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Why Ezra-Nehemiah Ends Badly (Gary Edward Schnittjer) · Thinking Christian: Bible, Theology, and Culture

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  Speaker 1: The world is becoming increasingly proficient at telling stories that
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  Speaker 1: deny God. As such, we need Thinking Christian to become
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  Speaker 1: as natural as breathing. Welcome to the Thinking Christian podcast.
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  Speaker 1: I'm doctor James Spencer. Through calm, thoughtful theological discussions, Thinking
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  Speaker 1: Christian highlights the ways God is working in the world
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  Speaker 1: and questions the underlying social, cultural, and political assumptions that
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  Speaker 1: hinder Christians from becoming more like Christ. Now on to
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  Speaker 1: today's episode of Thinking Christian. Hey, everyone, welcome to this
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  Speaker 1: episode of Thinking Christian. I'm doctor James Spencer and I'm
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  Speaker 1: joined again by doctor Gary Edward Snicker, and we're going
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  Speaker 1: to be talking today a little bit about Ezra Nehemiah.
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  Speaker 1: And Gary's written a commentary on Ezra Niamayah the Front
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  Speaker 1: that's coming out in the Baker Commentary series, so i'd
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  Speaker 1: just encourage you to check that out. I would also
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  Speaker 1: encourage you to go to his substack, carpentersstudent dot Com.
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  Speaker 1: That's with two s's in the middle, Carpenter's Student dot Com.
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  Speaker 2: And yeah, we're just going to jump in.
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  Speaker 1: And one of the things I find when I teach
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  Speaker 1: on Ezra and Nehemiah is that people are a little
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  Speaker 1: confused about how these books actually work together. We have
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  Speaker 1: a lot of these books in the Old Testament sort
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  Speaker 1: of get crammed together because you know, maybe they don't
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  Speaker 1: warrant a full class, or you know, you just want
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  Speaker 1: to teach, you know, a few books at a time.
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  Speaker 1: But Ezra and ne and Mayah is a little different.
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  Speaker 1: And so Gary, if we can start there, what's the
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  Speaker 1: connection between these two books and how do you think
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  Speaker 1: about it?
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  Speaker 3: Yeah, that's that's a really great place to start. But
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  Speaker 3: I even like the way from the question, like you
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  Speaker 3: teach on Ezra Amayah, that's great. Not everybody does that.
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  Speaker 3: They're they're kind of a poor step child in the
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  Speaker 3: Old Testament. Well, yeah, in the New Testament we have
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  Speaker 3: First Corinthians and Second Corinthians. Those are two separate letters.
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  Speaker 3: Of course they are to the same people. But in
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  Speaker 3: the Old Testament there's three books that we know of
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  Speaker 3: as first and Second Samuel, first and second Kings, and
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  Speaker 3: first and second Chronicles. Those are one book. Now, back then,
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  Speaker 3: these scrolls. Scrolls are a pain, and so to make
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  Speaker 3: them more manageable, they broke these huge scrolls into two
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  Speaker 3: smaller scrolls, which the name first and Second Ezra Amiyah
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  Speaker 3: is the same situation as that it's one story, one book,
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  Speaker 3: but it's easier scrolling to do in two scrolls. Now,
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  Speaker 3: when you know, we we we'd a w hold discussion
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  Speaker 3: with this. The folks at Baker when they were they
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  Speaker 3: actually called a meeting James. At their meeting, they decided,
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  Speaker 3: what should we call this commentary, and they decided, let's
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  Speaker 3: call it Ezra ne Amayah. But then even when they
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  Speaker 3: brought it back to me, they brought it with an
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  Speaker 3: n dash as that it was the Book of Ezra
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  Speaker 3: through the Book of an Amiah. I said, no, no, it
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  Speaker 3: needs to be a hyphen like, yeah, well hyphen and
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  Speaker 3: I said, yeah, it's on the analogy and I explained
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  Speaker 3: first and second chronicles and all that. Yeah, well, well
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  Speaker 3: then it should be. And I said no, no, no, I said,
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  Speaker 3: it can be first ez Amiah and second israni Amayah.
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  Speaker 3: It could be that, but it's it's one book, and
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  Speaker 3: so we need to sort of reflect that in the title.
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  Speaker 3: And I think you're right. It gets treated as two
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  Speaker 3: books usually in the English Bible.
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  Speaker 2: It does.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean you have that hard division. Now you
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  Speaker 1: have that in first and second Samuel too. But because
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  Speaker 1: it's Samuel and Samuel, people tend to get the connection
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  Speaker 1: Kings and Kings, chronicles and chronicles, you tend to get
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  Speaker 1: that sort of continuity between the two. But with Ezra
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  Speaker 1: and the Amayah, because you have the two different names
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  Speaker 1: there and really two different characters dominating the narrative in
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  Speaker 1: the different sets of book, it can feel like it's
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  Speaker 1: two separate narratives.
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  Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah, but I think that we do ourselves at disservice.
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  Speaker 3: It's already a very hard book to a in terms
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  Speaker 3: of yeah, so if we if we break it into
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  Speaker 3: a half book, then it becomes almost just obscure. So
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  Speaker 3: it's it's it's very important to think of it in
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  Speaker 3: terms of its coherence and unity across the entire book
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  Speaker 3: of Ezra Nehemiah.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah.
