This week we are studying chapter 8, the continuation of the Ezra memoir. Before the caravan of returnees sets out, Ezra recruits volunteers to join him, especially Levites and temple servants. The chapter also describes a bit about their travel preparations and reveals Ezra’s main concern. While the actual journey is not the chapter’s focus, the narrator highlights the particulars of their departure and arrival.
Once again, the book incorporates a list into the narrative. Ezra is slowly killing us with these lists, but in this case he writes the list in first-person. Ezra introduces the record: “this is the genealogy of those who went up with me from Babylonia, in the reign of King Artaxerxes” (8:1). The first names recorded are two priests, descendants of Phinehas, the priest forever celebrated for his zealous defense of Israel’s purity in the wilderness wanderings. God promised Phineas a “covenant of a lasting priesthood, because he was zealous for the honor of his God and made atonement for the Israelites” (Num. 25:13). Later in the book, Ezra demonstrated a Phineas-like zeal for protecting the holy seed of Israel.
