"Chronological Anomalies in Ezra,” Bibliotheca Sacra 162 (Jan-Mar 2005): 68–84

With its very first words, Ezra rivets the narrative to the line of time: “In the first year of Cyrus, King of Persia … .”⁴² At each successive turn of events, temporal markers point the way. In all, more than 40 of these signs of time line the textual highway, and the text ends its story with yet another temporal pinpoint, “And they finished … upon the first day of the first month” (10:17 ).⁴³ Beginning, middle, and end—every part of the Book of Ezra reflects the author’s careful attention to time.

At the same time, however, the prominence of these dates creates something of a problem. Since dates are characteristic of historical narrative, and “for narrative to make sense as narrative, it must make chronological sense,”⁴⁴ the reader has a double sense that Ezra’s narrative should unfold in just the sequence that things happened. But it does not. After covering more than 80 years of post-exilic history (538-457 B.C.; 1:1-4:23 ), without skipping a beat, Ezra jumps back 63 years to 520 B.C. (4:24 ) and picks up the account of the temple’s completion where he left it (4:5 ). With the rebuilding of the temple complete in 516 B.C. (4:24-6:22 ), an almost offhanded “after these things” transports the reader forward over more than 57 years of largely undisclosed history and lands him in 458 B.C., the seventh year of Artaxerxes (7:1 , 7 ).

In contrast to the first section’s 80-year span (538-457 B.C.), the last section (7:1-10:44 ) covers precisely one year to the day (1/1/458 B.C. to 1/1/457 B.C.).⁴⁵ The narrative’s temporal disproportions match its equally variable pace in the telling of its story—sometimes moving moderately, sometimes at a gallop, other times inching genealogically name-by-name. These textual factors in combination with the unalterable temporality of narrative—time as the matrix of events within a narrative, and time as the matrix of the reader in reading a narrative—underscore the importance of time in Ezra, important not only in constructing the narrative but also in discerning its message.

Ezra’s use of narrative temporality constitutes his most obvious yet complex literary technique. Bridging temporal gaps, manipulating temporal

Figure 1 — A Comparison of Chronological Order and Narrative Order in Ezra

pace and proportion, maneuvering between chronology and anachrony⁴⁶—Ezra makes use of these (and other) strategies of time throughout his narrative.⁴⁷ This chapter will analyze how Ezra develops and deploys these temporal strategies in the construction of the narrative’s key theological themes.

Temporal Notations

The most prominent aspect of Ezra’s focus on time is the frequency and variety of temporal markers throughout the text. No major juncture in the narrative is without an accompanying signpost. Depending on the criteria used to identify temporal markers, one will find between forty to forty-three in the Book of Ezra. The temporal markers charted in Table 1 meet one or more of the following criteria: (1) specific mention of a year, month, or day; (2) reference to time-specific events (e.g., “the evening sacrifice,” 9:5 ); (3) association of an historical figure with a span of time’s beginning, end, or duration; and (4) use of temporal adverbs (e.g., “when,” “after”). The one phrase in italics failed to meet any of the above criteria, yet it too seemed to mark time’s passing in a more subtle fashion.

Table 1 — Temporal Notations in Ezra

Ezra’s temporal markers range across a continuum from highly specific dates to ambiguous time references. Four categories of dates suggest themselves from the data: (1) specific names and dates, (2) specific points in time or specific lengths of time, (3) markers that delimit a general time period without specifying a point within that period, and (4) general consecutive indicators (“after,” “when”) that do not precisely identify the temporal relations between the events they mark and those that precede them. The great majority of Ezra’s temporal markers refer to a specific point in time, either with a name and a date or with a simple date. Of the eight clear references to a general time period, six locate their associated events within the reign of a Persian or Assyrian king. The other two involve references to the “days of old.” Though only two ambiguous time references occur in Ezra (7:1 ; 9:1 ), as will be shown, they are by no means insignificant.

Temporal Notations and Narrative Structure

The value of analyzing Ezra’s temporal notations lies primarily in the relationships that exist between the distribution of these temporal signposts and the structure of the narrative.⁴⁸ At least four levels of narrative structure, ranging from micro- to macro-structures, exist in Biblical narrative: (1) verbal structure, (2) narrative technique structure, (3) narrative world structure, and (4) conceptual structure.⁴⁹ Temporal notations exist at the level of the verbal structure; however, their contributions to the structure of the narrative are most perceptible at the other three levels.

Unanimous agreement exists among Biblical and literary scholars that Ezra’s “narrative world structure” divides into two major sections: chapters 1-6 and chapters 7-10.⁵⁰ While a greater diversity of treatment exists below this sectional level, each section naturally subdivides into two episodes:⁵¹ chapters 1-2 cover the first return;⁵² chapters 3-6 cover the building of the
temple and opposition to God’s people; chapters 7-8 cover the second return under Ezra, and chapters 9-10 cover the problem of mixed marriages.⁵³

As Table 2 shows, episodes one and two both begin with specific temporal notations (1:1 ; 3:1 ), whereas episodes three and four both begin with ambiguous time references and are preceded by temporal gaps (7:1 ; 9:1 ). Ezra marks the end of his narrative’s action with another specific date (10:17 ). Thus temporal notations demarcate both the beginning and the end of the narrative action, and each of the sections within the book begins with a temporal reference.

Both episodes one and three recount a return of God’s people, but the contrast in temporal detail could hardly be greater. Section one begins with its first and only temporal notation; no mention is made of the first return’s starting time, ending time, or duration. The temporal details of the first return are not significant. Its occurrence in fulfillment of the word of Yahweh through the prophet Jeremiah, not its details, constitutes its signal feature. On the other hand, the second section contains highly specific dates that mark precisely the second return’s beginning, duration, and ending. The specificity of Ezra’s temporal notations regarding the second return, as well as the anachronous order of their presentation, serves a distinctly rhetorical function which in turn supports the theological point being made in that section.

Table 2 — Narrative Structure and Temporal Notations

Ezra’s “narrative technique structure” primarily involves the relationships between the four kinds of material incorporated into the book: narration, written decrees and letters,⁵⁴ lists, and dialogue.⁵⁵ A correlation between Ezra’s placement of temporal signposts and these materials reveals that the majority of Ezra’s temporal notations occur in narration.⁵⁶ At this level the temporal markers play a crucial role in creating and maintaining narrative continuity. Through their linkage, the book’s sections and episodes are brought into chronological or thematic coherence.

