GOD’S WORD FOR YOU
EZRA 7:25-28
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25 “And you, Ezra, according to the wisdom of your God that you have, appoint magistrates and judges who may judge all the people in the Trans-Euphrates, men who know the laws of your God. If there are any who do not know them, you shall teach them about God’s laws. 26 Whoever does not obey the law of your God and the law of the king, let judgment be strictly executed upon him, either death, banishment. confiscation of his property, or imprisonment.”
The written text from Moses is called “the law of your God” in verse 24 but also “the wisdom of your God” in verse 25. Even in the mind of this Gentile Persian, the term “law” is broader than just regulations, but includes instruction, history, and revelation as well as legal items.
Here “all the people in the Trans-Euphrates” must mean the Jews of anywhere west of the River, no matter how distant they might be from Jerusalem; otherwise Artaxerxes would be making Ezra into a viceroy of Persia, and there is no language anywhere to justify that understanding of the text. Ezra’s specific duty was to appoint judges and others to help him govern the Jews. If he found Jewish men who would be qualified to be judges but who were not well-versed in Moses, he was given full authority by the Persian King to instruct them as necessary.
It was in a set of circumstances that were somewhat similar that brought Martin Luther to create and distribute the Small Catechism. When his Reformation began to bring area churches into agreement with Luther over Christian doctrine, he discovered many former Catholic priests and monks who had almost no knowledge of such basic things as the Ten Commandments. They could not recite the Lord’s Prayer except in Latin, and they did not actually speak Latin (they only knew it from singing the liturgy). “What wretchedness I beheld,” he wrote. “The common people have no knowledge whatever of Christian teaching, and unfortunately many pastors are quite incompetent and unfitted for teaching. Although the people are supposed to be Christian, are baptized, and receive the holy sacrament, they do not know the Lord’s Prayer, the Creed, or the Ten Commandments, they live as if they were pigs and irrational beasts, and now that the Gospel has been restored they have mastered the fine art of abusing liberty” (Preface to the Small Catechism).
So while he set out to train the leadership of the church, he made the brilliant move to making every father and head of a household into a teacher. Whether a man had only one pair of feet under his dinner table, or twenty, they were all going to learn the Catechism.
Luther did not use Ezra’s tools: “death, banishment. confiscation of his property, or imprisonment,” but many well-meaning Christian parents may have used various other incentives to help their children learn. We will re-examine Ezra’s tools later in this account, when he will have to bring this authority to bear.
27 May the LORD be blessed; the God of our fathers, who put such a desire into the heart of the king, to beautify the house of the LORD which is in Jerusalem– 28 the LORD, who has shown favor to me before the king and his counselors, and before all the king’s powerful officers. I took courage, for the hand of the LORD my God was upon me, and I gathered the leaders of Israel to go up with me.
Here we hear the voice of Ezra breaking in after the end of the letter (Ezra, now writing in Hebrew, has finished with the last section of Aramaic in the book). He praises God and blesses God. When a person is blessed, it means to wish or confer upon them God’s gifts and praise. When mankind pauses to bless God, it means to give him glory and praise.
Here God is blessed, and declared to be blessed, for putting the thought into the King’s mind to beautify the temple. The same term “beautify” is used in Isaiah 60:13 and in the same sort of idea, where God himself talks about adorning (beautifying) his sanctuary.
Having mentioned the Lord, Ezra goes on to consider in awe, “The Lord, who has shown favor to me before the king and all his counselors.” When the Lord is at work in our lives, it is good to recognize his blessing and his presence: “The Lord is with me; I will not be afraid” (Psalm 118:6). “The Lord is with me like a mighty warrior” (Jeremiah 20:11).
Ezra gathered many of Israel’s leaders to go with him back to Jerusalem. Once again we see that going to Jerusalem is always “going up” no matter where one sets out from. Ezra did not lead back everyone from what had once been their captivity. Many Jews chose to stay where they were in their new lives. It was now more than a hundred years since even the last group had been marched to Babylon; a hundred a fifty since Daniel had been taken away. Some of them wanted to stay, but Ezra was pleased that so many wanted to go with him.
We see law and gospel in this passage in the necessity of Ezra to educate his fellow Jews in the Word of God– those who were eligible for positions of leadership. We should take whatever opportunities we have to learn about our God, about our sin that offends him, and about our Savior from sin, promised since the very beginning of the world. To turn away from this is to break the Third Commandment, despising preaching and his word. But he is forgiving. Our sins are covered by the blood of Jesus, the grace of God, and his compassion for us. We have sinned– but God has redeemed our souls through Jesus Christ (Job 33:27-28), and “nothing is better than Jesus Christ.”
“The name of the Lord will be declared in Zion
and his praise in Jerusalem
when the people and the kingdoms assemble
to worship the Lord.” (Psalm 102:21-22)
In Christ,
Pastor Timothy Smith
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Archives at St Paul’s Lutheran Church https://splnewulm.org/daily-devotions/ and Wisconsin Lutheran Chapel: www.wlchapel.org/connect-grow/ministries/adults/daily-devotions/gwfy-archive/2025
Pastor Smith serves St. Paul’s Lutheran Church, New Ulm, Minnesota
God’s Word for You – Ezra 7:25-28 May the LORD be blessed