Ezra Brings the Law to Jerusalem
458 BC, estimated dateEstimated date
The priest and scribe Ezra comes from Babylon with a commission from the Persian king, confronts marriages with foreign wives, and reads the law of Moses aloud to the assembled people, who bind themselves to keep it.
Ezra was a priest of the line of Aaron and “a skilled scribe in the law of Moses”. In the seventh year of King Artaxerxes I he went up from Babylon to Jerusalem with a company of priests, Levites and laypeople (Ezra 7:1–10). He carried a letter from the king, which the book quotes in Aramaic. It allowed any Israelite in the realm to go with him, sent silver and gold for the temple, freed the temple staff from tax, and charged Ezra to inquire into Judah and Jerusalem according to the law of his God and to appoint judges for those who lived by that law in the province Beyond the River (Ezra 7:11–26).
The party gathered at the river Ahava. Ezra had told the king that God protects those who seek him and was ashamed to ask for an escort, so they fasted, set out, and arrived safely four months after leaving Babylon. The treasure was weighed into the temple (Ezra 7:9; 8:15–34).
After this the leaders reported that many of the people, priests and Levites among them, had married women from the neighbouring peoples. Ezra tore his clothes and prayed a long confession (Ezra 9). An assembly was called in Jerusalem in the ninth month, in heavy rain. It agreed that each case should be examined, and within three months the cases had been heard. The men named pledged to send their foreign wives away (Ezra 10:1–19, 44).
The book of Nehemiah adds the scene for which Ezra is best remembered. On the first day of the seventh month the people gathered in the square by the Water Gate and asked him to bring the book of the law of Moses. He read from it from early morning until midday, standing on a wooden platform, while Levites explained what was read “so that they understood the reading”. The people wept, were told to rejoice, and kept the feast of booths as they found it written (Nehemiah 8). Three weeks later they fasted, confessed their sins and put their names to a written agreement to keep the law: not to intermarry, to keep the Sabbath, and to support the temple with a yearly tax, firstfruits and tithes (Nehemiah 9:1–3, 38) (Nehemiah 10:28–39).
Josiah had read a book of the covenant to the people once, at a time of crisis (2 Kings 23:1–3). Here the law is read and explained to everyone, and the community defines itself by it. By the first century Moses was “read in the synagogues every Sabbath” (Acts 15:21), and a later Jewish book pictures Ezra dictating ninety-four sacred books by inspiration (2 Esdras 14:37–48).
How this is dated
Estimated date. A scholarly estimate from primary evidence, with a margin of years.
Ezra left Babylon on the first day of the first month and reached Jerusalem on the first day of the fifth month, in the seventh year of King Artaxerxes (Ezra 7:7–9). The text does not say which Artaxerxes. If it is Artaxerxes I (465–424 BC), the year is 458 BC and Ezra came thirteen years before Nehemiah, which is the order of the biblical books and the date given here. This is defended by H. G. M. Williamson, Ezra, Nehemiah (Word Biblical Commentary, 1985).
If it is Artaxerxes II (404–358 BC), the year is 398 BC and Ezra came after Nehemiah. This was proposed by Albin van Hoonacker, “Néhémie et Esdras”, Le Muséon 9 (1890), and argued again by J. A. Emerton, “Did Ezra Go to Jerusalem in 428 B.C.?”, Journal of Theological Studies 17 (1966), pp. 1–19. Its main supports are two. Ezra gives thanks for “a wall in Judah and in Jerusalem” (Ezra 9:9). And he stays in the room of Jehohanan son of Eliashib (Ezra 10:6), while Eliashib was high priest when Nehemiah built the wall (Nehemiah 3:1) and a Johanan was high priest in 407 BC (Elephantine petition to Bagohi verso, line 1). A third proposal emends “seventh” to “thirty-seventh” and gives 428 BC: John Bright, A History of Israel (3rd ed., 1981).
Against a late date, the book of Nehemiah names the two men together at the reading of the law and at the dedication of the wall (Nehemiah 8:9; 12:26, 36). The reading of the law has no year of its own; its place in the book sets it in the autumn after the wall was finished, 445 BC.
Primary sources
Scripture
In context
Grows out of
- March 515 BC, estimated date
- 622 BC, estimated date
Leads to
- 445 BC, estimated date
- about 250 BC, estimated date