Ezra

“ Brother Ezra, with that diffidence which strong natures often exhibit, thought he found in the lines of another man his own ideas more succinctly embodied than they would have been in his own words. Brother Ezra should not doubt his powers. Speech comes slowly to those who most deeply think, but he should consider how much we benefit by his words and how grateful we are to him for them. Brother Wright, it seems to me that you, perhaps, do not sufficiently appreciate the efforts of others who have gone before us on this road. ”

“ The figure of Ezra, though not without a certain devout energy, is somewhat stiff and formal; but the personality revealed by the memoirs of Nehemiah is gracious almost to the point of romance. Seldom did the Hebrew people produce so attractive and versatile a figure—at once a man of prayer and of action, of clear swift purpose, daring initiative, and resistless energy, and endowed with a singular power of inspiring others with his own enthusiasm. He forms an admirable foil to Ezra the ecclesiastic ”

“ Ezra's prayer and confession, his grievous weeping and prostrate humiliation before God, deeply affected the spectators; and as the news spread through the city, a very great congregation of men, women, and children assembled together to gaze at the strange spectacle. They could not gaze unmoved. Deep emotion is contagious. The man who is himself profoundly convinced and intensely concerned with his religious ideas will certainly win disciples. Where the soundest arguments have failed to persuade, a single note of sincere faith often strikes home. ”

“ You know, that’s where I go to smoke and think, doctor. Ezra goes too, and sometimes we take the old checkerboard and have a game or so. We take the telescopes and sextant up, too, and make observations there. It kind of scandalizes some of the stiff-necked old Puritans, but Lord love you! I don’t see any harm in it, do you? It all seems nice and sociable; it makes the death of my people seem only a kind of temporary going away, as if they’d gone on a visit, like, and as if Hal and Ezra and I were just waiting for ’em to come back. ”

“ To Ezra and his coadjutors, the men of the Great Synagogue, the Jews ascribe the completion of the canon of the Old Testament. Their traditions concerning him are embellished with extravagant fictions; yet we cannot reasonably deny that they are underlaid by a basis of truth. All the scriptural notices of Ezra attest both his zeal and his ability as "a scribe of the words of the commandments of the Lord, and of his statutes to Israel," a man who "had prepared his heart to seek the law of the Lord, and to do it, and to teach in Israel statutes and judgments." ”

“ I have bestrode that mitred personage before now—he is the hack to all the Presbyterians in the pit, but he cannot be spared on a journey so distant as this." "So thou wilt not tell me the name of thy steed?" said Ezra; "well, even as thou wilt." "Nay," said the spirit, "I shall not deny so good a man so small a matter. ”

“ This Ezra believed with his heart, and with his mouth made confession of it before the king; and therefore he was ashamed to ask of the king a convoy, lest thereby he should give occasion to the king, and those about him, to suspect either God's power to help his people or Ezra's confidence in that power. Those that trust in God, and triumph in him, will be ashamed of seeking to the creature for protection, especially of using any sorry shifts for their own safety, because thereby they contradict themselves and their own confidence. ”

“ Two things Ezra blessed God for:—1. For his commission. We suppose he kissed the king's hand for it, but that was not all: Blessed be God (says he) that put such a thing as this into the king's heart. God can put things into men's hearts which would not arise there of themselves, and into their heads too, both by his providence and by his grace, in things pertaining both to life and godliness. ”

“ He looked on the minister as something superior to man; a being possessed by a divine spirit; and he shook his head with all its silver hairs, and uttered a gentle groan or two, during some of the more rapt and glowing passages of Ezra’s sermons.
This faithful personage stood at the door of his master’s chamber, unwilling to go in, and yet loath to depart. “Josiah, thou art called, Josiah,” said Ezra, in a grave tone, “so come hither; the soul of an evil man, a worker of iniquity, is about to depart; one who drank the blood of saints, and made himself fat with the inheritance of the righteous. ”

