Ezra 4:8

4:8 Rehum the commander ¹  and Shimshai the scribe ²  wrote a letter concerning ³  Jerusalem to King Artaxerxes as follows:

Ezra 5:5

5:5 But God was watching over ⁴  the elders of Judah, and they were not stopped ⁵  until a report could be dispatched ⁶  to Darius and a letter could be sent back concerning this.

Ezra 7:1

The Arrival of Ezra

7:1 Now after these things had happened, during the reign of King Artaxerxes ⁷  of Persia, Ezra came up from Babylon. ⁸  Ezra was the son of Seraiah, who was the son of Azariah, who was the son of Hilkiah,

Ezra 7:13

7:13 I have now issued a decree ⁹  that anyone in my kingdom from the people of Israel – even the priests and Levites – who wishes to do so may go up with you to Jerusalem. ¹⁰ 

Ezra 7:16

7:16 along with all the silver and gold that you may collect ¹¹  throughout all the province of Babylon and the contributions of the people and the priests for the temple of their God which is in Jerusalem.

Ezra 8:28-29

8:28 Then I said to them, “You are holy to the Lord, just as these vessels are holy. The silver and the gold are a voluntary offering to the Lord, the God of your fathers. 8:29 Be careful with them and protect them, until you weigh them out before the leading priests and the Levites and the family leaders of Israel in Jerusalem, ¹²  in the storerooms of the temple of the Lord.”

Ezra 8:36

8:36 Then they presented the decrees of the king to the king’s satraps and to the governors of Trans-Euphrates, who gave help to the people and to the temple of God.

[4:8]  ¹ tn Aram “lord of the command.” So also in vv. 9, 17.

[4:8]  ² sn Like Rehum, Shimshai was apparently a fairly high-ranking official charged with overseeing Persian interests in this part of the empire. His title was “scribe” or “secretary,” but in a more elevated political sense than that word sometimes has elsewhere. American governmental titles such as “Secretary of State” perhaps provide an analogy in that the word “secretary” can have a broad range of meaning.

[4:8]  ³ tn Or perhaps “against.”

[5:5]  ⁴ tn Aram “the eye of their God was on.” The idiom describes the attentive care that one exercises in behalf of the object of his concern.

[5:5]  ⁵ tn Aram “they did not stop them.”

[5:5]  ⁶ tn Aram “[could] go.” On this form see F. Rosenthal, Grammar, 58, §169.

[7:1]  ⁷ sn If the Artaxerxes of Ezra 7:1 is Artaxerxes I Longimanus (ca. 464–423 B.C.), Ezra must have arrived in Jerusalem ca. 458 B.C., since Ezra 7:7-8 connects the time of his arrival to the seventh year of the king. The arrival of Nehemiah is then linked to the twentieth year of the king (Neh 1:1), or ca. 445 B.C. Some scholars, however, have suggested that Ezra 7:7 should be read as “the thirty-seventh year” rather than “the seventh year.” This would have Ezra coming to Jerusalem after, rather than before, the arrival of Nehemiah. Others have taken the seventh year of Ezra 7:7-8 to refer not to Artaxerxes I but to Artaxerxes II, who ruled ca. 404–358 B.C. In this understanding Ezra would have returned to Jerusalem ca. 398 B.C., a good many years after the return of Nehemiah. Neither of these views is certain, however, and it seems better to retain the traditional understanding of the chronological sequence of returns by Ezra and Nehemiah. With this understanding there is a gap of about fifty-eight years between chapter six, which describes the dedication of the temple in 516 b.c., and chapter seven, which opens with Ezra’s coming to Jerusalem in 458 b.c.

[7:1]  ⁸ tn The words “came up from Babylon” do not appear in the Hebrew text until v. 6. They have been supplied here for the sake of clarity.

[7:13]  ⁹ tn Heb “from me is placed a decree.” So also in v. 21.

[7:13]  ¹⁰ map For location see Map5 B1; Map6 F3; Map7 E2; Map8 F2; Map10 B3; JP1 F4; JP2 F4; JP3 F4; JP4 F4.

[7:16]  ¹¹ tn Aram “find.”

[8:29]  ¹² map For location see Map5 B1; Map6 F3; Map7 E2; Map8 F2; Map10 B3; JP1 F4; JP2 F4; JP3 F4; JP4 F4.