Temporal notations make an indirect contribution to the final and most significant structural level, conceptual structure, through their role in chronology, anachrony, temporal pace, and temporal proportion, for it is these strategies that help create the thematic structure of the book.

Table 3 — Narrative Technique Structure and Temporal Notations

Episodes

Narration

TN

Written material

TN

Lists

TN

Dialogue

TN

1-2

1:1

1

1:2-4

1:5-8

1:9-11 a

1:11 b

2:1-2

2:3-69

2:70

3-6

3:1-13

4

4:1-7

3

4:2b-3

1

4:8-22

2

4:23-24

1

5:1-7

1

5:3-4

5:7-16

1

6:1-2

6:3-12

2

6:13-22

3

7-8

7:1a

2

7:1b-5

7:6-11

3

7:12-26

7:27-28

8:1

1

8:2-14

8:15-20

1

8:18-20

8:21-30

8:26-27

8:31-36

3

8:35

9-10

9:1-5

3

9:6-15

3

10:1

10:2-4

10:5-9

2

10:10-14

1

10:15-17

2

10:18-43

10:44

Totals:

30

5

0

5

Note: TN indicates temporal notations. The number in the “Totals” row reflects how many temporal notations occur in each section.

Temporal Notations and Narrative Chronology

Temporal markers also play a crucial role in establishing Ezra’s narrative chronology.⁵⁷ This role involves two key functions: (1) genre indication, and (2) establishment of reader expectation. As in life, so in literature, first impressions are important. The Book of Ezra initiates the reader to the world of its narrative not with scenic depiction or vivid action, but with a date, a temporal locator planting itself firmly in the Persian world of Cyrus, the first king of Medo-Persia. That initial date produces certain immediate effects upon the reader and his reading. First, it suggests that the Book of Ezra belongs to the genre of history.⁵⁸ Further reading confirms this idea, showing Ezra to be narrative prose history⁵⁹—narrative because it tells a story, prose because it uses non-poetic language, and history because it is a record of the past.⁶⁰ Historical narrative by representational necessity moves sequentially from early to late in imitation of time’s march. Chronology is its guiding principle; and so the reader, introduced to a historical notation in the first line of the narrative, anticipates finding the same principle at work in the rest of the narrative.

The second effect of Ezra’s first temporal notation is the establishment of reader expectation. Every narrative establishes a “perceptual set” or framework by which the reader understands the norms of the world he is entering.⁶¹ Ezra’s opening date contributes a significant element to the reader’s perceptual framework by establishing a temporal precedent. As in geometry where two points form a line, so in narrative two successive dates conform to time’s line, and three such dates generate movement in time’s direction. Ezra gives not two or three, but many successive dates throughout his narrative. Out of Ezra’s forty-some time references, only two or three sets of temporal points openly deviate from time’s order.⁶² The composite result of Ezra’s temporal notations is a strong sense that this narrative will be in chronological order.

Temporal markers alone, however, are not sufficient to develop a narrative chronology.⁶³ There is more to Ezra’s use of time than explicit road signs, for what good are signs without a road? They mark progress, give direction, and indicate location. Yet they are only points along the story’s line, and it is the story that unfolds. Ezra paves his narrative highway with a consistent flow of cause-effect sequences that generates a strong chronological primacy-effect.⁶⁴ Yahweh stirs Cyrus, and he decrees God’s will (1:1-4 ). Levites are appointed to supervise the founding of the temple, and the work progresses (3:8-10 ). The Jews repulse the offer of a helping hand, and opposition ensues (4:1-24 ). God acts; men react. Kings command; subjects obey. From beginning to end, Ezra’s temporal markers work in conjunction with the narrative’s causal sequences to generate a sense of chronological movement through history.

The significance of this chronological primacy-effect will become evident later, but at this point it is sufficient to note the ubiquitous presence of chronology throughout the narrative. Each episode, except the second, begins early and ends late. The first episode covers approximately the first seven months of Cyrus’s reign (1:1-3:1 ). The third episode begins the first day of the seventh year of Artaxerxes’ reign (1/1/458 B.C.; 7:1 , 9 ) and ends sometime after the fourth day of the fifth month of the same year (5/4/458 B.C.; 8:33 ). The last episode starts four months later in the ninth month and finishes out on the first day of the following year (1/1/457 B.C.; 10:17 ). Though the second episode does not end at its latest point, its two blocks of material run according to time’s sequence: Ezra 3:1-4:23 begins in the seventh month of Cyrus’s first year (7/1/538 B.C.), moves through the reigns of Darius (4:5 ) and Ahasuerus (4:6 ), and ends sometime during the reign of Artaxerxes (465-424 B.C.; 4:7-8 ); and Ezra 4:24-6:22 opens in the second year of Darius (520 B.C.) and closes on the twenty-first day of Darius’s seventh year (515 B.C.; 6:19 , 22 ).

Chronology

Ezra’s strategic use of chronology throughout his narrative accomplishes a cluster of functions. Historically, Ezra provides us with the primary Biblical coverage of Israel’s reformation in the post-exilic period. The calculated placement of dates at significant junctures throughout the narrative sustains its historical significance. By pinpointing events to definite times and specifically named individuals, the narrative’s chronology also provides objectively verifiable data that anchor the narrative to the real world.⁶⁵ Rhetorically, chronological development gives the reader a sense of movement and enables him to mark his progress through the narrative. It also forms a background against which deviations from chronology stand in marked contrast. Theologically, the narrative’s chronological framing sets a stage for God’s work. God participates in the world of time and space, working His will through its inhabitants. In this way chronology supports the text’s revelation of God’s immanence in human history. Also, it provides the framework for demonstrating the temporal fulfillment of God’s word through Jeremiah (Ezra 1:1 ).

Anachrony: Chronological Anomalies

Although chronology is a prime ordering principle in the Book of Ezra, it is not the controlling principle of the narrative’s order. This becomes increasingly evident as the reader finds temporal notations that mark deviations from a strict chronology. This section first discusses the historical order in which the narrative’s events occurred;⁶⁶ second, it explores four instances in which Ezra departs from a chronological presentation and his purposes for these deviations. Chapter Two will review how scholars have handled these temporal anomalies, comparing and contrasting the results of a literary-analytical approach with other approaches.

