Ezra 10:5-8

2. The decision is shared by the leaders, and an assembly is ordered.

TEXT, Ezra 10:5-8

5

Then Ezra rose and made the leading priests, the Levites, and all Israel, take oath that they would do according to this proposal; so they took the oath.

6

Then Ezra rose from before the house of God and went into the chamber of Jehohanan the son of Eliashib. Although he went there, he did not eat bread, nor drink water, for he was mourning over the unfaithfulness of the exiles.

7

And they made a proclamation throughout Judah and Jerusalem to all the exiles, that they should assemble at Jerusalem,

8

and that whoever would not come within three days, according to the counsel of the leaders and the elders, all his possessions should be forfeited and he himself excluded from the assembly of the exiles.

COMMENT

His next step was to invite compliance by all of the nation. He first got the support of the leaders of each of the three groups: priests, Levites, and all Israel. These were required to take an oath; for more on this, see the Word Studies that follow.

According to Ezra 10:6 he spent the night in fasting and mourning in the quarters of one of the priests in the Temple. Here in all likelihood the two worked out the details of their course of action.

Some speculation has arisen whether the Jehohanan of this verse is the high priest Johanan mentioned in the Elephantine Papyri. The idea is tremendously fascinating, but if it is so it would require dating this part of Ezra fifty years later than we had supposed: later, in fact, than Nehemiah. As it is, the Jehohanan of Ezra 10:6 is not identified as the high priest; in fact, the book of Ezra never refers to any individual, even Jeshua, by this title.

With Ezra 10:7 their plan begins to unfold; they call an assembly of all the exiles at Jerusalem.

Ezra 10:8 specifies that they (the men) must appear within three days. This would not have been unreasonable since they still had not spread out very far from Jerusalem. The authority back of the order was that of the leaders and elders. Penalty for not appearing in person would be the loss of all their possessions, and their expulsion from the community. The land basically was the Lord'S, and it was distributed among the people in His name for their use, though He continued to hold title to it: therefore their continued occupancy was conditioned on their obedience to Him.

WORD STUDIES

COVENANT (Ezra 10:3, Berith): comes from the verb, eat. To make (literally, cut) a covenant, persons butchered and cut up a domestic vegetarian (peaceful) animal (see Genesis 15) and arrived at their agreements around a table of good fellowship. Peace treaties, religious obligations, personal contracts were all sealed in this way. God's covenant with man always had this connotation of fellowship, or sharing, including His obligation to bless if the covenant was kept.

TAKE OATH (Ezra 10:8, Shaba): swear, to seven oneself. Seven, a sacred number, calls attention also to offerings that would be made to seal an oath (Genesis 21:28 ff).