The books of Ezra and Nehemiah hold much confusion for Biblical scholars, as far as chronology is concerned. Some conclude Ezra and Nehemiah were contemporaries, while others believe Ezra arrived in Jerusalem over 50 years after Nehemiah’s ministry. Actually, the chronology of the books is very simple, IF, and only if, one decides with Jesus’ conclusion that scripture cannot or must not be read in a manner that forces it to contradict itself (John 10:35). In other words, one must labor to find a way in which two or more passages of scripture will not contradict. If this is done successfully, one would probably hold the truth of the matter in mind. How is this so, or why must this be done? It is because names of places have changed; sometimes people are known by more than one name; indeed, worldviews change from one age to another, so how one looks at something said in the scriptures triggers a different context of understanding than the original. Therefore, if one labors to understand the original meaning of the text, vis-à-vis what it meant to the original audience, one may very well be rewarded with the truth.
Reading genealogies is so boring; isn’t that true? Yet, from time to time, depending on the context of one’s study, they are very revealing. For example, none of the names that we find written in Ezra 8:1-14 are recorded in either the Book of Ezra or the Book of Nehemiah as having assisted in the rebuilding projects of either the Temple of God or the walls surrounding Jerusalem. That should come as a surprise for anyone who believes that the Decree of Artaxerxes had anything to do with either building project, and there are Biblical scholars who believe the decree permitted the building project to continue to its conclusion. Nevertheless, if none of the folks that Artaxerxes released to rebuild the Temple or the city are found to have participated in that labor, how can anyone conclude the Decree of Artaxerxes had anything to do with the Seventy Weeks Prophecy of Daniel 9:24-27?
The labor of building the Temple began with Zerubbabel, the governor of Judah, and Joshua, the high priest. It was they and those with them who rebuilt the Altar of God on the Feast of Trumpets, immediately following their coming to Jerusalem after being released by Cyrus from their captivity in Babylon (Ezra 3:1-3), and the Seventy Weeks Prophecy begins there. Moreover, the project of rebuilding the Temple continued from the second month of the second year, after being released from Babylon (Ezra 3:8). Additionally, the text claims that, after both the leaders and the rest of the men who came out of the captivity, vis-à-vis the folks listed in the genealogy found in chapter two of the Book of Ezra, laid the foundations of the Temple, they paused to celebrate the fruit of their labor (Ezra 3:8-13). Nevertheless, after about a year or two, and after no little frustration created by the Samaritans, the labor ceased by the order of Cambyses, king of Persia (Ezra 4:1-6).
It didn’t begin again until the coming of Nehemiah, and it is reveled in his account that the building project included the rebuilding of Jerusalem’s walls (Nehemiah 4:1-7). Moreover, those who took part on this building project included the folks of the generation that was born in Judah after the children of the captivity returned to Jerusalem from Babylon, and they are listed in chapter three of the Book of Nehemiah! In each case, the name mentioned lists his father/grandfather as being one of those who returned to Jerusalem from Babylon with Zerubbabel, the governor, and Joshua, the high priest.[1] Genealogies are boring to read, but they are important to show some very important things, including the timeframe, showing when certain events occurred, and who was involved. So, let me repeat, none of the names listed in Ezra 8:1-14 who returned with Ezra in the seventh year of Artaxerxes, the king of Persia (cp. Ezra 7:7), participated in the building project at Jerusalem. What can we conclude from this point? The conclusion of the matter is that Ezra and company arrived after the building project was over. The Temple was already completed, and its dedication was celebrated a year prior to the release of Ezra (Ezra 6:15-18). Moreover, the city and its walls were also complete, and Ezra and company arrived in Jerusalem just in time (a few weeks prior), to participate in the celebration of dedicating the walls of Jerusalem (Nehemiah 12:27, 35-36).
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[1] For example, Eliashib, the officiating high priest during the days when Nehemiah was in authority over the building project at Jerusalem, helped build the wall beginning at the Sheep Gate (Nehemiah 3:1). He was the grandson of Joshua the high priest, who had come up from the captivity (Nehemiah 12:10; cp. Ezra 2:2). Meremoth built the wall near the Fish Gate (Nehemiah 3:3), and he was the son of Urijah (Nehemiah 3:4), the son of Koz (cp. Ezra 2:61), and so on.