The Chronology of Ezra’s Events

One must know the true order of a series of events if he is to discern when an author deviates from that order. Ezra’s temporal notations give the reader sufficient evidence to establish the actual order in which the events occurred. Table 4 charts the chronological order of the events in Ezra’s narrative. As Table 4 shows, chapter four is at the heart of Ezra’s strategic use of anachrony. Of the four significant departures from chronology that occur in this book, two of them involve chapter four. The other two chronological anomalies involve Ezra 6:14 and the order in which the events of the second return are narrated in Ezra 7.

Anomaly One: Artaxerxes then Darius

The first temporal anomaly occurs between 4:23 and 4:24 , where the narrative switches from the time of Artaxerxes back to the time of Darius.

The first two chapters of Ezra recount Cyrus’s decree to rebuild the house of Yahweh in Jerusalem and the people’s return to the land of Israel. Chapter

Table 4 — The Chronological Order of Ezra

Date	Events	Reference
538	The first return under Cyrus	1-2
538-536	The rebuilding of the altar and founding of the temple	3
post 538	The refused offer of help, ensuing opposition	4:1-5
520-515	Temple reconstruction hindered until Darius’s second year, Work revived under Haggai & Zechariah, Tatnai’s investigation, Darius’s support, and Rebuilding of the temple	4:24-6:22
486	Opposition during the reign of Ahasuerus	4:6
465	Opposition during the reign of Artaxerxes67	4:7
458	Return of Ezra with imperial grant	7:1-8:36
458	Problem of mixed marriages exposed and resolved	9:1-10:44
post 458	Successful opposition to rebuilding of Jerusalem and its walls during the reign of Artaxerxes68	4:8-23

three begins with all the sons of the exile gathering to Jerusalem on the first day of the seventh month of Cyrus’s reign to restore the altar and reestablish sacrificial worship. Roughly two years later,⁶⁹ Jeshua and Zerubbabel bestir the people to lay the foundation of the temple and commence its reconstruction (3:8 ).⁷⁰ After refusing their adversaries’ request to help rebuild the temple, the Jews faced fifteen years of organized opposition and resistance until the reign of Darius (4:1-3 ). During the reign of Ahasuerus (486-465) their enemies lodged another complaint against them (4:6 ). The rest of chapter four (4:7-23 ) records two instances of opposition during the reign of Artaxerxes (465-424), the second of which resulted in an imperial decree authorizing the cessation of all Jewish building activity on the city walls.

To this point the narrative has followed a strictly chronological line despite the numerous gaps left in the history. All the temporal signposts in Ezra point forward until the final verse of chapter four, where the reappearance of Darius’s name indicates that time has been warped, and what was long past is present again. The 35-year gap between 4:5 and 4:6 is abruptly reopened, and the story flips back and down into that temporal opening to spend over 700 words filling in the gapped information concerning the temple’s completion during the reign of Darius.

The anomalous order of the narrative evokes a barrage of questions. What really happened? Who comes first? Why tell about opposition to the building of Jerusalem’s walls, opposition that happened years after the rebuilding of the temple, before one tells how the temple was rebuilt? The chronological facts of the matter are that the opposition instigated by the Samarians⁷¹ succeeded in hindering the reconstruction of the temple until Darius’s second year (4:24 ). At that time Haggai and Zechariah deliver God’s message and stir the people to work (5:1 ). Tatnai, the governor, investigates the building activity, sends a report to Darius for confirmation of the Jew’s claims, and requests instructions about how to proceed (5:3-17 ). Darius supports the work, and the rebuilding of the temple is completed (6:1-15 ). Some time later, during the reigns of Xerxes and Artaxerxes, opposition resumes (4:6-7 ).

Ezra’s reasons for telling history out of order are complex, involving both local and global plot development as well as the development of his overarching themes. An adequate explanation of authorial intent must answer both why Ezra omitted these events from their proper historical location and why he placed them where he did.⁷² To appreciate the significance of the text’s order, one must recognize the effects it has upon the reader. Despite the fact that Ezra alerts the reader that he is returning to an earlier period of history (4:24 ), the momentum of the narrative’s chronology and the continuance of chapter four’s opposition theme maintains the reader’s sense of narrative continuity through the temporal transition. This sense of continuity is augmented by the temporal particle that begins 4:24 ⁷³ as well as by the repetition of the verb, to cease, in verses 23 and 24 .⁷⁴ As the reader moves into chapter five, it appears that the Samarians had won (4:23 ), and the Jews were in for another beating, this time from Tatnai. However, Darius’s substantive support for the Jewish endeavor radically alters the dynamic of the situation, both historically and literarily (6:1 ff). Historically, Darius’s decree transformed the reconstruction from a beleaguered effort to an imperially supported project with more than adequate resources and authority. Literarily, the placement of this incident after all the previously recounted opposition creates a far greater sense of reversal than its historical placement ever could. Darius’s decree effectively reverses the frustration that mounted into despair as chapter four ends. Hostility is turned into help. The “bad guys” lose; the “good guys” win. And theologically, God comes through for His people. The episode’s closing comment summarizes Ezra’s theological point: “Yahweh had caused them to rejoice and had turned the heart of the king of Asshur to them to strengthen their hands in the work of the house of God, the God of Israel” (6:22 ).

This reversal is the thematic fulcrum for the first half of the book. Ezra’s audience is living in the aftermath of the Samarians’ heavy-handed enforcement of Artaxerxes’ decree to stop all work on the city walls (4:23 ). They had been prospering under Artaxerxes’ favor mediated through Ezra’s administration. Apparently, they were actively rebuilding Jerusalem when their enemies successfully exploited the king’s financial concerns to gain an injunction against them. If 4:23 forms the background to Hanani’s report to Nehemiah (Neh. 1:3 ), Nehemiah’s reaction gives a picture of the sorrow and gloom that must have engulfed God’s people. A significant part of Ezra’s purpose for writing is to revive the people’s hope for the future by looking back at how God had caused His people to triumph over persistent opposition. Implicit in Ezra’s strategic use of anachrony is the concept that what God has done in the past, He can do again in the future. Ezra skillfully orders the narrative events to create hope for the future, a hope firmly rooted in observable evidences of God’s sovereign providence.⁷⁵

