Ezra the Priest and Scribe

"Now after these things, in the reign of Artaxerxes king of Persia, Ezra the son of Seraiah, the son of Azariah, the son of Hilkiah…" sixteen generations back to "Aaron the chief priest." "This Ezra went up from Babylon; and he was a ready scribe in the law of Moses, which the LORD God of Israel had given: and the king granted him all his request, according to the hand of the LORD his God upon him."

He leaves on the first day of the first month and arrives in Jerusalem on the first day of the fifth month of the seventh year, "according to the good hand of his God upon him. For Ezra had prepared his heart to seek the law of the LORD, and to do it, and to teach in Israel statutes and judgments."

"Artaxerxes, king of kings, unto Ezra the priest, a scribe of the law of the God of heaven, perfect peace." Any of Israel, priests and Levites may go. Ezra is "sent of the king, and of his seven counsellors, to enquire concerning Judah and Jerusalem, according to the law of thy God which is in thine hand," carrying silver and gold from the king, his counsellors and the province of Babylon.

The treasurers beyond the river are to give Ezra up to a hundred talents of silver, a hundred measures of wheat, a hundred baths of wine and of oil, and salt without limit. No tribute may be laid on priests, Levites, singers, gatekeepers, Nethinim or temple servants. "And thou, Ezra, after the wisdom of thy God, that is in thine hand, set magistrates and judges… all such as know the laws of thy God; and teach ye them that know them not. And whosoever will not do the law of thy God, and the law of the king, let judgment be executed speedily upon him, whether it be unto death, or to banishment, or to confiscation of goods, or to imprisonment."

"Blessed be the LORD God of our fathers, which hath put such a thing as this in the king's heart, to beautify the house of the LORD which is in Jerusalem… And I was strengthened as the hand of the LORD my God was upon me, and I gathered together out of Israel chief men to go up with me."

Hebrew, Aramaic, Hebrew

7:1–11 is Hebrew narrative about Ezra; 7:12–26 is the king's letter in Aramaic; 7:27–28 returns to Hebrew and to the first person ("Blessed be the LORD… I was strengthened"). The first-person voice continues through chapter 9, the section often called the Ezra Memoir.

Ezra's ancestors

Ezra's line runs from Aaron through Eleazar, Phinehas and Zadok to Seraiah. Seraiah was the high priest killed by Nebuchadnezzar at Riblah in 586 BC (2 Kings 25:18–21), about 130 years before a mission in 458. "Son of" here means descendant. Compared with 1 Chronicles 6:3–15, Ezra's list omits six names between Meraioth and Azariah (Amariah, Ahitub, Zadok, Ahimaaz, Azariah, Johanan), perhaps because the eye skipped from one Azariah to another, or because the list was deliberately shortened. Biblical genealogies often select.

Torah and scribe

Ezra is a sofer, a scribe: in Persian administration a trained official, and in later Judaism an expert in the written law. The "law of thy God which is in thine hand" is a book. What it contained is debated: most think it was the Torah (the Pentateuch) in a form close to ours, some think a law code such as Deuteronomy or the priestly laws. Ezra 7 does not say.

Law with penalties

The decree backs the law of Ezra's God with the law of the king: death, banishment, confiscation or imprisonment. This is imperial enforcement, not a modern guarantee of religious freedom. It applies to "all the people that are beyond the river" who know the laws of Ezra's God, that is, the Jewish communities of the satrapy, not the whole population. The site presents it as a historical claim about Persian administration, with its ethical weight.

When did Ezra come?

None is certain. The 9:9 "wall" (gader) may be a metaphor for protection; Jehohanan son of Eliashib may be a different person from the high priest. The site keeps 458 BC as the conventional date and labels it disputed.

Persian imperial authorization?

Peter Frei proposed that Persia gave local laws imperial sanction, so that a community's own law became royal law in that community ("imperial authorization"). The Demotic Chronicle (verso) reports that Darius I ordered Egypt's laws collected and written in Aramaic and Demotic. Supporters see Ezra 7 as a case of the same policy, and some think it helped fix the Torah. Critics point out that the Persian evidence is thin, that Ezra 7 is known only from the Bible, and that the Torah's formation cannot be dated by this one decree. The hypothesis is disputed.

Is the decree authentic?

The decree uses Persian vocabulary (dat, "law"; adrazda, "diligently"; ganzaya, "treasury"; nishtewan, "letter") and Persian court forms ("king of kings," "the seven counsellors," compare Esther 1:14 and Herodotus 3.84). Its Jewish theological language (the "God of heaven," the stress on the Jerusalem temple) could come from a Jewish drafter at court, as Persian practice often relied on local officials, or from a later author. No original survives.