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146 responses to “The Chief Men Who Returned with Ezra”
[[[the division permits/helps the ordinary person to read and study scripture in a manner that we remember passages, and if passages, we know where to go to get the context and learn application.]]]
Torah common law does not “read” like a novel. The wisdom of this common law legal system, it requires the skills to know how to logically compare a sugya of Torah with a similar sugya of Torah from some other source with an eye to interpret the revelation of prophetic mussar that applies equally to all living generations of the Jewish people alone.
[[[As for hiding the subtleties, the more educated folks like yourself would be able to find those subtleties anyway, chapter or no.]]]
Torah logic stands on the foundation of Order. Destruction of the sugya Torah organization system amounts to anarchism.
[[[chiastic structure]]] Like a secret handshake between parallel ideas?! Comparable to a double helix of DNA, like some word-shaped mirror?!
Homer’s Illiad and Odyssey employ this technique. The Torah directly forbids assimilation of foreign cultures and customs. This Torah commandment serves to define the intent of the 2nd Sinai Commandment not to worship other Gods.
Herodotus, the Greek historian, had a flair for narrative. Scholars find chiastic techniques in his Histories.
The Roman counterfeit gospels, Matthew 23:11-12 showcase chiastic exposes this avoda zarah assimilation, as does Beowulf; produced between 975 and 1025 AD. Pagan Scandinavia, during the 5th and 6th centuries.
[[[We do change or receive strength to change from within]]] Growing the mussar rebuke within the Yatzir of the bnai brit heart defines the substance of Torah spirituality. Truth, the 8th Oral Torah middah means path. Only a person himself can determine his destiny path walk. Outsiders cannot and do not impose “truth” upon others.
[[[Do I need to remind you that the Temple stood long before the existence of Catholicism?]]] Great Temples found across the ancient world from Asia to South America thousands of years before the Catholic abomination of faith.
[[[Our buildings of worship arose out of your synagogues.]]] Like Hallal Muslim slaughter externally compares to Jewish kosher slaughter of animals! LOL What a joke, Muslim Hallal meats as treif as Xtian slaughtered meats. No difference what so ever. A mosque or a church qualifies as an Av tumah avoda zarah abomination.
[[[We attended your places of worship on the Sabbath, and you attended ours on Sunday.]]]
Utterly absurd. Only an assimilated Jews, most probably intermarried with a Goy, would ever step foot in a Church. Shabbat observance absolutely requires the wisdom skills that can discern מלאכה from עבודה. Both verbs translated (translations suck) as work. The former compares to the skilled labor of labor union personnel. The latter compares to unskilled labor of a minimum wage employee! Now how do these two opposing terms for ‘WORK’ define observance of the mitzva of shabbat??? Xtians never in 2000+ years, including the false messiah imaginary man JeZeus, possess the wisdom knowledge how to obey the mitzva of shabbat.
[[[ It arose out of the heart of David. The Tabernacle was a command from the Lord.]]] King David obeyed the mussar commandment of Natan the prophet. His son king Shlomo ignored the mussar commandment of the prophet Natan. In like and equal manner Rehovoam too ignored the elder sages advice in favor of his contemporary younger advisors at Sh’Cem.
Love the Torah does not define by the Greek agape nonsense. Love requires the precondition of ownership. A man does not love that which he does not own. A thief sells stolen goods at pennies on the dollar because he has no acquisition of these stolen objects unto his soul. The Talmud teaches that theft robs a man of a portion of his soul.
Another fundamental distinction Daniel a mystic NOT a prophet. The T’NaCH does not include the Book of Daniel with the Books of the Prophets!
A good week to ya.
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Greeting Mosckerr, you impress me as a very angry person. Perhaps I’m wrong. I hope I am. Let’s get to it, shall we?
