Jew serving as a court official in the Persian administration under King Artaxerxes, and he learns about the devastated condition in which the city of Jerusalem still lies. Moved by this report, Nehemiah begs permission to go and rebuild the city’s walls. The king gives his approval, and Nehemiah leads a group of Jews out of exile and back to the land of Israel. Once there, they begin work to restore the walls of the city. Their progress is troubled by opposition from the leaders of nearby populations, and because of this threat, Nehemiah’s workers must labor with weapons in one hand and tools in the other. With the walls restored, the priests lead the people of Jerusalem in a service of worship, including a reading of the law and a recommitment to the covenant. Nehemiah closes his book with an account of his further reforms, including efforts to deal with the problem of intermarriage (as in the book of Ezra) and details regarding the functions of the temple.
Esther Summary
The book of Esther relates a portion of Jewish history after the rise of the Persian Empire, under whose administration the restorations of Ezra and Nehemiah take place. Many Jews who did not return to Israel remain in Mesopotamia under Persian rule. The book of Esther is a Persian court drama set in the reign of Ahasuerus (usually identified as either Xerxes or Artaxerxes, emperors who ruled in the fifth century BCE). Esther is unique in the Old Testament as the only book that does not specifically mention God, although most interpreters view divine providence as a significant background theme of the text.
Ahasuerus decides to banish his wife for a minor offense and to find a new wife. Esther, a Jewish woman whose ethnicity is unknown to Persian officials, is selected and crowned as the new queen. Meanwhile, Haman, a high official of the administration, becomes infuriated with another member of Esther’s family, a man named Mordecai, who will not bow down to Haman as he passes in the street. In response to this affront, Haman plans a genocidal policy against Mordecai’s people, the Jews, setting a date on which Persian citizens are instructed to massacre the Jews and plunder their property. Mordecai prevails on Esther to persuade Ahasuerus to change Haman’s legislation. Esther does so at great personal risk, both because the emperor does not yet know her ancestry and because Persian customs do not normally permit the queen to make such requests. She successfully unmasks Haman’s machinations and asks Ahasuerus to alter the law so that the Jews will be able to defend themselves. When the appointed day comes, it passes without the planned massacre taking place. This successful turnabout, seen in Jewish tradition as a providential act of God, is celebrated in the festival of Purim. Haman is turned over to execution in the manner that he had planned for Mordecai, and Ahasuerus chooses Mordecai to take Haman’s former office.
Historical Books Part 3 (Ezra-Esther) Analysis
The third section of historical books relates to the exilic and post-exilic experience of the Jews, focusing on their life within the Persian Empire. The earlier period of exile, under Babylon, is addressed in some of the prophetic books (most prominently in Daniel), but the historical books move quickly past the Babylonian exile to the condition of the Jews under the Persian regime of the late sixth and mid-fifth centuries BCE. The authorship questions behind these books are complex, especially given the apparent nature of Ezra-Nehemiah as a single work with interweaving primary sources. Portions of both Ezra and Nehemiah were likely written by the title figures themselves, evident in the fact that some of the text is in the form of direct memoirs of their actions. Esther’s compositional history is debated among scholars, with many favoring a late date relative to other Old Testament sources, largely because of stylistic and structural features that it shares with the later literature of the Old Testament Apocrypha.
In these books, the core theme of The Steadfast Love of God is experienced in the historical circumstances of the Jews’ return from exile and their protection under persecution. The return from exile is narrated in three phases: the initial return under Zerubbabel in the late sixth century; the priestly return under Ezra; and the immediately subsequent return of Nehemiah. Each of these returns to the land of Israel is a demonstration of God’s faithfulness to his covenant-promises, even after the utter devastation of the conquest and exile. Esther, likewise, attests to the theme of The Steadfast Love of God, which implicitly undergirds the narrative. In its Hebrew form, the book of Esther does not refer to God (a problem amended in later Greek expansions), but his providential care is an assumed theological background to the fortuitous turn of events at the end of the book.
The Problem of Sin is not as thematically important in this section as in the previous historical books, with the major exception being those passages in Ezra and Nehemiah which deal with the issue of Jews intermarrying with other people groups. The theme of Faithfulness to God’s Law, however, features very large in Ezra and Nehemiah, and forms the main ideological backdrop to the intermarriage question. The mid-fifth-century restoration headed by Ezra and Nehemiah centers itself on rituals of recommitment to the Mosaic covenant, including massive public ceremonies where the law is read aloud to all the people. These acts show the Jews’ belief that the historical catastrophe of their exile was caused by infidelity to the law, and that the only way to ensure that such disasters do not come again is to reestablish the Jewish populace firmly within a lifestyle of keeping God’s commands.
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