Anomaly Two: “After these things …”

The second temporal anomaly occurs in Ezra 7:1 . Chapters 1-6 begin with Cyrus’s first year and end with Darius’s seventh year, a 21-year span. The total time span covered in the first six chapters, however, stretches over 80 years—from Cyrus to an unspecified time during the reign of Artaxerxes (4:6-23 ). Chapter seven introduces the second section of the narrative with the words “After these things, in the reign of Artaxerxes … .” Clearly Ezra intends to establish a sequence of events. The events of chapters 7-10 are said to follow certain things. But to which “things” does Ezra refer? Two mutually exclusive options are open to the reader. The first and simplest view takes the narrative words at face value and assumes that all the events of chapters 1-6 precede those of chapters 7-10 . Historically, this would mean that sometime within the first seven years of Artaxerxes’ reign, the Samarians finally succeeded in shutting down the Jewish building operation. The natural result was discouragement on the part of the people. The rubble of Jerusalem’s Babylonian destruction has now been compounded by the Samarians’ malice.⁷⁶ The coming of Ezra with an extraordinarily generous grant from the very king who had ordered them to stop building the city walls would then be evidence of God’s gracious hand working in their behalf.

The second interpretation, which is followed here, arises from an attempt to correlate the timing of Artaxerxes’ first appearance (4:7 ) with his second appearance (7:1 ). Ezra firmly fixes the events of chapter seven in the seventh year of Artaxerxes’ reign (7:7 ), but the temporal location of Artaxerxes’ first appearance in 4:7-23 is less clear. The text merely states that those events transpire “in the days of Artaxerxes” (4:7 ). The letter from Rehum and Shimshai, however, contains a clue to its date (4:8-16 ). Rehum and Shimshai state that certain Jews had come up from “near you to us” (4:12 ).⁷⁷ The prima facie implication of these words is that the “coming up” of the Jews was contemporary with both the writers and the king. The only recorded migration from Babel to Jerusalem during the reign of Artaxerxes (in sacred or secular history) is that led by Ezra.⁷⁸ The conclusion naturally follows that the events of 4:8-23 took place subsequent to Ezra’s return and precede the devastated condition of Jerusalem’s walls and gates reported to Nehemiah (Neh. 1:3 ). The phrase “after these things …” refers not to the totality of the preceding narrative, but specifically to chapters 5-6 —Tatnai’s investigation, Darius’s support, and the rebuilding of the temple.

Again, questions concerning the omission of these events from their proper historical order and the reasons for their present placement require an answer. Four reasons for Ezra’s omission of the events of 4:24-6:22 and chapters 7-10 from their proper historical order become evident as one examines the narrative’s order: (1) justification of the term “enemies”;⁷⁹ (2) defense of the rejection of the Samarians’ help; (3) prospective justification of mandated divorce; and (4) magnification of God’s gracious sovereignty.

In chapter four Ezra distills from history a concentrated account of the Samarians’ persistence in opposing God’s work. His intention is to present a case that justifies his characterization of the Samarians as “enemies” by revealing their unrelenting opposition to the work of God’s people (4:1 ). They had created problems not just once or twice, but over the course of seventy years they had repeatedly demonstrated the gross hypocrisy of their claim “for as you, we are seeking your God” (4:2 ). Had Ezra included chapters 5-10 in their proper place, the effect of this concentrated presentation would be significantly dissipated.

The omission of these events also creates a focused defense and exoneration of the Jewish leaders’ rejection of the Samarian offer to help (4:3 ). The response of Zerubbabel, Joshua, and the rest of the heads of the fathers of Israel sounds curt, perhaps even harsh, upon first reading: “Not to you and to us to build the house of our God; for we alone will build to Yahweh” (4:3 ).⁸⁰ As the narrative progresses, however, the sagacity of the Jewish elders becomes evident. They were rejecting an offer made not by Yahweh-fearing neighbors but by syncretistic pagans (cf. 2 Kings 17:24 -41) whose rancor grows increasingly apparent. Third, the wicked opposition of the Samarians establishes the background for understanding why Ezra takes such drastic steps to resolve the problem of mixed marriages.⁸¹ As Ezra’s fourth chapter clearly show, the peoples of the land had only malevolence for Yahweh and His people.

The final reason for Ezra’s omissions involves his narrative development of God’s gracious goodness. The distilled account of the Samarians’ malice stands in stark contrast to the following manifestations of God’s gracious favor in turning the hearts of the Persian kings to His people (6:22 ; 7:27 , 28 ; 9:8-9 ).⁸² The contrast reveals the doubly heinous nature of the people’s sin in marrying foreign women: not only have they intermarried with those who hate Yahweh, but they have done so in the face of Yahweh’s repeated overtures of grace.

The choice to omit certain material from its chronological setting does not necessarily entail its inclusion elsewhere in the narrative. Therefore, Ezra’s inclusion of previously omitted material as well as the location of its placement within the narrative order are both significant. Several things stand out about the placement of this material. The first is the structural division created by chapter seven’s opening words: “After these things … .” As noted before, there is unanimous agreement among OT scholars that Ezra divides into two sections: 1-6 and 7-10 . The unity of this scholarly analysis testifies to the effectiveness of Ezra’s temporal notation, despite its chronological artificiality. This division allows Ezra to accomplish two objects simultaneously. Locally, he maintains thematic continuity with chapters five and six in order to reinforce the reader’s sense of reversal. The text progresses from Darius’s support to Artaxerxes’ grant to Ezra. Since the narrative has already presented the negative developments that took place under Artaxerxes, this subsequent display of Persian favor appears to be a reversal of policy. Again, Ezra exploits the temporal rearrangement created by his thematic development in order to generate hope in his readers that such a reversal can happen again. Just as God has turned the hearts of Persian kings to favor His people in the past, He can do it again.