Parts of the Law read like a novel. Just about all of Genesis does. Exodus would be second. It seems to me that you believe the scriptures were preserved for only the elite to understand, something similar to Egyptian priests, preserving their knowledge in hieroglyphics. The common man wasn’t familiar with that kind of communication, so he was, therefore, unable to understand what they wrote. Is this how you think the Torah was written, so complex that only you and highly educated folks like you are able to speak of its secrets? I read somewhere (I forget where) that it was Moses who developed the Hebrew alphabet, simply because he wanted the common folk to understand what he was commanded to record. Yet, if only the elite Jews were to understand, however did you come by the reputation that you are “the People of the Book”?
Is that so, because YOU say it? Is the truth what **you** say it is? The truth that you know, is it yours, because you **own** it, or is it possible for others to come by the truth? According to what I read in the scriptures the truth is what GOD says it is. I don’t mean to get nasty with you, but this is wrong.
There is nothing in scripture that commands us not to divide God’s word into chapters and verses, in order to make it easier for folks to learn what he tells us. Something like this is commanded in his word, when he said to write things on our door posts and our gates. What folks wrote were parts of scripture not whole books.
How would you even begin to teach the subtilties of God’s word to your children? Yet, we are commanded by God to teach his word to our little ones. One has to really get basic and keep it interesting for children.
Like your fathers, your tradition, at least this tradition, nullifies the word of God and would keep it from folks less educated than yourself.
You are aware, aren’t you, that there are chiastic structures throughout the Bible, including the Torah, the Prophets and the Writings? Finding them helps us for certain that copyist didn’t leave anything out by accident or on purpose. If Jews weren’t allowed to do **anything** the goyim did, your people wouldn’t be able to do or say anything. “Don’t write letters, because the goyim do those things!” “Don’t wear watches, because that’s a goyim thing to divide the day that way.” Where would you draw the line?
I would expect nothing less from your worldview. You MUST find the Christian scriptures false if you ever hope to legitimatize your tradition that Messiah has not come. If Matthew 23 is correct, then your worldview is proved false. You cannot allow that to be so.
As for Beowulf and “Pagan” Scandinavia, obviously this has meaning for you. As for me, I don’t know what historical events you infer.
If you think I’m seeking to impose **my** truth on you, perhaps we need to end our discussion here. I’m doing no such thing. We both have similar and dissimilar understanding of Torah/Law. If we agreed on everything you would be a Christian or I would be a Jew. We are what we are, and we can learn from one another, if we allow it to occur.
I don’t get this, you blame Catholics, because their cathedrals are parallels to the Jews’ Temple that stood in Jerusalem. Then when I say the Temple existed prior to Catholicism, you tell me that there were temples all over the word and conclude with the Catholic faith is an abomination. I don’t see how all this fits together, and let me add that, although I have differences of interpretation of the scriptures than Catholics, I consider them, them who love God, to be my brethren. There are counterfeits in all religions, but for the most part, I don’ have a problem with Catholics. They have a history, but so do you, and I don’t hate you. We need to forgive one another. Those who love God will respond in a positive manner.
According to how I read the scriptures that speak of synagogues and churches in the Diaspora, they were houses opened to the public for worship. While bigots have existed throughout the ages, they didn’t have the power centuries ago that they do today.
As I said above, in the beginning we worshiped in houses. Some folks had large enough houses and opened them up to their brethren, both Jews and Christians. Ignatius of the early 2nd century AD wrote of Christians and Jews worshiping together – not the whole assemblies, but friends and some acquaintances they knew, perhaps neighbors or workmates. They didn’t have a problem worshiping together. This doesn’t mean they agreed on everything, but it shows some folks didn’t allow bigotry to get in the way of understanding the one another’s wordview.
You can say what you please about the Temple and rejoice and have a party, when your brethren are mourning. However, the word of God defines how the tabernacle would be built, and the Temple was modeled after it. It was David’s idea to build a stationary and great House for God, and God gave him the permission to do it, not himself, because he was so violent, but his son would do it, which, according to my worldview, his Greater Son, Jesus would build it, but that would be a spiritual Temple comprising both Jew and goyim.
