Ezra 8:15 Commentary - Dr Peter Masters

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Ezra 8:15

Comments

When you add up not only the numbers that are given, but you make allowances for the women and the children, there were getting on for, if not more than, eight thousand of them. It’s not an enormous number. This is eighty years after the first group of Israelites had left Babylon to return to Jerusalem after the Cyrus edict. There were 42,000 plus for the first journey. This second contingent is only eight thousand under Ezra. ‘I gathered them together to the river that runneth to Ahava;’ – Ahava was a river and a a town also; the name applies to both – ‘and their abode we in tents three days, and I viewed the people and the priests, and found there none of the sons of Levi.’ This seems to have been an assembly point where they gathered before beginning the journey proper. Problem! There are no Levites with them. Ezra does not rest while all else did, and carries out a review, not necessarily of everyone, but certainly of the vital people, the priests and the Levite's, and he discovers this deficiency. How could they maintain the temple worship without sufficient numbers of these? No Levites, not one! Astonishing! When the call had gone out to gather people from Babylon to return to Jerusalem, no Levites respond, and you can only wonder why. There weren't many Levites went with Zerubbabel eighty years before: only seventy-four, a pathetic number, really. Out of the several million Israelites in captivity in Babylon, so many even of the priests and Levites had settled down and didn't want to go, didn't want to return. They must have had a very low view of their national purpose, God's purpose for Israel. They maintained the worship, we are told. They believed they were God's people, but they had lost sight of God's purpose for them. They belonged in Jerusalem, conducting the worship. They had forgotten the reason why God had sent them into captivity: coldness and indifference that lead in due course to idolatry, which resulted in their being driven out, taken into captivity. They obviously had a fairly low view of the necessity of the law of Moses, which laid down what they should be doing and where they should be doing it. They probably had a fear of going back, pioneering all over again, redeveloping things; certainly a fear of what they'd heard about opposition, and the neighbouring countries, and the attacks and skirmishes. Some of them probably repeated the old Levite problem that cropped up in the time of Moses: they felt offended because their role – while it was a very celebrated role – was inferior to that of the priests. There had been a great rebellion on that account, and maybe that sort of thinking was still around: ‘We are not going back to work as Levites in the temple, under the priests.’ We are not told that, but maybe all those things were at play. But there were some among them, who – while they hadn't gone voluntarily, while they hadn't returned to Jerusalem with the other people, with the eight thousand on their own accord – had enough heart to be persuaded. So when a group was sent back to where there were many Levites living, to appeal to them and to tell them, ‘You are badly needed. We cannot do this without you. We need you’, it turned out there were thirty-eight. That was still a pathetic number, but there were at least thirty-eight who were moved to respond, and they returned with the party and joined the main camp of the journey.

Application

There is a great deal to learn from that, because those Levites are pretty much like us. We are very slow at times to see needs and respond to them, and we have to be persuaded. And it's the same of the ministry. There are many people: they feel a sense of responsibility, a call – young man, sometimes – to serve the Lord, and they shrug it off, and hang back. They are fearful of it for a variety of reasons. But there is some heart in them, and happily some can be persuaded to stand out and to lay down their lives and to be ready to be proclaimers for the Lord. We are rather like these reluctant Levites, and it is interesting to see it brought out in the record here.

Sometimes the leaders in the church, the office bearers come behind the members in zeal for the cause – those perhaps who have the advantages, maybe the more professional among the membership. For a full half-century there has been a lack of emphasis on Christian service for all. Pastors won’t stop and ask what percentage actually serve. We cannot force people to serve God – it must be voluntary – but we must show it is the will of God for his people.

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Ezra 8:15 Commentary and Bible Study