- Way in the back of the Bible
where the pages are still crisp and unturned.
There are two books that go very much unnoticed
and that really do deserve more attention.
They are the books of Ezra and Nehemiah.
Ezra and Nehemiah were born into a community of Jews
that had been forcibly exiled from Judea
and relocated to Babylon
after the destruction of the first temple.
They lived in what was known as the Persian diaspora
around the year 450 BCE.
They both returned to Judea with a mission.
Nehemiah came to rebuild the ruined city of Jerusalem.
And Ezra came to rebuild the Jewish soul.
Before we can even get into the books of Ezra and Nehemiah
we should do a little background.
After the exile, the Jewish community in Babylon
went into lockdown and isolated itself
in order to preserve its identity
and to keep its members from assimilating.
Laws against intermarriage,
which had been at times ignored in Judea
were now being strictly enforced in Babylonia.
Judaism in Babylonia maintained itself
with its sacred books and it's separate schools of study.
For 50 years the Jewish community was not allowed
to leave Babylonia.
And then a miracle happened.
A Persian King named Cyrus took control
of the Babylonian throne.
The Babylonian empire collapsed
and the Persian empire now began.
And here is where the book of Ezra starts,
in 538 BCE, the new King Cyrus, issues a decree.
The Jews are free to go back to Judea.
King Cyrus returns alluded contents of the first temple
to the Jewish community and vows to underwrite
this new second temple's construction.
Now, before you think Cyrus is a really nice guy,
let's keep in mind what he's getting out of this.
By allowing the Jews to rebuild their temple
and practice their religion in Judea,
Cyrus gains their unconditional loyalty,
especially since he will be paying for the project
and controlling the money.
It gives them a foothold in the area
without having to move a single soldier there.
The idea moving back to Judea
electrifies the community of exiles.
While many in the Jewish community of Babylon
have grown comfortable and decided to remain.
42,000 exiles leave a country that they lived in
for 50 years and returned to a land
that was then called "Yehud Medinata",
Aramaic for the state of Judah,
Aramaic being the international language of the day.
This return was in a sense a precursor
to the Zionist movement that would again take place
some 2,500 years later.
When the 42,000 arrive in Jerusalem,
they find an abandoned burnt down city
whose walls are breached and collapsing.
They get to work.
It takes two years just for the foundation
of the next temple to be completed.
The community gathers together in great celebration.
The elderly who knew Solomon's temple,
weep with mixed emotion.
Temple construction proper is set to begin.
And then as luck would have it, King Cyrus dies in battle.
A municipal governor, along with the local people
known as Samaritans, used this opportunity
to try and get the project stopped.
According to Ezra, the Samaritans were people
who had moved in and filled the vacuum
left by the Jewish exile.
They were practicing a competing version of Judaism
and they had a temple of their own.
They tell new King of Persia that Jerusalem is quote,
"A rebellious city, harmful to kings and states.
If this city is rebuilt and its walls are completed
you will no longer have any portion
in the province of Judea."
The king gets the message,
all work building the temple is forcibly halted.
A generation passes, another guy,
King Darius I takes the throne.
The Jewish community restarts temple construction
before even getting permission.
Again, the Samaritans appeal to King Darius
to stop the project.
The new king checks the archives
and he discovers that, yes, Cyrus had in fact
commissioned and paid for
the rebuilding of a new Jewish temple.
Darius I green lights the project
and orders the tax treasury in Samaria
to pay for the rest of the construction.
Work now begins in earnest.
In 516 BCE, 70 years after its destruction,
and 23 years after the start of the return from exile,
the temple is completed.
It's made of hewn stone and inlaid with wood
from the kings forests.
The Israelites, the priests
and all the returning exiles celebrate in great joy.
A sacrificial party rededicates temple service.
We have officially entered the second temple period.
You might've noticed at this point
that even though we're talking about the book of Ezra,
Ezra has yet to show up.
To meet him, we need to skip ahead another 50 years.
So 50 years after the second temple is finished
the next king of Persia, King Artaxerxes,
asks a man known as Ezra, the scribe, there he is,
to quote, "Regulate Judah and Jerusalem
according to the laws of your God."
The new community in Judea is frankly not doing very well.
And Ezra, a great scholar in the books of Moses
and a priest in the Persian Jewish community,
is sent by the King to re-establish Jewish culture
and to create the local judicial system.
He will be the new spiritual leader of Judea.
In essence, the first chief justice of the new nation.
After his long journey, Ezra arrives to find that
many in the Jewish community including community leaders
have intermarried.
This news is extremely traumatic to Ezra.
He tears his clothes, he goes into public mourning.
Ezra comes up with a desperate solution.
He orders all the Jewish men
to divorce their non-Jewish wives and to expel them
and their children from the community.
