Day 137 – February 28: Ezra 7-10 and Psalms 33 and 35

We begin our reading with Ezra in the first person. The King of Persia, whom you can understand as the king of Babylon, gives permission to Ezra to gather people who want to voluntarily relocate to Judah, and specifically Jerusalem. He gathers them up and there are numbers that are in the hundreds, so about 2,000 people join him to head down south. Now, keep in mind there is no army among them and they are laden with silver and gold and all sorts of valuable treasures that the king of Babylon had given them to bring with them down south. He was embarrassed to ask the king for protection because he had kinda bragged that God would deliver and protect them. If that was the case then why ask for an army, so he didn’t. Guess what? God protected them.

Interestingly enough they get close to Jerusalem and Ezra declares a fast to understand and seek out the favor and the direction of the Lord. While they were praying and putting themselves before the Lord one of the people of God received a message that we have a problem. The problem is that many who are going to be serving in the temple of the Lord while they were slaves married foreign wives and either allowed them to practice, or they themselves practiced, the foreign religions with the foreign gods, along with worshipping the Lord. This caused a major crisis with Ezra grieving and tearing his clothes and tearing out his hair. A solution had to be found.

We can certainly say that they did not take the easy road on this one. The solution is found: send away the foreign wives and the children that came as a result of these marriages. There is a questionable justice issue here with not knowing what would become of these foreign wives and children, the most vulnerable of that society, but that is the solution, and it is taken and we move on from there.