On the global level, Ezra creates thematic parallelism between the two sections of his narrative. Ezra’s return in chapters 7-8 parallels the return of chapters 1-2 . The external problems and resolutions of chapters 3-6 parallel antithetically the internal problem and resolution of chapters 9-10 . The ordering of this antithetic narrative parallelism contributes directly to the theological focus of Ezra’s message. By relating chapters 7-10 out of order, Ezra isolates all the Returnees’ external problems to chapters 1-6 so that he can direct the reader’s undivided attention to the most serious problems faced by God’s people—internal problems. The Returnees believed that the primary problems they faced were external: case in point, the Samarians had just squashed their efforts to rebuild Jerusalem’s walls. Ezra, however, recognizes that external opposition was not his people’s main problem. Returning to the promised land, renewing worship, rebuilding the altar and temple—all these external aspects of the Judean restoration were vain without worshippers whose hearts were pure and whose lives were obedient to the Law. Disobedience would ruin them as surely as it had their fathers.

Anomaly Three: “Cyrus and Darius and Artaxerxes”

The third chronological anomaly occurs in Ezra 6:14 . Having confirmed the authenticity of Cyrus’s decree at the request of Tatnai, governor of Beyond the River (6:3-5) ,⁸³ Darius ordered that all necessary funds and supplies for rebuilding the temple be placed at the Jews’ disposal. Ezra encapsulates the results of Darius’s decree this way:

Then Tatnai, the governor of Beyond the River, Shethar Bozenai and their colleagues did exactly and thoroughly what Darius the king had sent. And the elders of Judah were building and prospering through the prophesying of Haggai the prophet and Zechariah the son of Iddo; and they built and they finished from the command of the God of Israel and from the command of Cyrus and Darius and Artaxerxes, king of Persia. And this house was brought to an end on the third day of the month of Adar, in the sixth year of the reign of Darius the king (Ezra 6:13-15 ).

The unexpected and anachronistic appearance of Artaxerxes’ name in 6:14 momentarily jolts the reader back into the time of Ezra, immediately raising two questions: why is Artaxerxes mentioned in conjunction with Cyrus and Darius when they had both died before he was born; and why does the narrator imply that Artaxerxes was a co-contributor to the building of the temple when he had nothing to do with the actual building of the temple? The complete homogeneity of the textual evidence for this verse renders speculations about editorial activity needless.⁸⁴ Instead, recognition that Ezra purposely relates things out of order should prompt a search for his purpose for including this reference at this point in the narrative.

Ezra’s use of anachrony signals that thematic development is again overriding chronological presentation. The inclusion of Artaxerxes’ name in 6:14 brings into one compass all the Persian kings who contributed to the temple—from initial rebuilding to final beautification—and unites the entire preceding narrative around one of the narrative’s theological centerpoints: Yahweh’s sovereign control of history. Again, Ezra’s thematic treatment serves both narrative development and his theological purpose. In terms of narrative development, this verse summarizes all that has transpired in the process of rebuilding the temple and anticipates, by mentioning Artaxerxes, what is yet to come. Theologically, the syntax of 6:14 is significant. Ezra explicitly attributes the successful completion of the temple project to the command of God first and then to the command of Cyrus, Darius, and Artaxerxes. This order of presentation forges a causal-chronological link between the decree of God and the separate decrees of these three kings. God’s command effects Cyrus’s, Darius’s, and Artaxerxes’ commands.⁸⁵ The singular form [<u@f=] subsumes the three commands into one,⁸⁶ implying that the Persian decrees were merely extensions of the sovereign will of God. His was the command, and they were its publishers.

Anomaly Four: The End Before the Beginning

The magnitude of the chronological challenges associated with “after these things” in 7:1 has so overshadowed Ezra’s rearrangement of the dates associated with his own return that most scholars and commentators have given it no notice. Contrary to normal history-telling practice, Ezra’s temporal notations mark his journey’s end before they mark its beginning. Ezra begins with the ending date. “That Ezra went up from Babel … and he entered Jerusalem in the fifth month—it was the seventh year of the king” (7:6 , 8 ). The next verse then specifies when he began: “For on the first day of the first month was the beginning of the going up from Babel …” (7:9 ). This end-before-beginning arrangement holds true for the entire second return episode. The reader knows the day, month, and year that Ezra and the people arrive in Jerusalem before he is told anything of the journey’s background, preparations, or the potential hazards that may intervene.

Having given the ending and beginning dates, Ezra spends most of his time narrating the antecedents to the journey: Artaxerxes’ grant (7:12-26 ), the gathering of the people (8:1-14 ), the search for Levites (8:15-20 ), the prayer for protection (8:21-23 ), and the care of the temple vessels (8:24-30 ). The events of the nearly four-month-long journey are entirely omitted, except for one comment to reinforce his theological point: “And the hand of our God was upon us, and he delivered us from the palm of the enemy and ambusher along the road” (8:31 ). Interestingly, Ezra does not return again to the dates with which he began. Having said when the exiles arrived (7:8-9 ), he merely states that they arrive and how long they rest after the arrival (8:32 ).

This order of events results in a narrative with a minimum of suspense. The natural opacity of the future creates a degree of suspense in any narrative, and since suspense is a staple of narrative interest,⁸⁷ Ezra could have easily played up reader interest simply by telling his story in chronological order.⁸⁸ The fact that enemies lined the road home provided Ezra a prime opportunity to heighten the natural suspense of the unknown. Ezra, however, deliberately undermines his story’s potential for suspense in favor of a temporal strategy which supports his theological purpose.⁸⁹ Ezra’s third episode is the focal point for his theological development of God’s gracious goodness. At least nine times throughout this episode, Ezra inserts narratorial references to God’s personal activity.⁹⁰ Whereas magnified narrative suspense would have provided an opportunity to focus on faith, Ezra’s minimal suspense maximizes the reader’s awareness of God’s prevenient grace at work on behalf of His people.

Conclusion

The most prominent aspect of Ezra’s temporal strategies is his use of temporal notation. In cooperation with the narrative’s causal sequences, temporal notations identify the narrative’s literary genre, define its structural divisions, mark its temporal progression, establish its chronology, and indicate its anachronous twists and turns. Theologically, the chronological character of the narrative creates the historical framework, which highlights Yahweh’s immanence and His fulfillment of His word. The dominance of chronology in the narrative also serves to highlight the instances in which Ezra employs anachrony. Each of Ezra’s four chronological deviations contributes to the development of one or more of the narrative’s theological motifs: opposition to God’s people, hope for the future, the importance of obedience to the law, Yahweh’s sovereign control of history, and His gracious goodness.

