Ezra - Return and Rebuilding

 After years in exile the Israelites are finally allowed to return to Jerusalem.

Once there, they begin to rebuild God's temple, with the blessing of King Cyrus of Persia.  There is a bit of conflict and confusion over the construction as some people implied the Israelites were not authorized to do this.  But the issue is resolved through numerous letters and finally a research of the archives of King Cyrus.  Scrolls are located authorizing the rebuilding of Jerusalem and the temple.  The conflict is resolved and construction resumes.

Midway through the book, we finally meet Ezra.

Ezra was a descendent of Aaron (as in Moses and Aaron) and is a keeper of the laws of God.  Ezra was chosen to lead the rest of the exiles into Jerusalem, help complete the building of the temple and oversee the execution of the law.  When he arrives, Ezra discovers (of course) that the Israelites have already forsaken God's law by marrying foreigners from the lands surrounding Jerusalem.  Ezra pleads to God for forgiveness and all the people repent and join in.  The men who had married foreign women agree to send the women away.  

Ezra makes a list of the guilty and the book ends. 

On to Nehemiah! 

2 Chronicles

I thought 2 Chronicles would just be a repeat of 2 Kings.  I was wrong.

2 Kings jumped between the kings of Judah and the kings of Israel, following them along the same timeline.  2 Chronicles focuses solely on the kings of Judah starting with Solomon. Both books of Kings spent a lot of time on the prophets.  In Chronicles, the prophets are part of the story, but only as a deliverer of God’s messages (or warnings) to the king of the hour. They are not the focus of any story in Chronicles, where in Kings we learned about the prophets in great detail.

All the kings of Judah are reviewed - the good, the bad and the ugly.

There is more narrative in Chronicles on some king’s lives than there were in either book of Kings...and less detail on others. 

Jehoshaphat is barely mentioned in Kings, even though he reigned for twenty-five years. In Chronicles he has a much more detailed story. We are told not just about his being a good king in God’s eyes.  We see how Jehoshaphat listens to the prophet of God, unlike his counterpart the King of Israel, who dies on the battlefield. We see how Jehoshaphat pays homage to the Lord and how God rewards him...until he makes a deal with the new and wicked king of Israel. Oh well.

Jehoshaphat is replaced by his son, Jehoram, who did evil in the eyes of the Lord. I found it interesting how his death is portrayed. “He passed away, to no one’s regret, and was buried in the City of David, but not in the tombs of the kings.”  He must have been one really bad king. He died in great pain and no one cared. 

Most of these kings took the throne when they were very young.  Some were just kids, seven and eight years old.  Some were barely men, becoming king in their early twenties. There is no rhyme or reason as to who was a “good” king and who was a “bad” king. Age wasn’t a factor. How their father honored (or didn’t honor) God wasn’t an indication of how the son would rule.  Who their mother was and what she believed did not seem to be a consistent indicator of good or evil either. 

It all seems so random...

Next up, Ezra. (I didn’t even know there was a book called Ezra - wonder who he is?)