After the king had granted the release during the Feast of Esther in the tenth month of the lunar calendar (Esther 2:16, 18), which corresponds in our solar calendar to late December (21st to the 22nd) into January (21st to 22nd), much preparation had to be made before Ezra left Babylon for Jerusalem on the first day of the first month of the next calendar year (Ezra 7:9). The release wasn’t an unorganized event, as might be understood in the release of a prisoner from confinement, who is simply reminded of his rights and obligations to the state and warned against future offenses, then released to do as he otherwise pleases. The context of the release of the Jews to return to Jerusalem was quite different than that.
First of all, the Lord had to prepare the heart of the king to do good to the Jews (cp. Ezra 7:27). Indeed, he also had to prepare the heart of Ezra to seek the Law of God with his whole heart and desire to teach it to the Jews at Jerusalem (Ezra 7:10). The Lord also had to have time to prepare the minds of other Jews to actually pull up stakes and leave a comfortable living and return to their homeland in Judah (Ezra 7:13). Indeed, the Lord is able to perform great works in an instant, but he has willed that men have freewill, and it takes time to convince the hearts of men to think and do what the Lord wants done.
Furthermore, the king and his seven counselors had to have time to plan Ezra’s commission to establish a system of magistrates and judges (Ezra 7:25), and to consider what offering they would make to the God of Israel (Ezra 7:15), and what he should put in the decree to his treasurers west of the Euphrates River for the benefit of Ezra and the House of God at Jerusalem (Ezra 7:21-22). Moreover, Ezra needed time to make a search at Babylon for any of the vessels of God for the Temple that may have been overlooked earlier (Ezra 7:16), and to gather the freewill offerings of the people for the House of God. Finally, Ezra also needed time to both convince and gather chief men of Israel to go up with him, whose hearts were prepared by God to teach the people (Ezra 7:28).
It is in this context, then, that Ezra blesses the Lord God of his fathers for doing such a thing, for preparing the hearts of men from the king and his counselors to the priests and chief men who would go with him to Jerusalem, and even to the brave men and women who freely decided to leave behind their comfortable living and return to their ancestral homeland, not having any guarantees of a better or even a comparable life after their arrival (Ezra 7:27). Moreover, Ezra continued to bless and thank the Lord for commissioning him for the work before him, for strengthening his hand with such graceful gifts and good will from the king, and for giving him such good, responsible men to help him in the task the Lord had given Ezra to do (Ezra 7:28).
In closing this portion of my study of the Book of Ezra, one needs to reconsider the wording of the Decree of Artaxerxes. While it is indeed a wonderful blessing that strengthened the positions of both Ezra for his work and of the Jews of the land of Judah, it was emphatically not a decree to rebuild Jerusalem. On the contrary, the decree assumes Jerusalem was already rebuilt, and in need of a governmental and judicial system to keep order (Ezra 7:25-26). Knowing this, vis-à-vis knowing Jerusalem has already been rebuilt, how could this decree be the one that initiates the Seventy Weeks Prophecy of the Book of Daniel (Daniel 9:24-27)? Consider that the angel told Daniel: “from the going forth of the commandment to restore and to build Jerusalem… shall be seven weeks… and the street shall be built again, and the wall, even in troublous times” (Daniel 9:25). In other words, the first 49 years or the first of 10 jubilees comprising the Seventy Weeks Prophecy (490 years) had already past by the time Ezra left Babylon and arrived at Jerusalem, just in time to take part in the dedication of the newly rebuilt walls surrounding the city (cp. Nehemiah 12:31-36).
Smoodock's Blog 