Sunday, February 11, 2018

Year 8, Day 42: Ezra 4


Theological Commentary: Click Here



As I read through Ezra 4, I find that I am torn between the what-could-be and the skeptic within.  This chapter opens with the enemies of the Jews coming and offering to help.  The Jews refuse to accept help, and this sets of a period of turmoil and the Persian king is even brought in to order the Jews to stop working.  A part of me wonders if that would have happened had the Jews had the graciousness to accept the help instead of refuse it.



On the other hand, time and time again we heard God tell His people in the Old Testament to be careful of the influence of the rest of the world.  The skeptic in me says that this offer of help was probably just a ploy for subterfuge.  These people could have been offering to help but only as a means of getting on the inside so that they could disrupt the building process.  I have no means for justifying such skepticism other than the fact that the Bible calls these people enemies and my own human critical thinking.  It doesn’t make sense that the enemies of the Jews would want to voluntarily help them all of a sudden.



In any case, what we see happening here is that the temple effort is eventually hindered.  The rebellious nature of the Jews, just being humans, comes back to haunt them.  The Jews hadn’t done anything in articular to rebel against the Persians, but the Jews did have a strong reputation for rebelling against the Assyrians and the Babylonians.  For the record, so did ever vassal nation.  Who wants to be a vassal when the opportunity for freedom might exist?



There is a lesson to be learned here, too.  It is really important to learn to keep our human nature in check.  We will develop a reputation.  All people and all groups of people get reputations.  If we don’t keep our humanity in check, we will find our reputation able to be soured and used against us by our enemies.



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