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⁴² No compelling reason exists that renders authorship by Ezra either impossible or improbable. Since chapters 7-10 clearly imply his authorship, this dissertation assumes Ezra the scribe to be the final author of the Book of Ezra in its entirety. A detailed discussion of the issues surrounding the authorship of Ezra lies beyond the scope of this chapter. In sum, three views emerge from the literature as the major contenders. The first view holds that the “Chronicler” wrote Ezra. For a review and analysis of this position, see Tamara C. Eskenazi ’s published dissertation, In An Age of Prose: A Literary Approach to Ezra-Nehemiah (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1988), 17-36. The second view is that Ezra the Scribe wrote Ezra. The majority of conservative scholars, including R. K. Harrison , Gleason Archer , and E. J. Young , maintain this position. Edwin M. Yamauchi provides a helpful synopsis of this viewpoint in “Ezra-Nehemiah,” in The Expositor’s Bible Commentary, ed. Frank E. Gaebelein (Grand Rapids: Zondervan Publishing House, 1985), 4:573-79. The third major view contends that a later hand edited the original material, whether written by the “Chronicler” or Ezra. For a thorough statement of this view, see H. G. M. Williamson ’s introduction and associated bibliography in Ezra, Nehemiah, vol. 16 of Word Biblical Commentary (Waco: Word Books, 1985), xxiii-xxxv.

⁴³ See Table 1 - Temporal Notations on page 18 for the distribution of Ezra’s temporal markers throughout the narrative.

⁴⁴ Meir Sternberg , “Time and Space in Biblical (Hi)story Telling: The Grand Chronology,” in The Book and the Text: The Bible and Literary Theory, ed. Regina Schwartz (Cambridge: Basil Blackwell, Inc., 1990), 81.

⁴⁵ For a comparison of the chronological order of the events covered in Ezra with the order in which those events are presented in the narrative, see Figure 1 on page 16. Quite clearly Ezra does not follow the historical order of the events he narrates.

⁴⁶ Anachrony denotes a temporal arrangement of events in which an author presents later events before earlier events. The term does not imply or connote anachronism—the frequent liberal indictment of Scripture as ignorantly or deceptively placing what is historically late in a much earlier setting.

⁴⁷ Sternberg presents a valuable analysis of the resources available to a chronological narrative for variety in presentation in the article, “Telling in Time (I): Chronology and Narrative Theory.” Poetics Today 11 (1990): 940-41. In sum he states that a “chronological narrative’s resources for multiformity [divide] into three categories:” (1) “gradation … between the poles of chronology and anachrony,” (2) “closer or looser modes of linkage and transition, length of discourse or of span and perspective, representational ratios and pacing, cut-off points, homology or disparity between macrosequence and microsequence,” and (3) a range of other “ordering forces” including the treatment of simultaneity, functional sequencing, and suprasequential form.

⁴⁸ Shimon Bar-Efrat defines narrative structure as “the network of relations among the parts of [the narrative].” “Some Observations on the Analysis of Structure in Biblical Narrative,” VT 30 (1980): 155-69.

⁴⁹ Bar-Efrat defines these levels of narrative structure as follows: “verbal structure” is the result of an author’s uses of words and phrases, “unusual grammatical and syntactical constructions,” metaphors, similes, and other stylistic features; “narrative technique structure” is a function of an author’s “variations in narrative method, such as narrator’s account as opposed to character’s speech (dialogue), scenic presentation versus summary, narrations as against description, explanation, comment, etc.”; “narrative world structure” involves an author’s use of characters, to some extent, but primarily the use of events, in other words, plot structure; “conceptual content structure” arises from “the themes of the narrative units or the ideas contained therein” (157-68). For a display of the narrative’s structure in relation to the distribution of temporal markers, see Table 2 — Narrative Structure and Temporal Notations on page 22.

⁵⁰ No work consulted proposed an alternative division to the Book of Ezra as it currently exists in the Masoretic Text.

⁵¹ An episode is “a portion of a narrative that relates an event or a series of connected events and forms a coherent story in itself.” The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, 3d ed. (New York: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1992).

⁵² Because of the uncertainty surrounding the identity of Sheshbazzar and Zerubbabel, some have postulated that more than one return is involved in chapters 1-2 . There is nothing in the text, however, to support this hypothesis. Ezra mentions Sheshbazzar four times in his narrative (1:8 , 11 ; 5:14 , 16 ) and states that Sheshbazzar, the prince of Judah (hdwhyl aycnh; 1:8 ), was appointed by Cyrus as “the governor” (hjp; 5:14 ). Zerubbabel the son of Shealtiel figures more prominently as a leader of the Returnees, but no official title is associated with his name. At most, Ezra 4:3 implies that he was one of the “heads” of Israel. Haggai, however, clearly states that Zerubbabel was the governor of Judah at the time of the temple’s founding (hdwhy tjp; Hag. 1:1 ), and Zechariah credits Zerubbabel with laying the temple’s foundation (Zech. 4:9 ). On the other hand, Ezra credits Sheshbazzar with bringing up the temple vessels with the exiles from Babel (1:8 , 11 , 5:15-16 ) and laying the temple’s foundation (5:16 ). The most natural conclusion from the Biblical data is that Sheshbazzar and Zerubbabel are two names for the same person. For contrary argumentation, see Williamson , 17-19. If Sheshbazzar and Zerubabbel are not the same person, then they may have been co-governors and joint participants in founding the temple. Derek Kidner provides a lucid discussion of the major issues and views on this difficulty in his commentary, Ezra and Nehemiah, The Tyndale Old Testament Commentaries, ed. D. J. Wiseman (Downers Grove: Inter-Varsity Press, 1979), 139-42. For a more extended discussion of this issue of identity, see Sara Japhet ’s two articles, “Sheshbazzar and Zerubbabel: Against the Background of the Historical and Religious Tendencies of Ezra-Nehemiah,” ZAW 94 (1982): 66-98; and “Sheshbazzar and Zerubbabel: Against the Background of the Historical and Religious Tendencies of Ezra-Nehemiah. Pt. 2,” ZAW 95 (1983): 218-229; and Johan Lust , “The Identification of Zerubbabel with Sheshbassar,” Ephemerides Theologicae Lovaniensis 63 (1987): 90-95.