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  Speaker 1: Actually, you only get sort of a partial closure at
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  Speaker 1: the end of Ezra's main part, and I'm speaking of
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  Speaker 1: the character Ezra at this point. You only get a
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  Speaker 1: partial closer at the end of his main thrust, and
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  Speaker 1: then you move into Neamiah. You have to almost wait
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  Speaker 1: till the end of Neamiah to really get the whole
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  Speaker 1: scope and understanding of what's going on in the overarching narrative,
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  Speaker 1: and they do inform one another to some degree.
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  Speaker 3: Yeah, I think that's right, and I think the complexity
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  Speaker 3: is something we've not attended to. My commentary has two angles, really.
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  Speaker 3: I mean, it goes through a passage by pass is
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  Speaker 3: like normal, but a couple of neglected things that have
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  Speaker 3: really needed to be surfaced. And so there are things
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  Speaker 3: I emphasize in my commentary. One is the bad ending.
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  Speaker 3: It has a bad ending. But what's amazing in the literature,
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  Speaker 3: and this is both in the literature for pastors and
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  Speaker 3: Bible study guides and also even for the technical literature,
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  Speaker 3: which is more familiar to Old Testament folks like myself
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  Speaker 3: and yourself. The bad ending a few few people acknowledge it,
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  Speaker 3: but then they deny it. They say, oh, it's an appendix.
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  Speaker 3: The book ends in Neomiah twelve with the parade around
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  Speaker 3: the walls of Jerusalem, and that's the major technical commentary
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  Speaker 3: say this as Kenazi's and Williamson's and others. Right, So
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  Speaker 3: there's there's just a surprising lack of treating the book
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  Speaker 3: with a bad ending. And so it's very important to
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  Speaker 3: think that this book starts on a high note. The
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  Speaker 3: Yahwe's fulfillment of his word through the prophet Jeremiah, through
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  Speaker 3: his servant, the Messiah Cyrus. It starts on this wonderful fulfillment,
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  Speaker 3: but the book at its end leads to a bad ending.
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  Speaker 3: And so I don't think that there's been amazingly adequate
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  Speaker 3: study of this book within the framework of a bad
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  Speaker 3: ending by the time we get to this end of
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  Speaker 3: the book. Nehemiah, who I love Namiah, but he's well,
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  Speaker 3: he's practically an American, but he's walking around Jerusalem. They
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  Speaker 3: have the walls, they have Torah reading, they have Sabbath keeping,
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  Speaker 3: but it's in everything's in full rebellion, and he uses
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  Speaker 3: his goons to beat people up and chase people away
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  Speaker 3: and scream at people and rip their hair out.
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  Speaker 2: But we have the real.
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  Speaker 3: Sense, like all of the collective reformations that we've seen
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  Speaker 3: a series of these and Ezra Amiah, they're gone. At
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  Speaker 3: the end. It's just Neamiah alone in his zeal And.
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  Speaker 3: We say, if the exile was supposed to reform people,
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  Speaker 3: it didn't work, didn't I mean, we need if God's
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  Speaker 3: going to fulfill his word, if he's going to bring
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  Speaker 3: to pass all that he promised he's going to have
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  Speaker 3: to do it another way, and that really sets us
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  Speaker 3: up for the profit that arises from Nazareth.
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  Speaker 1: So I've looked at that bad ending for a long time,
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  Speaker 1: and one of the things that I sort of started
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  Speaker 1: just thinking about was the canonical arrangement of the Old Testament.
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  Speaker 1: So English readers know that the Old Testament ends in
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  Speaker 1: used to tell my freshman students Malachi, the last Italian prophet.
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  Speaker 2: And so it ends in Malachi.
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  Speaker 1: But the Hebrew canon actually ended with what we know
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  Speaker 1: as Second Chronicles, and at the end of Second Chronicles,
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  Speaker 1: you have this sort of looking forward and hope the
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  Speaker 1: Jews haven't gone back to the land yet they haven't.
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  Speaker 1: You don't see this quote unquote bad ending just yet.
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  Speaker 1: It ends on a note of hope, looking forward to
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  Speaker 1: something that's going to come. And I actually think that's
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  Speaker 1: really helpful. It helped me when I was looking at
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  Speaker 1: this bad ending and Emi to realize that even though
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  Speaker 1: this is embedded and it's a little out of sequence,
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  Speaker 1: and you know, it doesn't chronologically fit a clean narrative
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  Speaker 1: across the whole thing, the Jews are still hoping for
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  Speaker 1: more at the end of their cannon, and they have
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  Speaker 1: this moment within as we Nemiah, where you sit back
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  Speaker 1: and you say, yes, we're still hoping for more. Hasn't
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  Speaker 1: come yet, but we know that it will. Despite the
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  Speaker 1: situation we're describing here, I actually think the bad ending
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  Speaker 1: is crucial to understanding what the Jews believe is happening, right,
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  Speaker 1: But also obviously the theology that is being conveyed here
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  Speaker 1: is that we're going to need God's intervention. Something else
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  Speaker 1: is going to have to come in here. The law
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  Speaker 1: is insufficient, the practices are insufficient, the cult is insufficient.
