Ezra 7:11 Commentary and Bible Study

This is intensely interesting. Ezra does not tell us himself about his commission. He doesn't tell us what the king of the Medo-Persian Empire gave him to do, or what he applied for and got. He just quotes the king's letter. So here you have a court document. You have the official decree given to Ezra. The letter begins. ‘Artaxerxes, king of kings, unto Ezra the priest’, and there is what appears to be a greeting: ‘perfect peace and at such a time.’ The word ‘peace’ is in italics; it isn’t in the original. Others feel that the translation has gone in a slightly wrong direction, and what the verse means to say is, ‘Unto Ezra the priest, a perfect scribe of the law of the God of heaven’, and that's very plausible. Our translators have inserted the word ‘peace’ and taken it a slightly different way, but the other way is Artaxerxes saying of Ezra, ‘He is a great priest and scribe. He knows his business. He is well instructed.’ It's an endorsement of him. ‘A scribe of the law of the God of heaven’ – it is remarkable that a Persian king should say this. He does not localise God as the God of the Jews. He seems to be visited by a similar spirit to that which visited Cyrus and Darius before. At least for some time God made them deeply respect his being. This really took hold of Artaxerxes.