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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