Eerdmans Commentary on the Bible: Ezra and Nehemiah

By Lester L. Grabbe

This extract from the Eerdmans Commentary on the Bible provides Grabbe’s introduction to and concise commentary on Ezra and Nehemiah. The Eerdmans Commentary on the Bible presents, in nontechnical language, the best of modern scholarship on each book of the Bible, including the Apocrypha. Reader-friendly commentary complements succinct summaries of each section of the text and will be valuable to scholars, students, and general readers.
 
Rather than attempt a verse-by-verse analysis, these volumes work from larger sense units, highlighting the place of each passage within the overarching biblical story. Commentators focus on the genre of each text—parable, prophetic oracle, legal code, and so on—interpreting within the historical and literary context.
 
The volumes also address major issues within each biblical book—including the range of possible interpretations—and refer readers to the best resources for further discussions.
 

• Language: English
• Publisher: Eerdmans
• Release date: Jun 18, 2019
• ISBN: 9781467453608

Book preview

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EERDMANS

COMMENTARY on the BIBLE

Ezra and Nehemiah

Lester L. Grabbe

WILLIAM B. EERDMANS PUBLISHING COMPANY

GRAND RAPIDS, MICHIGAN

Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co.

4035 Park East Court SE, Grand Rapids, Michigan 49546

www.eerdmans.com

© 2003 Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co.

All rights reserved

Originally published as part of Eerdmans Commentary on the Bible

This edition published 2019.

ISBN 978-1-4674-5360-8

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress.

Contents

Preface

Abbreviations

Ezra

Introduction

Literary Structure of Ezra-Nehemiah

Sources and Historicity

Time and Place of Writing

Commentary

Cyrus’s Decree and the Initial Return of Exiles to Judah (Ezra 1)

The Genealogy and List of Those Who Returned (Ezra 2)

Rebuilding of the Temple Begins (Ezra 3)

Adversaries Get the Rebuilding Stopped (Ezra 4)

The Rebuilding Is Resumed, and Persian Officials Investigate (Ezra 5)

The Temple Completed with the Persian King’s Blessing (Ezra 6)

The Activities of Ezra the Scribe and Priest (Ezra 7–10)

Ezra’s Commission (Ezra 7)

Ezra’s Journey to Jerusalem (Ezra 8)

The Problem with Intermarriage (Ezra 9–10)

Nehemiah

Introduction

Relationship to the Book of Ezra

The Ezra and the Nehemiah Traditions

Sources

Time and Place of Writing

Commentary

How Nehemiah Came to Jerusalem (Neh 1:1–2:10)

The Rebuilding of the Wall Begins (Neh 2:11–3:32)

Opposition from Sanballat and His Colleagues (Nehemiah 4 [Heb. 3:33–4:17])

The Plight of the Poor (Nehemiah 5)

The Wall Is Finished, Despite Attempts to Intimidate Nehemiah (Nehemiah 6)

The Genealogical Register of the Settlers (Nehemiah 7)

A Fragment of the Ezra Tradition (Nehemiah 8–9)

Ezra’s Reading of the Law (Nehemiah 8)

Confession of Sin (Nehemiah 9)

Pledge to Separate from Foreigners (Nehemiah 10)

Those Who Lived in Jerusalem (Nehemiah 11)

Dedication of the Wall (Nehemiah 12)

Nehemiah Addresses Himself to Problems Arising in His Absence (Nehemiah 13)

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Preface

No one familiar with the Bible in any degree needs to be told that it is a remarkable volume. Its documents and traditions span a period of at least a thousand years. It contains the sacred scriptures of two of the world’s major religions, Judaism (what Christians call the Old Testament) and Christianity, and is the lifeblood of each. In and through its words hundreds of thousands have heard, and still hear, the Word of God addressing them personally. The Bible has informed and infused Western culture to such an extent that the foundations, formative traditions, character, and values of Western society cannot be understood without it. Nations have been built on foundational principles drawn from it. Much of the world’s greatest art, music, and literature cannot be adequately appreciated without a good knowledge of the Bible. It has been the source and inspiration for countless acts of quiet heroism and lives of sacrificial service—though, paradoxically, many of its texts have also been used to justify acts of unimaginable horror and systems of barbarous intolerance. And in many parts of the world, particularly in Africa and South America, where the Christian churches are growing rapidly, the Bible is being rediscovered and read in new and exciting ways.

A striking and equally familiar feature of the Bible is the rich diversity of types of writing within it—law codes, historical narratives, poetry, psalms and proverbs, prophetic oracles, apocalyptic visions, gospels, and epistles. Each of these genres requires detailed study to unfold its riches, and all of the sixty-six individual writings—not to mention the Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha—have given rise to numerous commentaries and special studies. Indeed, a further measure of the Bible’s importance is that it has resulted in far more secondary literature than has any other single or composite volume in history. In consequence, the beginning student or study group that wants to give the Bible serious attention can quickly be overwhelmed by such an embarrassing abundance of riches. The sheer disparity between the Bible’s one volume and all that has been written about it is mind-boggling. At the same time, many briefer treatments of biblical books and themes are written at an overly simplistic level; they neither wrestle with the complexity of many texts, nor penetrate very far into the profundity of others, nor show enough awareness of the diversity of interpretations possible at many points or of the challenges and benefits of much modern scholarship. Despite its age, biblical studies is a fast-moving discipline with new discoveries, angles of approach, and insights constantly calling for fresh assessment of older assumptions simply taken for granted, whether at a fine-detail or whole-picture level.

It is essential, then, that each new generation should have a guide enabling serious students of the Bible to see the forest without getting lost in the trees. Since the Bible too easily becomes the province only of the technical expert, it is desirable that a single volume should sum up the best of modern scholarship and direct interested readers to appropriate further reading. And since the twentieth century witnessed huge strides in the way the Bible is read and heard, with many new translations and ways of approaching the Bible under constant discussion, it is appropriate that students of the Bible should have a handbook which provides authoritative summing up of the best fruits of the last century’s scholarship and clear guidance on into the twenty-first century.

The Eerdmans Commentary on the Bible is just such a volume.

•It draws on and encapsulates the best of modern and international scholarship on the books of the Bible.

•It is the only one-volume Bible commentary to cover all the texts (including the Apocrypha and 1 Enoch) regarded by one or more Christian churches as canonical.

•It