Ezra 2:1-67 - Homiletics

The muster-roll.

The last chapter gave us a catalogue of the sacred vessels returned. In that portion of the present chapter which concludes with the above verses we have a similar catalogue of the sacred people returned (see Lamentations 4:2 ). The first verse seems to show us where this catalogue was made out, viz; in the land of their exile, where Judaea was constantly spoken of as "the province" (comp. Ezra 5:8 ; Nehemiah 1:3 ; Nehemiah 11:3 ). If the nearly identical catalogue which Nehemiah ( Nehemiah 7:5 ) describes himself as having found at Jerusalem, about 103 years afterwards, were the same catalogue as corrected and laid up after the arrival of the exiles at Jerusalem, this might account for the various minor differences which are discoverable between them. Many enrolled to start might never start, or never arrive; some not enrolled to start might join afterwards and be enrolled then. At any rate it is easier to suppose something of this kind than to suppose, in connection with such careful and formal documents of state, so many glaring "mistakes." See also the very curious coincidences with regard to numbers in this case adduced by Wordsworth in loc. ; coincidences hardly to be accounted for except on the supposition of some secret but perfect method of numerical reconciliation. We may take the catalogue before us, therefore, very much as it stands. Not improbably, according to its own methods of interpretation, it is quite correct as it stands. Can we regard it as being also instructive from a moral point of view? Perhaps if we merely regard it in a general way, and as setting before our notice, first, the kind of men, and second, the number of men, that came up, we shall find even this apparently barren Scripture not without some sacred use to us. Some lessons can also be gathered from the very names we find here.

I. THE KIND OF MEN THAT CAME UP . They appear to have been men, in the main, loving the old state of things. They were conservatives, e.g; in politics, keeping still, in the person of Zerubbabel as their chief civil ruler, to the ancient dynasty, that of David. They are also thought by some, comparing the names in verse 2 with the probably correcter account in Nehemiah 7:7 , and with Ezra 6:17 ; 1 Kings 18:31 , to have shown the same spirit touching the ancient twelve-fold "constitution" of Israel. In Church matters, again, so to call them, the returning exiles showed their strong respect for precedents and the past by submitting to Jeshua as chief priest (see 2 Kings 25:18-21 ; 1 Chronicles 6:15 ; Haggai 1:1 , Haggai 1:14 ). Also we see another branch of this Church conservatism of theirs in the especial importance attached by them to the question of genealogy. While, further yet, on this last-mentioned matter, the only proposal made for settling the doubts that beset it was by an ancient method again (verse 63). Nor is it altogether unworthy of remark in this connection that they also appear to have been men showing great attachment to race and place, and assembling together for their proposed return to Jerusalem in family groups. In most cases these groups are described as "the children" of some one man. This is the case of 1 Kings 18:1-17 , and again of 1 Kings 18:33-35 . In other cases ( 1 Kings 18:18-33 ) the groups are described as being connected with particular towns, which, considering how necessarily near of kin all Israelitish fellow-townsmen had formerly been, comes to much the same thing (see Numbers 36:7 ; 1 Kings 21:3 ). All the priests also who returned amongst them are in similar groups, being all described as belonging to four "courses" or family lines ( 1 Kings 18:36-39 ). The same kind of thing, again, is true of the Levites ( 1 Kings 18:40-42 ), and even of those Nethinims and children of Solomon's servants who appear to have been the "hewers of wood" and "drawers of water" for the congregation at large. A strong "clannish" spirit, a great desire to be and do as in" the old times before them," seems to have prevailed among all; the same spirit which afterwards degenerated into that false conservatism, the conservatism of mere human traditions (comp. Jeremiah 6:16 and Jeremiah 18:15 ), found in Pharisaism and Rabbinism. Meanwhile, however, and while still uncorrupted, it made them just the men for their work: returned refugees, not colonists; men called upon merely to rebuild and restore, and not, like Moses before and the apostles of Christ after them, to devise and create.

II. The NUMBER of those who returned is also worthy of note. They were only a few, all told; some 50,000, of all sorts, including, so it would seem from comparing the items, about 10,000 souls of some kind not mentioned in the detailed catalogue. How different from the 600,000 "that were men," beside women and children and many others, that had come up out of Egypt so many generations previously! How many others must have been left behind (as some indication of the state of things on this point, see Esther 9:16 )! Counting also by the number of families or groups that returned, what are thirty-five, the whole number mentioned here, out of the many thousands of Israel! Moreover, a comparison of this chapter with what we read in 1 Kings 8:1-66 . of such names as Pharosh, Pahath-Moab, Adin, Shephatiah, and others, shows that all the members even of these thirty-five families did not come back at the first. So also, although the proportion of priests returning was very considerable (about one tenth of the whole), only four courses out of the twenty-four ( 1 Kings 8:36-39 ; 1 Chronicles 24:1-31 .) were represented among them; whilst some 341 Levites of all three descriptions, as against 38,000 in David's time, and some 392 Nethinims and others, comprised in forty-five groups, complete the catalogue given, except of cases of doubt. Yet even these few appear to be many, viewed from a different point. Of beasts of burden of all kinds they had rather more than 9000 amongst them (about one to every six travellers); but of these only 736 were horses; and of camels, the animals so especially required by them in the desert journey before them, there were only 435—a very different proportion indeed to that which we read of in Genesis 24:10 , where ten camels appear to have been provided for one traveller's use. Altogether it may well be questioned whether caravans of greater apparent importance in every way do not annually cross the deserts of the East without leaving any visible trace behind them on the history of the day. The secret of the difference was in the "blessing" that went with them. In those holy vessels, in the duty before them, and in the presence among them of the prophets and priests of Jehovah, and of the ancestor of the coming Saviour, they were indeed "bearing precious seed" ( Psalms 126:6 ). That being so, their small number was just the proper one for God's use; sufficient to form a nucleus and make a beginning, but not sufficient to give them the appearance of being more than instruments in his hands (comp. 7:2 , 7:4 ; and in connection with the very people and time we are speaking of, Zechariah 4:6 ).

III. A word or two may be added, finally, as to the special NAMES we find here. It cannot surely be a mere coincidence that we find this second entrance into Canaan, this return from Babylonian captivity, headed (ecclesiastically) by one bearing the greatest of Jewish names. Are not such truths as we find in Psalms 68:18 ; Acts 7:45 ; Colossians 2:15 , etc. pointed to here by this name of Jeshua? See further, as to the typical relation between this "Jeshua" and the man Christ "Jesus," Isaiah 11:1 ; Jeremiah 23:5 ; Zechariah 3:8 ; Zechariah 6:11-13 , etc. Also let the name of Bethlehem in verse 21 of this chapter be noted. Was not the fact there recorded, the return, viz; of certain Bethlehemites to their ancestral home in Judah, one step in the many steps taken to fulfil the prophecy of Micah 5:2 , and to make this town of Bethlehem in after ages the exact spot where heaven came nearest to earth? When we remember, indeed, yet further, as before noted, that we have in the name of Zerubbabel the name of a direct ancestor of Messiah himself ( Matthew 1:13 , Matthew 1:16 ), as also what we read in Hebrews 7:9 , Hebrews 7:10 , can we not, in these three names of Jeshua, Zerubbabel, and Bethlehem, prophetically see the Lord Jesus himself leading his people back to their land? And can we not also, in the march of that little company, as it were, hear the very sound of his feet? How true, therefore, and how much to be remembered by us, what we read of as declared on this subject by apostles, by angels, by himself ( John 5:1-47 :89, 46; Acts 10:43 ; Revelation 19:10 ).