Let me put it this way. If Israel’s greatest king, King David, were alive today, would he join you in celebrating AD 70 or would he be mourning over that tragedy with your brethren?
You don’t attempt to quote what I said that prompted this response. So, I’ll repeat what I said in my earlier comment:
“If I am understanding you correctly, judicial justice might be a beginning, but it hardly fulfills man’s obligation to his brother. We’re given the capacity to love for a reason. Judicial justice may stop the violence, but it has no affect upon the heart.”
What does thievery have to do with my statement?
Tell me, when you pray the Sh’ma each day, do you think you “own” God. I know he is **your** God, but do you think he is yours in the sense that you **own** him? In other words, if I worshiped **your** God, would that be thievery?
Of course Daniel isn’t among the prophets in the Tanakh, if he were, you would be forced to admit that Jesus is your Messiah. You know, the Seventy Weeks Prophecy, 490 years after the Jews are released from Babylon and counting from when they gathered the stones for an altar in Jerusalem (the Feast of Trumpets), Messiah would come, be cut off and the end would come (Daniel 7).
Therefore, because such a thing must not be true, Daniel is be a mystic and placed with the writings. Nevertheless, he predicted in his visions that there would be 4 kingdoms or empires before the end of the matter would come, and sure enough the Jewish nation was destroyed before a fifth empire showed up. He predicted that Greece would conquer Persia and a lot of the politics and wars that would occur in and around Palestine after the great Grecian king (Alexander) died.
Josephus, the Jewish historian and priest of the first century AD, believed Daniel was a prophet. Makes me wonder exactly when Jews stopped believing Daniel was a prophet.
I don’t like being this harsh, but neither do you hold back your words, often expressing contempt. Yet, we go on! Surprising, and interesting!
Be safe, and be blessed.
P.S. (AND I’LL DELETE THIS POSTSCRIPT AFTER YOU REPLY TO THIS QUESTION: YOU PLACED A LARGE COMMENT ON MY STUDY “THE CHIEF MEN WHO RETURNED WITH EZRA. IT BEGINS WITH “Type II diabetes, the consequence of an imbalance of large Intestines gut bacteria?” TELL ME HOW THIS APPLIES TO MY STUDY AND I’LL POST IT, BUT I PROBABLY WILL NOT REPLY TO IT.
Angry constitutes as an unspecified general term. Am very angry at the towel heads who just murdered 6 Israeli stolen hostages on Oct 7th 2023! To employ a general term, lacking a specific particular – has as much meaning as popping a bubble-gum balloon in your mouth. For example: addressing your P.S. question. I shared my research on treating type II diabetes. Its what this atheist – praise God into. I thought you too my have an interest in an actual idea rather than bogus mythology and fictional counterfeit propaganda books.
[[[Parts of the Law read like a novel. Just about all of Genesis does.]]] Goyim have no awareness of Torah aggadah. 1/4 of the Talmud Bavli aggadic in nature. The Creation stories, and the stories of the Avot/fathers all Aggadic stories which come to teach the mussar of tohor time oriented mitzvot and their relationship with positive and negative commandments, the next 3 Books of the Written Torah. Honestly, it seems to me that Goyim, being but props to begin with, compare to a blank page.
[[[ It seems to me that you believe the scriptures were preserved for only the elite to understand, something similar to Egyptian priests, preserving their knowledge in hieroglyphics. The common man wasn’t familiar with that kind of communication, so he was, therefore, unable to understand what they wrote. Is this how you think the Torah was written, so complex that only you and highly educated folks like you are able to speak of its secrets?]]] Exactly. 100+%!!!! Whooooooooooooooooop. :))) You got it.
[[[Moses who developed the Hebrew alphabet, simply because he wanted the common folk to understand what he was commanded to record.]]] No. Moshe gave the Torah strictly on only to the Tribe of Levi, his Tribe. The House of Aaron, Moshe’s brother, a specific aristocracy in the larger Tribe of Levi.
[[[Yet, if only the elite Jews were to understand, however did you come by the reputation that you are “the People of the Book”?]]] The koran slanders Jews and first referred to Jews as: “the people of the Book”. A Book which Muhammad could not read. LOL.
