Righteous Ezra

Return from Babylon

The biblical narrative places Ezra's return to Jerusalem in the seventh year of the reign of the Persian king Artaxerxes. He led a company of exiles back from Babylon, having received from the king a commission to instruct the people in the laws of God and to set in order the affairs of the restored community.

His undertaking joined religious instruction with reform of community life. He is described as reintroducing the Torah at Jerusalem and pressing for adherence to its commandments, including measures concerning intermarriage with surrounding peoples that he judged contrary to the Law.

The Reading of the Law

The book of Nehemiah records that the assembled people gathered at the Water Gate and asked Ezra to bring the book of the Law of Moses. On the first day of the seventh month he read from the Law in the open square before the Water Gate, from morning until midday, before the men and women and all who could understand.

The Levites explained and interpreted the reading so that the people grasped its meaning. The people first wept on hearing the words of the Law, and were then summoned to rejoice because the day was holy. The community afterward kept the Feast of Tabernacles, dwelling in booths as had not been done since the days of Joshua son of Nun, and entered into a renewed covenant to keep the commandments of the Law.

Scribe and the Scriptures

Ezra is remembered above all as a scribe, a teacher and transmitter of the Law. Tradition associates him with the gathering and ordering of the Hebrew scriptures after the exile and credits him with the authorship of the Books of Chronicles.

Later Jewish tradition further connects him with the establishment of the Great Assembly, which is held to have shaped the public reading of the Law and other enduring practices of worship. These traditions stand alongside the biblical portrait of a man devoted to the study, teaching, and restoration of the Law.

Veneration

In the Orthodox Church Ezra is numbered among the Old Testament righteous and is commemorated on December 14. He is also remembered together with the Holy Forefathers and the Ancestors of Christ on the Sundays before the Nativity, when the Church recalls the line of patriarchs, prophets, and righteous figures who looked toward the coming of the Messiah.