Author

The Scribe and Scholar Ezra

Writing

450 BC Covering the time period of 550-510 BC

Main Themes

Contains the famed story of hundreds of men sending away foreign wives, whom they had married against God's wishes. The story covers the period following the Great Exile and the rebuilding of the Temple.

King Cyrus decrees the work of the Temple may begin.

Men with foreign wives sent them all away.

Key verses

Ezra 1:5 Then rose up the chief of the fathers of Judah and Benjamin, and the priests, and the Levites, with all [them] whose spirit God had raised, to go up to build the house of the LORD [Yahweh] which [is] in Jerusalem.

Ezra 9:12 Then rose up the chief of the fathers of Judah and Benjamin, and the priests, and the Levites, with all [them] whose spirit God had raised, to go up to build the house of the LORD [Yahweh] which [is] in Jerusalem.

Important Points

This book details the rebuilding of Solomon's Temple after the Great Exile.

In the book of Ezra, the rebuilding of the new temple is the center of all. It shows the unity among the returning tribes as they came home from the Babylonian Exile. Later, the first returnees stopped work on the city walls. Workers felt burned out and became spiritually lazy.

Ezra arrived with another 2,000 people. His enthusiasm and power from the Lord sparked a spiritual revival.

One problem before the exile was that men had married foreigners, who chronically drove them away from God and into idolatry. Ezra was dumbfounded to find that people were already doing this again-before the Temple was even built! When the men repented and offered to send these foreign wives away, Ezra did not object.

By the end of Ezra, Israel had renewed its relationship with God and were being very obedient.