“ Ezra's precious name saluted us, at first, in the title of the book, but in the history we have not met with it till this chapter introduces him into public action in another reign, that of Artaxerxes. Zerubbabel and Jeshua we will suppose, by this time, to have grown old, if not gone off; nor do we hear any more of Haggai and Zechariah; they have finished their testimony. What shall become of the cause of God and Israel when these useful instruments are laid aside? Trust God, who has the residue of the Spirit, to raise up others in their room. ”

“ Ezra:
Tuts! Girls take their chance. And you’d
Conceit enough of Jim, at one time—proud
As a pipit that’s hatched a cuckoo: and if the gowk
Were half as handsome as I—you ken, yourself,
You needed no coaxing: I wasted little breath
Whistling to heel: you came at the first “Isca!”
Eliza:
Who kens what a lass runs away from, crazed to quit
Home, at all hazards, little realizing
It’s life, itself, she’s trying to escape;
And plodging deeper.
Ezra:
Trust a wench for kenning. ”

“ Then, after assuring God that his book had been burnt, Ezra obligingly offers to write him another in its place—to "write all that hath been done in the world since the beginning, which were written in thy law that men may find thy path." ”

“ Well, however, Ezra gives thanks to God for the king; and so should all that fear God in all countries, if he would please to put it into the hearts of the kings, states, and parliaments, to take off the yokes of violence, and permit, at least, the consciences of their subjects, and especially such as in truth make conscience of their worships to the God of Israel: and yet, no cause for Ezra then, or God’s Ezras and Israelites now, to acknowledge the care and charge of God’s worship, church, and ordinances, to lie upon the shoulders of Artaxerxes, or any other civil prince or ruler. ”

“ Then God bade him die, and hid him from the eyes of men, in his cell, with all that he had about him, his fruit, his mat, and his ass. At the close of a century God revived him, and he found all as when he had died; the ass standing, and the fruit unwithered. Then Ezra saw the works that had been executed in Jerusalem, how the walls were being set up, and the breaches repaired, and he said, “God is Almighty; He can do whatsoever pleaseth Him!” ”

“ It takes people that way sometimes—running up against Death and barely slamming the door in his face—but don’t imagine the close shave will change Ezra any more than his bath will. He’ll be as mean and as dirty as ever in a few weeks. We’ve done our damnedest for him to-night, but we’re the ones benefited by it. Life’s a doubtful blessing to Ezra. ”

“ Ezra, having found in the second year of his government ( [1] and 10) that many of the people had taken strange wives, contrary to the law, and that several of the priests and Levites, as well as the chief men of Judah and Benjamin, had transgressed herein, after he had in fasting and prayer deprecated God's wrath for it, caused proclamation to be made for all the people of Israel that had returned from the captivity to gather themselves together at Jerusalem, under the penalty of excommunication, and forfeiture of all their goods. ”

“ Judged by this standard—the only fair standard—Ezra's work cannot be pronounced a failure. On the contrary, he accomplished just what he aimed at. He established the separateness of the Jews. Among ourselves, more than two thousand years after his time, his great idea is still the most marked feature of his people. All along the ages it has provoked jealousy and suspicion; and often it has been met by cruel persecution. The separate people have been treated as only too separate from the rest of mankind. Thus the history of the Jews has become one long tragedy. It is infinitely sad. ”

“ Our weeping for other people's sins may perhaps set those a weeping for them themselves who otherwise would continue senseless and remorseless. See what a happy influence the good examples of great ones may have upon their inferiors. When Ezra, a scribe, a scholar, a man in authority under the king, so deeply lamented the public corruptions, they concluded that they were indeed very grievous, else he would not thus have grieved for them; and this drew tears from every eye: men, women, and children, wept very sore, when he wept thus. ”

“ Ezra went to the council-chamber where, it is probable, the priests used to meet upon public business; and till he came thither (so bishop Patrick thinks it should be read) , till he saw something done, and more likely to be done, for the redress of this grievance, he did neither eat nor drink, but continued mourning. Sorrow for sin should be abiding sorrow; be sure to let it continue till the sin be put away. 2. He sent orders to all the children of the captivity to attend him at Jerusalem within three days (v. 7, 8) ”