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  Speaker 1: We've got to be looking forward to more. And I'm
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  Speaker 1: just sort of, like I said, I don't know that
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  Speaker 1: there's any sort of technical connection between all of.
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  Speaker 2: That, but just as an early reader of.
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  Speaker 1: These texts, that's where I landed when I looked at
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  Speaker 1: that arrangement.
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  Speaker 3: Well, good, we're kindred spirits in that. But it's the
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  Speaker 3: literature is not that way. The literature that's out there,
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  Speaker 3: in all its variety, is about a happily ever after
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  Speaker 3: Hollywood ending, and so people have found a way to
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  Speaker 3: ignore the way that Ezrami is. But I guess your
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  Speaker 3: point is to put it in the context of the
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  Speaker 3: whole Old Testament. Yeah, now the bhs U and I
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  Speaker 3: guess they follow the the town the town with the
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  Speaker 3: Babylonian town would and then Chronicles the BHQ. Once they
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  Speaker 3: finish going through the editorializing of it, they're going to
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  Speaker 3: put it in the order of the Leningrad Codex, where
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  Speaker 3: Ezrami is actually last last. Yeah, so they're going to
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  Speaker 3: kind of mess everything up both with n A twenty
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  Speaker 3: nine is going to mess up the order of the
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  Speaker 3: New Testament. HU is going to mess up the order
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  Speaker 3: of the Old Testament that we're used to anyway. But
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  Speaker 3: that's very interesting that the met that it is sort
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  Speaker 3: of last because it goes after Chronicles, right, second, Chronicles
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  Speaker 3: thirty six overlaps Ezra one. So that's right, sort of
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  Speaker 3: as I is a good ending, but or is appropriate ending.
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  Speaker 3: But then in the Babylonian Talmen, it's arranged the way
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  Speaker 3: you say they put before Chronicles, and it ends on
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  Speaker 3: this hopeful note, which is I agree with you that
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  Speaker 3: there's this sense of we we know that Chronicles, you know,
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  Speaker 3: the immediate sequel is going to end in failure, but
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  Speaker 3: Chronicles is a good way to reach past that failure
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  Speaker 3: that we already know about in sight and all those
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  Speaker 3: among his people, let them go up to Jerusalem. Yes,
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  Speaker 3: I mean that's that's that's the right ending.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, it isn't that this sort of in this moment
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  Speaker 1: that people coming back to Jerusalem and rebuilding the walls
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  Speaker 1: is the end of all things, Like we finally come
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  Speaker 1: to this solution that we've always wanted, and we're back
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  Speaker 1: from exile and every you know, it's all puppies and rainbows.
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  Speaker 2: It's not that and they know that.
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  Speaker 1: And so to end on this note of we've still
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  Speaker 1: got to push forward, We've still got to look ahead
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  Speaker 1: for what God is going to do with us.
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  Speaker 2: I think is really.
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  Speaker 1: A fantastic reading, and I don't fully grasp I'm with
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  Speaker 1: you on the critical scholarship. I don't fully understand why
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  Speaker 1: people ignore that last chapter of Nehemiah, because to me,
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  Speaker 1: it fits so well with the overarching message that we see,
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  Speaker 1: whether that's in the profits, whether that's in you know,
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  Speaker 1: the rest of the Old Testament, or even in the
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  Speaker 1: New you know, you even if you just look at
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  Speaker 1: something like Ezekiel thirty six, twenty six and twenty seven, right,
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  Speaker 1: there is going to have to be something more than
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  Speaker 1: just bringing you back from exile.
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  Speaker 2: I'm going to have to change your heart from stone
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  Speaker 2: to flesh.
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  Speaker 1: I'm going to have to put my spirit within you
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  Speaker 1: to empower you to keep my laws in commands. And
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  Speaker 1: so that hasn't happened yet, but we have clear evidence
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  Speaker 1: that it needs to. And so to me, that Ezrai
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  Speaker 1: and I ending fits with that sort of broader Old
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  Speaker 1: Testament theology.
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  Speaker 2: I suppose.
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  Speaker 3: Yeah. I mean, that's that's how Torah ends right across
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  Speaker 3: the Jordan River. It's not in the Promise and propriat.
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  Speaker 3: That's how we call it. The former prophets, the rise
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  Speaker 3: in the fall of the Hebrew kingdom in Joshua judges
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  Speaker 3: Samuel King. It ends in exile. Yes, Johoya chen is released,
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  Speaker 3: but he's he's still just he's an exile. And that's
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  Speaker 3: how the profits end waiting for, you know, the the
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  Speaker 3: return of Moses and Elijah. There in Malachi as you
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  Speaker 3: would say, or Alakai as we say.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, there's a there's an And I think it's interesting.
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  Speaker 1: Is again, I don't want to go too far afield
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  Speaker 1: from Mesmer and Yamaya, but I think it's interesting to
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  Speaker 1: consider all of the different places where the Bible, I
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  Speaker 1: wouldn't just say the Old Testament, but the whole Bible
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  Speaker 1: leaves us in an anticipatory state. We're not in any
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  Speaker 1: particularly different sort of state. Now, we're anticipating something that
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  Speaker 1: is to come, but we're living within the groanings of creation,
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  Speaker 1: waiting for you know, the glorification of the sons of God.