⁵³ Below the episodic level there appears to be little consensus on the divisions of the text. The variety of treatment below the sectional level reflects not the difficulty of outlining Ezra but the differing outline criteria used by the authors. Some simply follow the chapter divisions of Ezra for ease of use. Others divide the book into minute pieces. None of the commentaries surveyed offered an outline based upon literary criteria such as plot continuity or episodic and scenic division. For an analysis of the structure of Ezra’s episodes, phases, and scenes, see Chapter Three.

⁵⁴ The letters used by Ezra belong to a specific genre in their own right. A thorough discussion of this subgenre lies beyond the scope of this chapter. However, Williamson ’s summary comment on this topic bears repetition: “We may thus conclude that the documents on which our author drew took the form of official Aramaic correspondence as commonly practiced in Achaemenid times” (60). For a discussion of Aramaic epistolography, see R. A. Bowman , “An Aramaic Journal Page,” AJSL 58 (1941): 302-13; L. V. Hensley , The Official Persian Documents in the Book of Ezra, (Ph.D. diss., University of Liverpool, 1977); P. S. Alexander , “Remarks on Aramaic Epistolography in the Persian Period,” JSS 23 (1978): 155-70; J. A. Fitzmyer , “Some Notes on Aramaic Epistolography,” JBL 93 (1974): 201-25; B. Porten , “Aramaic Papyri and Parchments: A New Look,” BA 49 (1979): 74-104; “Structure and Chiasm in Aramaic Contracts and Letters,” in Chiasmus in Antiquity, ed. J. W. Welch (Hildesheim: Gerstenberg Verlag, 1981), 169-81; J. L. White , ed., Studies in Ancient Letter Writing, Semeia 22 (1982); J. D. Whitehead , “Some Distinctive Features of the Aramaic Arsames Correspondence,” JNES 27 (1978): 119-40; J. C. Greenfield , “Aramaic Studies and the Bible,” Supplements to Vetus Testamentum, vol. 32, ed. J. Emerton (Leiden: Brill, 1980), 110-130.

⁵⁵ The term dialogue, as used here, includes the monologues (8:22, 28-29), prayers (8:21-23 ; 9:6-15 ), and dialogues (4:2-3 ) that occur in Ezra. See Chapter Three under Presentation of Events for an analysis of Ezra’s use of dialogue.

⁵⁶ See Table 3 — Narrative Technique Structure and Temporal Notations on page 25.

⁵⁷ Though the thesis that chronology functions as a primary ordering principle in Ezra’s narrative is a significant part of this chapter, as Menakhem Perry observes, “even when [an ordering] principle is a global one, it does not involve all the semantic elements in the text but merely a selection of them, leaving a residue to be organized by other, complementary or even competing ordering principles.” “Literary Dynamics: How the Order of a Text Creates its Meaning,” Poetics Today 1, no. 1-2 (1979): 36. For an extended discussion of the other ordering principles by which Ezra arranges his narrative, see Chapter Three.

⁵⁸ Rising above the definitional morass in which genre criticism is currently mired, common sense recognizes that any piece of literature that is not entirely unique invokes a set of interpretive expectations shared with other similar texts. These expectations guide and shape the reader’s understanding in the process of reading. Such generic guidance operates both externally and internally. Externally, genre locates a text’s basic position within the broad range of written materials. Internally, it establishes norms to which the reader expects the text to adhere. For an introductory discussion of the complexity of genre criticism, see V. Philips Long , The Art of Biblical History, vol. 5 in Foundations of Contemporary Interpretation (Grand Rapids: Zondervan Publishing House, 1994), 306-307. For a more detailed discussion of genre and interaction with the major theories in genre criticism from an evangelical perspective, see Grant R. Osborne , “Genre Criticism—Sensus Literalis,” Trinity Journal 4 (1983): 1-27.

⁵⁹ Contra Robert Alter who prefers to speak of the Bible as “historicized prose fiction” or “fictionalized history.” By this he means not that the Biblical authors created stories with the appearance of history, but that the authors took the basic facts of historical events and then applied their imagination in inventing verbatim dialogue or interior monologues, ascribing “feeling, intention, or motive” to their characters in harmony with the thematic purposes they were pursuing. The Art of Biblical Narrative (New York: Basic Books, 1983), 24-35. Literary critics who hold this or a similar view of Biblical narrative include Herbert Chanan Brichto , Toward a Grammar of Biblical Poetics: Tales of the Prophets (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992), see esp. 247-55; Frank Kermode , The Genesis of Secrecy (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1980); Adele Berlin , Poetics and Interpretation of Biblical Narrative (Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 1994). Although not necessarily affirming the Biblical text’s historicity, Meir Sternberg argues cogently that “[Biblical] narrative is historiographic, inevitably so considering its teleology and incredibly so considering its time and environment” (Poetics of Biblical Narrative, 30).

⁶⁰ At present there is no literary consensus on the definition of narrative or even “story.” For example, Gerald Prince defines a story as consisting of “three conjoined events [e.g., ‘He was unhappy, then he met a woman, then, as a result, he was happy’]. The first and third events are stative, the second is active. Furthermore, the third event is the inverse of the first. Finally, the three events are conjoined by the three conjunctive features in such a way that (a) the first event precedes the second in time and the second precedes the third, and (b) the second even causes the third.” A Dictionary of Narratology (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1987), 53. Prince , however, distinguishes a narrative from a story, defining narrative as “the representation of at least two real or fictive events and situations in a time sequence, neither of which presupposes or entails the other.” Narratology: The Form and Functioning of Narrative (Berlin: Mouton Publishers, 1982), 4. For the purposes of this chapter, “story” and “narrative” are synonymous. One has to agree with Sternberg ’s wondering “why the distinction between ‘story’ and ‘narrative’ needs to be made in the first place.” “Telling in Time (II): Chronology, Teleology, Narrativity.” Poetics Today 13.3 (1992): 466. Sternberg follows his incisive critique of the current muddle in narratology with an insightful theory of narrative (529-39).

⁶¹ Meir Sternberg , Expositional Modes and Temporal Ordering (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1978), 132. Perry explains the creation of a perceptual set in this way: “In the process of reading the reader constructs … a set of frames which can motivate the convergence of as many of the various details in the text as possible… . even when the text-continuum does not preserve the order of [its] frame, the text is still read in confrontation with that order. The frame serves as a guiding norm in the encounter with the text, as a negative defining principle, so that deviation from it becomes perceptible and requires motivation by another frame or principle” (36-37).