[[[Is that so, because YOU say it? Is the truth what **you** say it is?]]] My Rav taught me this kabbalah. His Rav taught him this kabbalah. His Rav, the Posek Ha’Dor of both his and my generations Rabbi Yosef Shalom Elyashiv. As an unmarried Yeshiva student i cleaned the shul of rabbi Elyashiv before every shabbat. I learned Torah with his children Moshe and Binyomin. Moshe took over the chair of rabbi Elyashiv after he passed. It seems to me this kabbalah masoret tradition comes from very reliable Jewish sources.
[[[ According to what I read in the scriptures the truth is what GOD says it is.]]] Torah common law, nowhere in the Talmud God ever mentioned. LOL. Common law not Xtian theology which spins around God. Torah common law exists as codifications of Oral Torah Sanhedrin judicial rulings. Just that simple.
[[[You are aware, aren’t you, that there are chiastic structures throughout the Bible, including the Torah, the Prophets and the Writings?]]] No I am not aware, please enlighten me by bringing examples from within any T’NaCH source you please. I will take the time to examine these prophetic mussar sources and interpret the mussar which the sages of Israel learn from them.
[[[There is nothing in scripture that commands us not to divide God’s word into chapters and verses, in order to make it easier for folks to learn what he tells us.]]] If you examine a Sefer Torah, its organized into פ and ס organizations. The former means chapter, and the latter means sub-chapter. A chapter can include many and multiple sub-chapters. The Goyim obliterated this kabbalah of Moshe Rabbeinu’s Sefer Torah. All the Books in the NaCH likewise broken down into sugyot. The Xtian bible abomination raped this T’NaCH organization.
[[[I don’t get this, you blame Catholics, because their cathedrals are parallels to the Jews’ Temple that stood in Jerusalem.]]] No. I bring the Catholic Cathedrals as a real life example of the customs of ancient people who made hugely expensive abominations in the days of king Shlomo and also Ezra’s lifetimes! Clearly Catholicism did not exist during king Shlomo’s and Ezra’s avoda zarah errors.
[[[You can say what you please about the Temple and rejoice and have a party, when your brethren are mourning.]]] I do.
[[[However, the word of God defines how the tabernacle would be built, and the Temple was modeled after it.]]] The Talmud interprets the Mishkan as the establishment of lateral common law courtrooms starting with the Great Sanhedrin placed within Ezra’s Temple. King Shlomo’s avoda zara despised the commandment of his father to rule the land with judicial common law justice. Shlomo’s abomination “replacement theology” substituted a fancy Catholic like Temple in the place of lateral Sanhedrin common law courtrooms.
[[[It was David’s idea to build a stationary and great House for God, and God gave him the permission to do it, not himself]]] No the prophet Natan rebuked king David against committing this tumah avoda zarah.
[[[ If Israel’s greatest king, King David, were alive today, would he join you in celebrating AD 70]]] We would party and rejoice and sing and dance together. Like we would at a wedding of close family members!
[[[“If I am understanding you correctly, judicial justice might be a beginning, but it hardly fulfills man’s obligation to his brother. We’re given the capacity to love for a reason. Judicial justice may stop the violence, but it has no affect upon the heart.”]]] False. The connection of Moshe’s love for our People begins with the genesis of Moshe’s standing in the court of Par’o over the flogging of Israelite slaves who could not meet the quota tale of bricks demanded by Par’o who withheld the most essential aspect of brick making – the straw!
The Sh’ma a very unique p’suk/verse. In the whole of the T’NaCH only one other place in the Written Torah compares to the p’suk of the Sh’ma which employs 3 Divine Names in succession. The last word ONE does not refer to God, cause there is not God praise God. LOL. The word one refers to a persons’ acceptance of the 3 oaths sworn by Avraham, Yitzak and Yaacov as “ONE” within his own heart.
Revisionist history concerning Daniel changes nothing. Daniel a mystic not a prophet. Just as the false messiah JeZeus has no portion with Torah common law. And therefore has no connection what so ever with the Torah commandment of Moshiach.
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