Ezra 9 Ezra doesn’t get long to savour the amazing goodness of God in granting him favour before the Persian king and bringing the exiles safely back to Jerusalem. Four months after the sacrifices are offered (compare 7:8 and 10:9),…
Category: Old Testament
Summer Tuesdays with Ezra (Chapter 8)
Ezra 8 Chapter 8 reads like an entry from Ezra’s personal journal; in vivid detail he chronicles the actions he took to gather and lead the company of exiles back to Jerusalem in the seventh year of king Artaxerxes. Ezra…
Summer Tuesdays with Ezra (Chapter 7)
Ezra 7 Almost 80 years after Zerubbabel’s return, and 60 years after the completion and dedication of the Temple, in the seventh year of king Artaxerxes (7:7), we are introduced to Ezra and his part of God’s story. Ezra, whose…
Summer Tuesdays with Ezra (Chapter 6)
Ezra 6 The opening words of chapter 6, pick up where chapter 5 left off. Tattenai and his fellow governors had requested King Darius to order a search of the royal archives and issue a ruling on the legitimacy of…
Summer Tuesdays with Ezra (Chapter 5)
Ezra 5 The opening verse of chapter 5 introduces us to two prophets who God uses to jump start the rebuilding project after it had languished for years—from the early years of Cyrus’ reign (a twenty-year period: 550 – 530…
Summer Tuesdays with Ezra (Chapter 4)
Ezra 4 The beginning of the reconstruction of the Temple, signaled by loud shouts “heard far away” (3:13), garners the attention of “the peoples of the lands” (3:3). Some of these neighbouring peoples, who are “adversaries of Judah and Benjamin”…
Summer Tuesdays with Ezra (Chapter 3)
Ezra 3 In the seventh month, shortly after the exiles arrived back in the land, they gather in Jerusalem to celebrate the feast of Tabernacles. Mosaic Law commanded all men to come to Jerusalem for this feast (Exodus 23:14-17; Deut…
Summer Tuesdays with Ezra (Chapter 1)
This year I spent time digging into the Old Testament book of Ezra. While the book contains a fascinating historical account of the return of the Jewish exiles after the Babylonian captivity, it's more than a history book. It's a…
Resource Spotlight: Help with Isaiah, Jeremiah and Ezekiel
Some of the richest parts of the Old Testament can be some of the most difficult to understand. I'm talking about the prophetic books written by Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel. In these powerful books, we get to know God in…
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Rick and Linda Reed 