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  Speaker 2: You know, Roman's aid has that sort of gesturing forward.
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  Speaker 3: To Yeah, I don't want to get way laid in
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  Speaker 3: the New Testament either, but you know, the whole idea
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  Speaker 3: of the Lord rising from the dead and descending on high,
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  Speaker 3: but his people are the marginalized and the just the
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  Speaker 3: riff raff of society, if you will. It's not the
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  Speaker 3: dominant culture. It's not until the Emperor is converted to
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  Speaker 3: Christianity that Christianity becomes part of the prevailing culture. So
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  Speaker 3: we come from a heritage that's upside down from the
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  Speaker 3: way the whole Bible was. You know, we're used to
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  Speaker 3: Christianity being the prevailing culture, but it's that's not the
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  Speaker 3: way any part of the Bible is framed.
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  Speaker 1: So if we skip back, just with that point, if
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  Speaker 1: we skip back to the Jews coming back from exile
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  Speaker 1: into Jerusalem, they are a marginal class. I mean, they
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  Speaker 1: are being allowed to come back. They're not an autonomous
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  Speaker 1: nation at this point. And Ezra recognizes this, knows that
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  Speaker 1: it's not just about rebuilding the temple and the walls
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  Speaker 1: and the you know, all those kind of things, not
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  Speaker 1: just about being in the city. There has to be
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  Speaker 1: something more. And so he begins teaching on the law.
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  Speaker 1: How do you think about that entree into this, Like,
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  Speaker 1: why is Ezra teaching on the law so significantly and
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  Speaker 1: why does he touch on the very particular laws that
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  Speaker 1: he does.
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  Speaker 3: So let me just prebble a little further. Yeah, are
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  Speaker 3: you asking me about Ezra nine and ten, the big divorce?
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  Speaker 3: Ask me about Neamyah chapter eight, the reading Torah and this.
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  Speaker 1: Let's go Nemiah eight first and then maybe we'll circle
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  Speaker 1: back around to the other.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, thank you.
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  Speaker 3: Yeah. So in nea My eight, it's it's really this complex,
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  Speaker 3: and it's it's a really just one of the really
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  Speaker 3: wonderful parts of all of scripture to be in because
• 16:22
  Speaker 3: they're studying scripture in such a vibrant way. So we
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  Speaker 3: have neam I eight where they they read and study
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  Speaker 3: scripture among the people, not just the priestly class, among
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  Speaker 3: people for eleven days, and then in Namiyah chapter nine, uh,
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  Speaker 3: the Levites lead the people in a scripture saturated prayer.
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  Speaker 3: It's the the longest panoramic retrospective prayer all of scripture
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  Speaker 3: that starts all the way at the beginning and comes
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  Speaker 3: all the way up to their moment. And then Niamiah
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  Speaker 3: chapter ten, the people in writing sign an oath, a
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  Speaker 3: solemn oath that they're going to obey. So only your
• 17:09
  Speaker 3: viewers can see this. I'm holding my hands out right
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  Speaker 3: now if you're listening. Torre says this. But then the
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  Speaker 3: people say, no, no, no, we're going to do more
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  Speaker 3: than this. I'm raising my hands a little higher. So
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  Speaker 3: all of the things they promise to do are above
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  Speaker 3: the standards that Torah calls the people to do. So
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  Speaker 3: it's this really exciting moment of eleven days of scripture study.
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  Speaker 3: They sort of revive the way they do tabernacles and
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  Speaker 3: celebrate that they have. The Levites lead them to this
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  Speaker 3: great prayer of confession, this retrospective sort of realigning their identity,
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  Speaker 3: and then they promise to obey God and be faithful
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  Speaker 3: to him, and they don't quite come out with what
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  Speaker 3: they're asking for but it seems, probably from the retrospective,
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  Speaker 3: that they're hoping that if Abraham was faithful and God
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  Speaker 3: blessed him, we're going to be faithful, and maybe you
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  Speaker 3: do a little bit of Abraham stuff for us. But
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  Speaker 3: it all begins there in Neam I eight with you know,
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  Speaker 3: this exciting moment of Ezra reading Torah. I think, James,
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  Speaker 3: what a lot of people don't pause to see is
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  Speaker 3: that this is not Ezra's idea. The people say to him,
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  Speaker 3: get the tourist scroll and read it to us. And
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  Speaker 3: this isn't at the temple, this isn't the watergate. So
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  Speaker 3: this is a public event. It's not a sort of
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  Speaker 3: and it's not on a worship day. They do later
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  Speaker 3: in chapter eight during tabernacles. They do have scripture reading
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  Speaker 3: on the holy days as well, but it begins with
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  Speaker 3: the people. It's their desire to study scripture. And so
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  Speaker 3: we don't know of anything like this, this collective scripture
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  Speaker 3: study for eleven days anywhere in scripture. The only thing
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  Speaker 3: that's close to it is maybe the early days of
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  Speaker 3: the Way and Acts. Yeah, but that's not focused as
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  Speaker 3: much on scripture study as what we have here in
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  Speaker 3: ezraneam Ale.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, It's really fascinating as you think through the dynamic.
