Ezra 3:1 Commentary and Bible Study

‘And the children of Israel were in the cities.’ They had taken the journey home, and for most of them it would have taken approximately 3 to 4 months, travelling on foot with their families. They would have crossed a large area of desert waste in order to get down from their various locations within the Babylonian empire to return to Judah. The first thing they appear to have done is to return to their own smallholdings and towns and villages in Judah – those which lay within the territory assigned to them. Some of them no doubt had been occupied by the settlers that, some sixty years previously, had been brought in by the Babylonian authorities to settle in the land. No doubt some of them had to start all over again, but the Jews of those days were still living for the most part in the plots and portions of land, according to their tribes and families that were accorded to them from the very beginning. They had inherited them, so they return to their homes, now very dilapidated. Even homes built by modern construction would be fairly dilapidated after abandonment for some sixty to seventy years, and you can imagine the kind of structure that was in use in Judah and Israel: they would have returned to a shambles, and to land, if it hadn't been reoccupied, horrendously overgrown so that they were all starting from scratch. They now gather together as one man in Jerusalem. Since on their return they had gone straight to their ancestral lands, they must have had a prior arrangement made before they set out on the journey that at the seventh month, they would assemble in Jerusalem in time for the feast of Tabernacles. It would be the first time, the feast had been held in decades. There was no canvas, no call, made. When the time came they all together voluntarily in response to that prior arrangement, headed for Jerusalem. That was quite a complex arrangement to follow. Consider that you were among the 42,000 plus who returned to Judah. You would have nothing but work before you. You are virtually pioneers all over again, building your homes in wasted and ruined areas, and you want to get down to it and make those homes safe, and the great temptation now you are in your own land again, will be to beautify your homes. They did in the course of time fall to that temptation, and to spend the best of their time and their energies on their smallholdings and their homes, but it is quite remarkable that they are given really very little time to settle: just about time to identify their plots and build some sort of a shack or make initial repairs, and then they are off to Jerusalem. Nevertheless, as one man they go. So there is tremendous enthusiasm among this remnant, and there's a great optimism under God to honour the worship and the re-establishment of the sacrifices and the temple in Jerusalem. It seems so commendable. that's what the phrase means translated ‘as one man’ – they did it on their own, without having to be aroused, and they all headed off together. So there's a lot to be said for this generation. There is a lot of faith in them. How much they understood and believed: whether they really appreciated the full wonder of the fact that the promises of God were being fulfilled and the purpose of God for the Jews of old was back on track. The time of discipline, the captivity, was ended, and it seemed for many years as though things could never go back to how they were before. ‘You can't reoccupy Judah; you can't preoccupy Jerusalem; you were under the Babylonians, now you’re under the Persians. This cannot be done; it is impossible’, and yet here they are, able to return. Do they see that this is of the Lord? Well many of them obviously did. Did they see that the promised Messiah, the line is unbroken, the plan of God is good to be carried out?