Ezra's Blog

by Ben

I read Ezra 1-10 (whole book).

Weblogs are great things. For the writer, they get to share the events of their day, feelings, and even creative writings. For the readers, it is a chance to see inside of someone else's mind. You get to learn more about your friends or favorite celebrities than you could by just reading a simple bio. You get to read the actual words of that person, which allows you to see what that person was thinking when they wrote their blog.

That is exactly what the book of Ezra is like. We, as readers, get to see inside Ezra's thoughts. At the beginning and the end of the book, he writes about the events that are going on around him. But throughout the book, we get his perspective on things, such as after he receives a letter from King Artaxerxes allowing him to get what he needs for his mission, we read:

Praise the Lord, the God of our ancestors, who made the king want to beautify the Temple of the Lord in Jerusalem! And praise him for demonstrating such unfailing love to me by honoring me before the king, his council, and all his mighty princes! I felt encouraged because the gracious hand of the Lord my God was on me. And I gathered some of the leaders of Israel to return with me to Jerusalem.

I think the point that I'm trying to make here is that we, the readers, are getting a direct connection to the author and to the heart of his story. We aren't getting this through a witness or through someone who collected stories together. We are getting the details from the one who was in the middle of it all. It would be like reading one of the gospels written from Jesus perspective.

This really hits home to me. If you aren't getting the power of the way this is written, read Ezra 9:3-15. It is like reading right out of Ezra's prayer journal.

Ever since Matt (and his youth) rewrote Luke into modern language, I have been struck by the idea of the Biblical figures keeping personal journals. To explain Luke 2:19, Matt's group wrote, "Maria wrote it all down quietly in a private post on her Xanga." In our age of shared thoughts and ideas, this makes sense to us. It may seem a little silly, but through Ezra, we can see that the notion isn't far off. What would it be like to read the internal thoughts of some other Bible characters?