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  Speaker 1: You know you talked about. You know, Abraham was faithful,
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  Speaker 1: God blessed Abraham. Maybe if we're faithful, God will bless
• 19:37
  Speaker 1: up like key blessed Abraham.
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  Speaker 2: Do you see in any of this.
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  Speaker 1: Sort of a continued misunderstanding of what Tora requires, even
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  Speaker 1: after the reading and even after the signed oath, or
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  Speaker 1: do you see this as a genuine expression of we
• 19:56
  Speaker 1: get it, We want to commit ourselves to this teacher
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  Speaker 1: even though.
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  Speaker 2: They're not able to right you, how do you think
• 20:05
  Speaker 2: about that?
• 20:07
  Speaker 3: I think it's a mixed bag. But I want to
• 20:10
  Speaker 3: say it's no different for them than it is for us.
• 20:14
  Speaker 3: It's no different for them than it is for Jesus
• 20:17
  Speaker 3: followers or the Pharisees of his day. There's something to
• 20:22
  Speaker 3: our zeal and our desire. I mean, as Deuteronomy says it,
• 20:26
  Speaker 3: it's not too hard for you, right, It's there in
• 20:29
  Speaker 3: your mouth. And so there is a sense where tor
• 20:33
  Speaker 3: is given to as the ten Commandment says, all Yahweh
• 20:36
  Speaker 3: lovers obey scripture. But what we find ourselves is in
• 20:43
  Speaker 3: the camp of the Yahweh haters who put something before God.
• 20:48
  Speaker 3: And so I think that the people are not wrong
• 20:50
  Speaker 3: to study Torah and try to obey to her. I
• 20:55
  Speaker 3: think that Ezra eight nine and ten is just a
• 20:59
  Speaker 3: moment that all of us should embrace. It really is
• 21:05
  Speaker 3: a moment that shows the best of us, because I mean,
• 21:08
  Speaker 3: these are the people that captivity is sort of waned
• 21:13
  Speaker 3: now that the Persians have taken over. But it's better
• 21:17
  Speaker 3: living there because living in Judah it's a wasteland. Nebukanzer
• 21:23
  Speaker 3: in his rage after the people rebelled once again in
• 21:27
  Speaker 3: five eighty two, this is four years after the fall
• 21:31
  Speaker 3: of Jerusalem and the destruction of the Temple when they
• 21:34
  Speaker 3: assassinated Gdalaya the governor, he came back and he decimated
• 21:39
  Speaker 3: the infrastructures. So when we look back, say to our
• 21:42
  Speaker 3: great grandparents generation of the Great Depression of the United States,
• 21:48
  Speaker 3: it's those three years in nineteen thirty to nineteen thirty
• 21:51
  Speaker 3: three where it just marked the whole generation and we
• 21:54
  Speaker 3: still feel the reverberation of it in our current culture. Well,
• 21:59
  Speaker 3: it's like that, except it goes on for hundreds of
• 22:02
  Speaker 3: years in Judah. I mean, it's really tough living there,
• 22:06
  Speaker 3: and that's why when the people come back, they're the
• 22:09
  Speaker 3: best of the people, because they're leaving sort of their
• 22:11
  Speaker 3: stable ghettos and slave camps back in Babylonia where life
• 22:18
  Speaker 3: is predictable, and they're going to a place where they
• 22:20
  Speaker 3: don't know how they're going to provide for their families.
• 22:23
  Speaker 3: And that's why there's this special temptation towards intermarriage with
• 22:29
  Speaker 3: the established folks of the land. We find it all
• 22:32
  Speaker 3: these social destable, destabilizing moments in Deuteronomy and Joshua. There's
• 22:39
  Speaker 3: teachings for hey, don't marry unbelievers. It's tempting, but don't
• 22:45
  Speaker 3: don't give your sons to their daughters. Don't take their
• 22:48
  Speaker 3: sons for your daughters. Don't do that. And the same
• 22:52
  Speaker 3: temptation is there in Ezrane Amayah. And it's very understandable
• 22:57
  Speaker 3: because ancient people in an arranged marriage culture, they want
• 23:01
  Speaker 3: to help their children and they know that they're starving
• 23:05
  Speaker 3: and as Rene and I we know Neamiah five. Because
• 23:09
  Speaker 3: of the poverty, many people had to sell their children,
• 23:12
  Speaker 3: even their daughters, into debt slavery, and they can't redeem
• 23:17
  Speaker 3: their daughter's back. That's the nature of it. In Exodus
• 23:20
  Speaker 3: twenty one, so it's a very hard time so we
• 23:24
  Speaker 3: can understand the temptation to better their children by marrying
• 23:28
  Speaker 3: them into establish people as the lens A. It's a
• 23:33
  Speaker 3: tough thing because people tend to do the worst things
• 23:38
  Speaker 3: for the best reasons. Yeah, as the days of Zerniami
• 23:42
  Speaker 3: are no different in that respect than our own.
