Saturday, August 1, 2026
For Ezra had set his heart to study the Law of the LORD, and to do it and to teach his statutes and rules in Israel.
Historical Context
The year is 458 BC. Persia rules the region, and Artaxerxes I sits on the throne. Ezra is a Jewish priest living in Babylon, born generations after his people were carried there. He is also a scribe. The king’s own letter gives him that title, and scholars still argue about what it meant in Persian terms: a scholar of the law, an official inside the imperial government, or some of both. Either way, Artaxerxes sent him off with money, with permission to appoint judges, and with a royal decree behind him. The Jerusalem waiting for him was not a fresh ruin. The temple had been rebuilt and running for about 57 years, though the city still had no walls. Those came 13 years later, under Nehemiah. Getting there took four months and several hundred miles, a caravan of families carrying a fortune in silver and gold, with no soldiers guarding it.
Reflection
Study, do, teach. Most of us are tempted to reorder that list, and the step that usually goes missing is the doing. It is the slowest of the three, and the quietest. Reading can be done in a morning. Teaching gets you an audience. But living out what you have read happens where no one is watching and no one claps. What you see in Ezra is a kind of integrity: what he learned, how he lived, and what he said all pointed the same direction. Before the next thing you plan to tell someone else, it is worth asking how the living part is going.