Ezra was deeply concerned that the Jews of Judea
were violating divine law and that they would assimilate
and vanish into history.
What's more, the Persian Jewish community believed
that God had destroyed the first temple
for the sins of the people.
We just finished building the second temple.
Ezra doesn't want this temple destroyed as well.
Ezra's book abruptly ends here, but don't worry,
Ezra will show up again in the book of Nehemiah.
Nehemiah at the opening of his book is cut bare
to the same King Artaxerxes.
That means he's the King Sommelier, the wine steward
which is a title of high rank in any palace.
One day, Nehemiah was talking to some Judeans,
visiting the palace and learns that the people of Judea
are in really bad shape.
He also learns that the walls of Jerusalem
are still breached and that the city
is vulnerable to attack.
He asked the king of Persia, if he, Nehemiah,
could be made governor of Judea to take care of
and protect his people.
King Artaxerxes allows it.
And he sends Nehemiah to Judea with a letter
to the keeper of the Kings park,
the keeper's to supply Nehemiah
with all the lumber he might need
for any project he deems necessary.
When Nehemiah gets to Jerusalem.
He sees that the stories are true.
Sure, the temple has been rebuilt
but the walls are still breached
and the gates are still destroyed
from the Babylonian Siege, 130 years earlier.
A volunteer workforce is assembled.
They're motivated to say the least,
the breaches to the walls and the city gates
are all repaired in 52 days.
With the city secured,
Nehemiah now addresses another quality of life issue.
The scourge of debt.
There's a rich upper class in the state of Judah.
The majority of the Jews, however, are poor
and indebted to the wealthy.
People have sold their fields
and have even sold themselves into bondage
all in hope of gaining relief, but the debts keep mounting.
Nehemiah gathers the community together.
In this assembly, the poor vastly outnumber the rich.
He publicly shames the members of the upper class
who indebted their brethren.
"The Jews had been brought out of indentured servitude
in Persia at great expense," he tells them,
"It was not so they could now live in indentured servitude
in Judea."
One after another and Nehemiah has the predatory lenders
step forward, forgive the debts owed them
and return the people's land to them.
This is in effect the first sabbatical year
of this new Jewish community.
This is where Ezra shows up in Nehemiah's book,
the two work together.
Ezra reads the Torah of Moses, i.e, the Bible
to the entire community, men and women from Dawn to midday
while priests translate and explain.
There was not yet a custom of
regular public readings of the Torah.
And the people are completely overwhelmed.
They weep hearing the words of God.
Ezra, Nehemiah and the priest tell them,
"This is the day of celebration.
There's no need to be sad."
24 days later, Ezra again convenes the community.
And again, reads the Torah to them.
The community leaders are inspired and they sign a pledge
to follow the teachings of God given through Moses.
They vowed not to intermarry,
they vowed to let the land life fallow
and to forgive all debts, every seven years.
They vowed to pay a tithe, meaning a 10th of their income
as a tax to the temple, and to maintain the temple
with food and sacrifices and fuel for the altar.
They vowed not to buy goods from the locals on the Sabbath.
Nehemiah continues his work,
though Jerusalem's walls are rebuilt,
the city inside is still mostly ruined.
Most Jews opt to live out in the countryside.
Nehemiah has the people draw lots
and he forcibly moves one out of every 10 Judeans
back into the city.
And then he comes across the same problem
that Ezra had been struggling with.
The community continues to intermarry
and now their children don't even know how to speak Hebrew.
Nehemiah resorts to flogging the men
who have non-Jewish wives.
Nehemiah ends his book with a prayer to God.
He says, "I purified the priesthood and the people
and reestablished the temple service."
He's essentially saying to God, "I did everything I could."
Thus ends the second to last book of the Bible.
For his part, Ezra credited with adding new
and important elements to Judaism.
His gatherings of the community to read the Torah of Moses
established the practice of publicly reading the Bible
every Monday and Thursday morning,
as well as every Sabbath afternoon.
Later the rabbis of the Talmud
added a reading to the Sabbath morning service.
Ezra is also credited with convening
the first great assembly.
A deliberative body of prophets, scholars and judges
that later became the Jewish Supreme Court
of the second temple period.
He's also credited with writing his self-titled book
as well as the books of Malachi and Chronicles 1 and 2.
The framework of the Jewish biblical cannon
known in Hebrew as the Tanakh,
starts with the creation of the world
and ends with the building of the second temple.
Unfortunately, for later generations,
the policies of the Roman empire
and the Jewish response to them,
would lead to the destruction of the second temple,
which stood as the center of Jewish sacrificial worship
for 580 years.
If you like this video,
make sure to subscribe to our channel
and turn on the notifications.
So you'll know when we upload new videos.