• 23:48
  Speaker 1: Let's tease out a little bit of that because I
• 23:50
  Speaker 1: think that again, whenever I've interacted with people on the
• 23:56
  Speaker 1: inner marriage issue, what inevitably comes up is, well, there's
• 24:03
  Speaker 1: going to be a religious or ideological drift that you're
• 24:07
  Speaker 1: supposed to stay away from these people so that you
• 24:09
  Speaker 1: don't adopt their foreign gods. Now I don't I don't
• 24:18
  Speaker 1: think that's wholly wrong, right. I think that depending on
• 24:22
  Speaker 1: what narrative you're looking at, that can actually be correct, right, Like,
• 24:27
  Speaker 1: this is what's going on here. It really has never
• 24:30
  Speaker 1: seemed to me that that's what's going on in Ezra.
• 24:33
  Speaker 1: It seems to me that there's something more fundamentally, there's
• 24:39
  Speaker 1: something more fundamental to Jewish identity going on there, and
• 24:44
  Speaker 1: to I would almost argue more theological going on there,
• 24:49
  Speaker 1: not the adoption of foreign gods, but the development of
• 24:53
  Speaker 1: dependency on foreign nations as opposed to trusting the Lord.
• 24:58
  Speaker 2: What's your how would you now the gate through that?
• 25:02
  Speaker 3: Well, in terms of the big point you're making, I
• 25:05
  Speaker 3: want to embrace it. Yeah. The thing that needs to
• 25:08
  Speaker 3: be tweaked on the front end, though, is people just
• 25:14
  Speaker 3: read into the text. Ezraeyami is very careful as a
• 25:18
  Speaker 3: book as a whole, So I don't know if it's
• 25:21
  Speaker 3: made up of many sources. So the editor might have
• 25:26
  Speaker 3: author editor might have had to tweak them to do this.
• 25:30
  Speaker 3: But nowhere are the others defined as gentiles. Nowhere they're
• 25:39
  Speaker 3: defined as unbelievers. And so there's a sense of which
• 25:45
  Speaker 3: because there's a whole hodgepodge of people. And we need
• 25:48
  Speaker 3: to remember that the book of Ezraneami covers two hundred years.
• 25:52
  Speaker 3: The main narrative covers about one hundred and twenty, but
• 25:55
  Speaker 3: then there's another one hundred years there, and it's contemperous
• 25:59
  Speaker 3: with It begins with the Edict of Cyrus and goes
• 26:03
  Speaker 3: to the Rise of the Last Less, goes to win
• 26:08
  Speaker 3: Alexander the Great comms. So it's exactly on the Persian
• 26:12
  Speaker 3: Empire anyway. The point being here though, that the other
• 26:15
  Speaker 3: is ever present. There's an opposition between God's people Israel.
• 26:21
  Speaker 3: The aloistic Judeans. They are called many things in this book,
• 26:24
  Speaker 3: and the other the enemy of the peoples of the lands,
• 26:27
  Speaker 3: but it's the peoples of the lands, those peoples of
• 26:29
  Speaker 3: the lands. Some of them are Judeans who were never exiled.
• 26:35
  Speaker 3: Some of the people's the lands are people that were
• 26:38
  Speaker 3: brought there by that old Assyrian Empire who reshuffled people's
• 26:44
  Speaker 3: and they were exiled to Israel. Some of these people
• 26:47
  Speaker 3: are from the Northern Kingdom. Some of these people are gentiles,
• 26:52
  Speaker 3: and a lot of them are intermarried from any of
• 26:55
  Speaker 3: these different lines of people. So the book never though
• 27:03
  Speaker 3: names them as foreigners. Even in Ezra nine to one,
• 27:09
  Speaker 3: the report of the leaders of Jerusalem that Ezra agrees with,
• 27:14
  Speaker 3: they say they act like the Canaanites acted. They don't
• 27:20
  Speaker 3: say they are Canaanites, and actually there's actually no such
• 27:24
  Speaker 3: thing as Canaanites anymore, but they act like that, and
• 27:28
  Speaker 3: so it's a it's a very different thing. So that's
• 27:31
  Speaker 3: the problem is these non covenental others. And then getting
• 27:35
  Speaker 3: back to the really perceptive thing you said, when the
• 27:40
  Speaker 3: when the wives are put away and its wives, because
• 27:45
  Speaker 3: there is evidence in Neemia chapter six that Judean females
• 27:50
  Speaker 3: are marrying out. Okay, so it's it's both genders, males
• 27:56
  Speaker 3: and females are marriage. But it's a patriarchal culture, so
• 28:00
  Speaker 3: there's no there's no apostasy husbands. There's only a positive
• 28:04
  Speaker 3: wives or apothecy husbands. Are you know you've already sent
• 28:08
  Speaker 3: your daughters out to them, they're they're dead to you.
• 28:12
  Speaker 3: But think about it again, in economic terms, there's evidence
• 28:18
  Speaker 3: from the Elephantine uh Papyri that we have that when
• 28:25
  Speaker 3: women left the marriage they take their dowries with them.