“ Introduction to the Book of Ezra
At the conclusion of 2 Kings, and also of the preceding book, 2 Chronicles, we have seen the state of misery and desolation to which the kingdoms of Israel and Judah were reduced through their unparalleled ingratitude to God, and their innumerable backslidings and rebellions. These at last issued in their captivity; the inhabitants of the former country being carried away by the Assyrians, and those of the latter by the Chaldeans. ”

“ To leave us a remnant to escape - The ten tribes are gone irrecoverably into captivity; a great part even of Judah and Benjamin had continued beyond the Euphrates: so that Ezra might well say, there was but a remnant which had escaped.
A nail in his holy place - Even so much ground as to fix our tent-poles in.
May lighten our eyes - To give us a thorough knowledge of ourselves and of our highest interest, and to enable us to re-establish his worship, is the reason why God has brought us back to this place. ”

“ And you’d a tongue to glaver a guff of a girl,
The devil’s own; and whatever’s gone from you,
You’ve still a tongue, though with a difference:
Now it’s all edge.
Ezra:
The knife that spreads the butter
Will slice the loaf. But it’s sharper than my teeth.
Eliza:
Ay, tongues cut deeper than any fang can bite,
Sore-rankling wounds.
Ezra:
You talk of tongues! I’m deaf:
But, for my sins, I cannot be deaf to yours,
Nattering me into my grave; and, likely, your words
Will flaffer about my lugs like channering peesweeps,
When I lie cold. ”

“ It was also kindly done, and evinced a great affection to the temple and a great confidence in Ezra. It is the interest of princes and great men to use their wealth and power for the support and encouragement of religion. What else are great revenues good for but that they enable men to do much good of this kind if they have but hearts to do it?
V. He charges him to let nothing be wanting that was requisite to be done in or about the temple for the honour of the God of Israel. ”

“ The Jews' confession of sin led up to a prayer which the Septuagint ascribes to Ezra. It does so, however, in a phrase that manifestly breaks the context, and thus betrays its origin in an interpolation. [233] Nevertheless the tone of the prayer, and even its very language, remind us forcibly of the Great Scribe's outpouring of soul over the mixed marriages of his people recorded in Ezra ix. No one was more fitted to lead the Jews in the later act of devotion, and it is only reasonable to conclude that the work was undertaken by the one man to whose lot it would naturally fall. ”

“ Tradition always conducts Ezra and the mariner's widow to this seldom-frequented place: a hundred and a hundred times have I mused over the scene in sunlight and moonlight; a hundred and a hundred times have I hearkened to the wild and variable accounts of the peasantry, and sought to make bank, and bush, and stream, and tree assist in unravelling the mystery which must still hang over the singular and tragic catastrophe. ”

“ When Ezra came forward with the book of the Torah, he did so not in any sense as an opponent of the prophets, or as making a breach between their ideas and his [65] own. He came forward to enforce their teaching, to apply it, and to get from it a larger result of practical righteousness than it had produced in their time. It was just because the prophets had so splendidly revealed God to Israel, had proclaimed to him the full grandeur of his privilege, that Israel must now be taught to do his part as he had never done it before. The greater the privilege the greater the responsibility. ”

“ Thou mayest be the grand artificer of deceit come to practise upon my immortal soul. Unmantle thee, I pray, that I may behold if thou art a poor and an afflicted spirit, punished for a time, or that fierce and restless fiend who bears the visible stamp of eternal reprobation." "I may not withstand thy wish," uttered the form in a tone of melancholy; and dropping his mantle, and turning round on the pastor, said, "Hast thou forgotten me?" "How can I forget thee?" said Ezra, receding as he spoke; "the stern and the haughty look of Bonshaw has been humbled indeed. ”