Bible Stories: Ezra

After King Darius died, Cyrus came to be king in Babylon. God put it into his heart to let the Jews go back to their own land. One man who made this long trip from Babylon to Jerusalem was a man called Ezra. He was called a scribe. Ezra 8: 15-36. He loved god’s Word and wanted to go back so he could teach it to his people.

The king gave his permission for him to go and take some people with him. So Ezra gathered together all the Old Testament books and made them into one big scroll. This precious copy was carried with him to Jerusalem.

There he lived with the people and taught them the Word of God. After the walls and the temple were both built, the people all gathered together into a wide space near one of the gates. They made a pulpit for Ezra so that he would be higher than any of the others.

Then he stood up with the scroll in his hands. The people stood as he read from it. He read from morning till noon, and the people listened. Some of the priests may have helped him read it. Some of them were scattered through the crowd to help explain the meaning of any hard words, or anything they did not understand.

Then Ezra and Nehemiah told the people not to be sad but happy, to go home and eat and then send gifts of food to those in need. It was something like the modern day Thanks-giving day. After this they kept one of the feasts which God had commanded. It lasted for seven days. Every day they gathered to hear God’s Word read to them.

For many, it was the first time they had ever heard God’s Word read. The people listened to God’s Word from day to day. It told of the holiness of God and sinfulness of man. The people began to see the wrong things they were doing. Then they felt sad and fasted. Instead of listening to God’s Word read all morning, they had to take part of that time to confess their sins to God and pray to Him for forgiveness.

One of the things they had sinned in was that some of them had married heathen wives. This had been forbidden by God. He wanted His people to be a holy people. He knew that, if boys and girls grew up in a family where the mother worshiped idols and followed heathen practices, they would wan to do this also, even if the father worshiped the living God.

When they saw how sinful this was, the fathers said that they would give up their heathen wives. Another wrong thing was that they allowed the people to come inside the city walls on the Sabbath day to sell things like fish, fruit and wine.

Nehemiah closed the gates and would not allow those who sold to come in on the Sabbath. He wanted to obey God’s laws. The Jewish Sabbath is our Saturday, the last day of the week. Our Sunday or the Lord’s Day is the day on which the Lord Jesus rose from the dead. We observe it each week in memory of Him. He wants us to keep it as a holy day too, different from every other day of the week because it is His day.