• 28:30
  Speaker 3: So anybody that's marrying to get an economic or social advantage,
• 28:35
  Speaker 3: when they're forced to divorce their spouses, they lose those
• 28:41
  Speaker 3: economic and social advantages. Yes, so it's it's not you know,
• 28:48
  Speaker 3: the women, they're part of an established society. They take
• 28:51
  Speaker 3: those advantages with them. So I think that we have
• 28:55
  Speaker 3: things a little bit backwards sometimes when we think of this,
• 28:58
  Speaker 3: and maybe one more point, and this isn't your question,
• 29:01
  Speaker 3: but it's one more like lingering thing in here. Yeah,
• 29:05
  Speaker 3: we tend to be very individualistic when we focus on
• 29:09
  Speaker 3: the personal things that happened to the people in these
• 29:13
  Speaker 3: mass divorces that happen over and over again. In Asrane Amayah,
• 29:17
  Speaker 3: Ezrani Amiah never focuses on the individual in the mass divorce.
• 29:22
  Speaker 3: They're all collective revival events, they're all collective repentances. Yes,
• 29:30
  Speaker 3: there are individual circumstances, and divorce is always painful for
• 29:34
  Speaker 3: every single one, but none of that's the issue. In
• 29:37
  Speaker 3: Ezranee Amiah. Yeah, there's this zealous social cultural it's the
• 29:45
  Speaker 3: whole society saying we need to get right with God
• 29:48
  Speaker 3: or God's wrath's going to break out upon us. That's
• 29:50
  Speaker 3: basically Ezra's prayer. And Ezra not Yeah, he's thrown himself
• 29:54
  Speaker 3: on the ground, ripping his hair out. The people are weeping,
• 29:58
  Speaker 3: and they agree, and they he doesn't come out with
• 30:01
  Speaker 3: the words, but he agrees with it. That check and
• 30:03
  Speaker 3: I says, then we should divorce our wives. And so
• 30:09
  Speaker 3: he uses language that's only used here. And in First
• 30:15
  Speaker 3: Kings eleven he says the foreign wives. Now the foreign
• 30:19
  Speaker 3: wives in First Kings eleven, same thing as an azrae Eliah.
• 30:24
  Speaker 3: It's not their ethnicity that's an issue. I think that's
• 30:28
  Speaker 3: not a problem because right you think about Ria Baum's mom,
• 30:31
  Speaker 3: the ammonitis, that's not an issue, right. The crown princess
• 30:36
  Speaker 3: from an amonitis. The issue is that these are marrying out.
• 30:41
  Speaker 3: These are marriage treaties that Solomon's getting into. He's they're
• 30:47
  Speaker 3: not converts, they're not assimilations. They're worshiping at the high
• 30:52
  Speaker 3: places to their own gods that Solomon builds for them,
• 30:55
  Speaker 3: all around the temple that he's building, so that their
• 30:59
  Speaker 3: dad's the kings of all these nations don't get upset
• 31:02
  Speaker 3: and come give Solomon any trouble. Solomon's the peace king,
• 31:06
  Speaker 3: and he makes peace in the bedroom with all of
• 31:09
  Speaker 3: these treaty wives. So anyway, that kind of got lost there.
• 31:14
  Speaker 3: But the point I'm getting at is, Amaya, there's no
• 31:20
  Speaker 3: there's no sense, there's no attention at all given to
• 31:25
  Speaker 3: the individual hardships of the divorces. The folks is all
• 31:28
  Speaker 3: collective and corporate on God's wrath's going to break upon us,
• 31:32
  Speaker 3: and so we need to do this extraordinary thing and
• 31:35
  Speaker 3: hold a mass divorce. And they force the mass divorces
• 31:39
  Speaker 3: in some cases upon the people.
• 31:42
  Speaker 2: That is uh, that is why you wrote the commentary. Man.
• 31:46
  Speaker 2: I never I kind of missed that whole I knew it.
• 31:51
  Speaker 1: I knew when you when you raised first King's eleven,
• 31:55
  Speaker 1: second King's eleven. I was like, yeah, the foreign wives,
• 31:59
  Speaker 1: that make perfect sense there. I'd never caught it in
• 32:02
  Speaker 1: Azranya Mile like, I just hadn't thought through it.
• 32:07
  Speaker 3: Shaka and uses that term foreign women that's only used
• 32:11
  Speaker 3: in the plural there and one Kings eleven meam I thirteen.
• 32:15
  Speaker 3: Neamiah comes back around to that, and he says, when
• 32:18
  Speaker 3: he's ripping out the hair of the faces of these
• 32:21
  Speaker 3: men who are in apostate marriages again, you know, every
• 32:25
  Speaker 3: twelve years they have one of these big divorces. But
• 32:30
  Speaker 3: then in the end of Azni Amayah, neam I is
• 32:32
  Speaker 3: not getting a divorce, getting them divorced. He's just ripping
• 32:35
  Speaker 3: their hair out and beating them up and cursing them.
• 32:37
  Speaker 3: But he says to them, is this not what happened
• 32:41
  Speaker 3: to Solomon when he married all of these foreign women,
• 32:45
  Speaker 3: even he who loved, who was loved by the Lord
• 32:48
  Speaker 3: was drawn astray? Yeah, Neami puts words to it.
