1 Esdras 7: What the Passage Says

The Chapter in a Sentence

Sisinnes, Sathrabuzanes and their companions carry out King Darius's orders and oversee the work on the temple, helping the Jewish elders and the temple leaders, and the work goes well while Aggeus and Zacharias prophesy. The temple is finished on the twenty-third day of Adar in the sixth year of Darius, and the people dedicate it with offerings of bulls, rams, lambs and twelve goats, with priests, Levites and gatekeepers in their places as the book of Moses directs. The returned exiles then keep the Passover and the seven-day feast of unleavened bread, rejoicing before the Lord because he had turned the mind of the king of Assyria toward them.

Claim by Claim

1. 7:1
   • Sisinnes was governor of Coelesyria and Phoenicia.
   • Sisinnes and Sathrabuzanes had companions with them.
   • Sisinnes, Sathrabuzanes, and their companions followed the commandments of king Darius.
2. 7:2
   • They oversaw the holy works very carefully.
   • They assisted the elders of the Jews and the rulers of the temple.
3. 7:3
   • The holy works prospered.
   • The prophets Aggeus and Zacharias prophesied.
   • The holy works prospered during the time the prophets prophesied.
4. 7:4
   • They finished these things.
   • These things were finished by the commandment of the Lord God of Israel.
   • These things were finished with the consent of Cyrus, Darius, and Artaxerxes, kings of Persia.
5. 7:5
   • The holy house was finished on the twenty-third day of the month Adar.
   • The holy house was finished in the sixth year of Darius king of the Persians.
6. 7:6
   • The children of Israel, the priests, the Levites, and the others of the captivity who were added to them acted according to what is written in the book of Moses.
7. 7:7
   • For the dedication of the temple of the Lord they offered a hundred bulls.
   • They offered two hundred rams.
   • They offered four hundred lambs.
8. 7:8
   • They offered twelve male goats as a sin offering for all Israel.
   • The number of goats matched the number of the chiefs of the tribes of Israel.
9. 7:9
   • The priests and the Levites stood arrayed in their vestments.
   • The priests and Levites stood according to their kindreds.
   • They stood in the service of the Lord God of Israel.
   • They stood according to the book of Moses.
   • The gatekeepers were at every gate.
10. 7:10
    • The children of Israel who were of the captivity kept the passover on the fourteenth day of the first month.
    • The priests and the Levites had been sanctified before the passover was kept.
11. 7:11
    • Those who were of the captivity were not all sanctified together.
    • The Levites were all sanctified together.
12. 7:12
    • They offered the passover for all those of the captivity.
    • They offered the passover for their brethren the priests.
    • They offered the passover for themselves.
13. 7:13
    • The children of Israel who came out of the captivity ate.
    • All those who ate had separated themselves from the abominations of the people of the land.
    • Those who ate sought the Lord.
14. 7:14
    • They kept the feast of unleavened bread seven days.
    • They rejoiced before the Lord.
15. 7:15
    • The Lord had turned the counsel of the king of Assyria toward them.
    • The turning of that counsel strengthened their hands in the works of the Lord God of Israel.

Words Worth Explaining

Every language note in this chapter, gathered. These explain what a word meant, never what it means for the reader.

7:1

Celosyria and Phenice are the Greek names for a single Persian administrative region west of the Euphrates: Coele-Syria ("hollow Syria," the inland valley country) together with Phoenicia, the coastal strip of what is now Lebanon. Sisinnes governed it on the Persian king's behalf; in the parallel account in the Hebrew book of Ezra the same official is called Tattenai. Darius is Darius I, who ruled the Persian empire from 522 to 486 BC.

7:2

The King James "the ancients of the Jews" does not mean people of long ago. "Ancients" here translates a word for elders, the senior men who governed a community, and the rendering says elders for that reason.

7:3

Aggeus and Zacharias are the Greek spellings of the prophets known in English Bibles as Haggai and Zechariah; 1 Esdras comes down to us in Greek, which is why many familiar names look unfamiliar here.

7:4

Artexerxes is Artaxerxes, who ruled Persia after Darius, so the three kings are not in the order of the building work but form a summary list of the Persian rulers under whom the Jewish community operated. Cyrus authorized the return and the rebuilding, Darius confirmed it, and Artaxerxes belongs to a later stage of the story.

7:5

Adar was the twelfth and last month of the Jewish year, falling in late winter, roughly February to March. The sixth year of Darius I puts the completion of the temple around 516 or 515 BC, some seventy years after the first temple was destroyed.

7:6

"The book of Moses" means the law contained in the first five books of the Bible, which set out how the sacrifices, the priesthood and the festivals described in this chapter were to be carried out.

7:7

These animals were burnt offerings, killed and burned whole on the altar. The numbers are deliberately large: an offering on this scale was an act of public celebration, marking the temple's formal opening for use.

7:8

A sin offering was a sacrifice made to remove ritual impurity and guilt. Twelve goats, one for each of the twelve tribes descended from Jacob's sons, stood for the whole nation, including the tribes that no longer had a community in the land.

7:9

The vestments were the prescribed garments of the priesthood, not ordinary clothing; wearing them was part of being fit to serve. "Kindreds" means family groups, since priests and Levites served in divisions organized by descent. The King James "porters" means gatekeepers, men posted to control who entered the temple courts, not carriers of luggage.

7:10

Passover was kept on the fourteenth day of the first month, Nisan, in spring, roughly March or April. It commemorated Israel's escape from Egypt, when the people were told to kill a lamb and eat it in haste. To be "sanctified" was to go through washings and abstentions that made a person ritually clean and so fit to take part.

7:12

"They offered the passover" means the priests and Levites killed the Passover lambs on behalf of others, rather than each household doing its own slaughtering as in the older practice.

7:13

"The people of the land" is a set phrase for the population already living in the region, those who had not been deported and those of other nations who had settled there. "Abominations" refers to their religious practices, which returning exiles regarded as ruled out for themselves. To "seek the Lord" meant to attach oneself to the worship of Israel's God rather than to those practices.

7:14

The feast of unleavened bread ran for the seven days immediately after Passover, and during it no yeast was used or even kept in the house, in memory of bread baked in haste at the departure from Egypt.

7:15

"The king of Assyria" is surprising, since the ruler in question is the Persian Darius. The Assyrian empire had been gone for a century, but its name clung to the region and to whoever governed it, so the phrase means simply the great king ruling from the east. "To strengthen their hands" is an idiom for giving someone the resources and backing to finish a job.