• 32:52
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 32:53
  Speaker 1: No, it's a great connection. No, that that helps clear
• 32:57
  Speaker 1: up so much and it's so much cleaner. Who was
• 33:01
  Speaker 1: I reading? Jason Staples I think is his name. He
• 33:04
  Speaker 1: wrote a book here recently on dealing with the various
• 33:09
  Speaker 1: ways that israel Is used in the Old Testament and
• 33:14
  Speaker 1: then Judean is used in the New Testament, which was
• 33:18
  Speaker 1: really helpful and fascinating.
• 33:19
  Speaker 2: His argument was.
• 33:20
  Speaker 1: That the Israelites were not considered ju Dian, but that
• 33:26
  Speaker 1: the Judeans could be considered Israelites. It was a subset
• 33:31
  Speaker 1: within and so just as you were talking through all that,
• 33:35
  Speaker 1: it's like, yes, that makes good sense. Like you've got
• 33:38
  Speaker 1: a covenantal structure. The people who are concerning are the
• 33:41
  Speaker 1: people who are outside of that covenental structure. They're now
• 33:44
  Speaker 1: being globbed on to covenantal people and creating this sort
• 33:48
  Speaker 1: of these sort of rifts and problems, which is sort
• 33:53
  Speaker 1: of fascinating. Man.
• 33:54
  Speaker 3: You've got it made. So podcasters like you get people
• 33:59
  Speaker 3: to come on their podcast. You're reading books before the
• 34:01
  Speaker 3: published literature, like already like me, like all hoy POLOI
• 34:08
  Speaker 3: we're all like ten years behind you. So you have
• 34:11
  Speaker 3: to have cocktail parties with all the podcasters that have
• 34:14
  Speaker 3: current conversations.
• 34:16
  Speaker 2: It's it's the only reason I do it.
• 34:23
  Speaker 1: Well, Gary, this has been really helpful, and I just
• 34:26
  Speaker 1: encourage everybody go get Ezra Niyamaya Baker commentary series. Baker
• 34:32
  Speaker 1: commentary on the Old Testament series Ezrani Amia is just
• 34:36
  Speaker 1: I wouldn't say it's my favorite set of books, but.
• 34:40
  Speaker 2: I really do love them.
• 34:42
  Speaker 1: I think I've always been sort of a narrative guy,
• 34:44
  Speaker 1: and so I started with Pentituke, but I've taught through
• 34:47
  Speaker 1: Samuel King's and as rahny A Maya and Ezrani and
• 34:52
  Speaker 1: Maya is just this fantastic moment after the exile, that
• 34:56
  Speaker 1: if we can get our head around it, we have
• 34:58
  Speaker 1: such a stronger understanding of what is really going on here,
• 35:01
  Speaker 1: what God is trying to do, how all this is working.
• 35:04
  Speaker 1: It's a fantastic set of books, and I think Gary's
• 35:07
  Speaker 1: commentary would be a great guide. So Ezra hyphen Nehemiah
• 35:12
  Speaker 1: is the title, and and you can find it on Amazon.
• 35:18
  Speaker 1: Also check out Gary's substack Carpenter's student dot com. That's
• 35:22
  Speaker 1: Carpenter's with an S student with an S dot com.
• 35:26
  Speaker 1: So two s is together there. And yeah, Gary, thanks
• 35:30
  Speaker 1: for being here, Thanks for talking to us through this.
• 35:32
  Speaker 1: Really appreciate it.
• 35:33
  Speaker 3: Thanks, Jams A real pleasure, especially with somebody who teaches
• 35:39
  Speaker 3: on Azerniamayah, that's that's exciting.
• 35:42
  Speaker 2: That is really exciting.
• 35:45
  Speaker 1: Well, I'm looking forward to getting the commentary, reading through it,
• 35:48
  Speaker 1: and teaching on this again. I think I'm going to
• 35:50
  Speaker 1: plan for my next set of Wednesday Bible studies. We're
• 35:53
  Speaker 1: doing Philippians right now, and then I'll flop them over
• 35:56
  Speaker 1: into Ezra Namayah.
• 35:56
  Speaker 2: They won't know.
• 35:57
  Speaker 1: What's going on, so it's going to be beautiful, perfect anyway.
• 36:03
  Speaker 1: We'll catch everybody on the next episode of Thinking Christian,
• 36:06
  Speaker 1: So come on back. We're gonna be talking a little
• 36:08
  Speaker 1: bit about what is inner biblical exit.
• 36:11
  Speaker 2: Jesus next, I think, so you won't want to miss that.
• 36:13
  Speaker 1: I'll be back again with Gary and really appreciate everybody listening.
• 36:18
  Speaker 2: Take care. We'll see on the next episode.
• 36:20
  Speaker 1: I just want to take a second to thank the
• 36:21
  Speaker 1: team at Life Audio for their partnership with us on
• 36:24
  Speaker 1: the Thinking Christian podcast. If you go to lifeaudio dot com,
• 36:27
  Speaker 1: you'll find dozens of other faith centered podcasts in their network.
• 36:30
  Speaker 1: They've got shows about prayer, Bible study, parenting, and more.