⁶² Ezra 4:23 , 24 ; 6:14 ; 7:1-9 .

⁶³ “Time is not denoted in Biblical narratives solely by explicit temporal expressions, however, nor even primarily by them… . The full fabric of time is woven primarily through the events presented in the narrative rather than by direct indications of time.” Shimon Bar-Efrat , Narrative Art in the Bible, trans. Dorothea Shefer-Vanson, 2d ed. (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1989), 145.

⁶⁴ The terms “primacy-effect” and “recency-effect” were coined by a group of psychologists experimenting with the persuasive effects that varying orders of informational presentation had upon readers. The essence of their findings is that information given first tends to control a reader’s perception of later information (primacy-effect), though later information, if of sufficient strength, may alter or overturn (recency-effect) an audience’s first impression. Abram S. Luchins , “Primacy-Recency in Impression Formation,” in The Order of Presentation in Persuasion, ed. Carl I. Hovland (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1957). See the fourth chapter of Meir Sternberg ’s Expositional Modes, where he develops the implications of this principle of impressions for literature and specifically for narrative exposition.

⁶⁵ It may at first appear strange to note verisimilitude as a characteristic of Scripture, since the believing reader already accedes to its verity. Yet an awareness of what is “real” and what is not helps the interpreter recognize that Jotham’s story of the trees (Jud. 9:1-20 ), while narrative in form, is not intended to be understood as historically accurate. The “realness” of the narrative forms an essential foundation for the theological truth it seeks to convey through its treatment of history. As Erich Auerbach has so well observed, the aim of Biblical stories “is not to bewitch the senses, and if nevertheless they produce lively sensory effects, it is only because the moral, religious, and psychological phenomena which are their sole concern are made concrete in the sensible matter of life. But their religious intent involves an absolute claim to historical truth… . Without believing in Abraham’s sacrifice, it is impossible to put the narrative of it to the use for which it was written… . The world of the Scripture stories is not satisfied with claiming to be a historically true reality—it insists that it is the only real world, is destined for autocracy… . The Scripture stories do not, like Homer’s, court our favor, they do not flatter us that they may please us and enchant us—they seek to subject us, and if we refuse to be subjected we are rebels.” Mimesis: The Representation of Reality in Western Literature, trans. Willard R. Trask (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1953), 14-15.

⁶⁶ “Historical order” here reflects this dissertation’s most basic premise: all Scripture is God-breathed. Therefore, when Scripture explicitly states that certain events took place, history in its truest sense is being revealed. This does not imply that Scripture reveals all that is historically true, but what it does reveal is a priori the truth.

⁶⁷ The text does not supply sufficient information to determine the temporal relationship between this first letter to Artaxerxes and the events of chapters 7-10 with certainty . Whether it came before Ezra’s return, after his return but before chapters 9-10 , or entirely after chapters 7-10 is impossible to determine. The lack of information about the official positions of Bilsham, Mithredash, and Tabe’el obscures the issue further.

⁶⁸ The anachronous transition from the reign of Artaxerxes (4:8-23 ) back to the reign of Darius (4:24-6:22 ) occupies such a prominent place in discussions of Ezra’s chronology that the fact that the events in Ezra 4:8-23 actually took place after the events in Ezra 7-10 receives scant notice. The commentators who do note the historical location of these events usually place them after Ezra’s return, c. 448 B.C., often with the suggestion that Ezra 4:23 may form the background of Neh. 1:1-3 . Gustav Oehler credits Ernst Bertheau with “having first … assigned the paragraph Ezra iv. 7 sqq. to its right place” (i.e., after chapter 10). Theology of the Old Testament, ed. George E. Day (1883; reprint, Grand Rapids: Zondervan Publishing House, n.d.), 430. Other scholars who concur with this historical placement include Derek Kidner , 52; J. Barton Payne , 118; Edwin Yamauchi , 634; H. G. M. Williamson , 63; Mervin Breneman , 103; Joseph Blenkinsopp , 113-14; and Leon Wood , A Survey of Israel’s History (Grand Rapids: Zondervan Publishing House, 1970), 397-98. For a contrary proposal placing the events of Ezra 4:8-23 “within the context of the transition of power from the assassination of Xerxes to the point when Artaxerxes I was secure on the Achaemenid throne, around the year 464 BCE,” see Kenneth G. Hoglund , Achaemenid Imperial Administration in Syria-Palestine and the Missions of Ezra and Nehemiah (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1992), 119-27, 163, 211.

⁶⁹ The phrase “in the second year after they came to the house of God” in Ezra 3:8 is difficult to interpret. Its earliest reference would be to the second year of Cyrus, and at the latest it would reference Cyrus’s third year.

⁷⁰ A number of commentators have argued that Ezra 3 has been arranged anachronously and does not reflect the historical order of events. Williamson , following the lead of Shemaryahu Talmon , suggests that “no temple construction took place from Cyrus till Darius’s second year” (44). Shemaryahu Talmon , “Ezra, Book of,” The Interpreter’s Bible Dictionary, Supplementary Volume (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1979), 322-23. Williamson bases his contention on the attribution of the temple founding to Zerubbabel by Haggai and Zechariah (Hag. 1:14 ; Zech. 4:9 ) and on the reference to the “second year” in Ezra 3:7 . He takes the “second year” to be Darius’s second year. Ezra 3:7-4:3 , therefore, “describes the start of the work in the time of Darius,” and Ezra 4:4-5 explains why there was no work from the rebuilding of the altar (3:1-6 ) until Darius’s second year (ibid.). Various reasons for this anachrony have been advanced. Blenkinsopp suggests that the “C[hronicler] has simply telescoped events … and backdat[ed] the laying of the foundation to the reign of Cyrus to emphasize the exclusive role played by the golah group immediately after its return to the homeland … [and to explain] the unconscionable delay in implementing the royal decree” (100, 108). In a different vein, Williamson argues that the “verbal parallels” between Ezra 3:7-13 and 1 Chron. 22:2-4 ; 2 Chron. 2:7-15 —“(the shipment by sea to Joppa; the payment of food, drink, and oil; the bracketing of the Sidonians and the Tyrians)”—are sufficiently striking to conclude that Ezra’s account was written as “a typological account of the founding of the second temple” (45, 47). Baruch Halpern , after rejecting Williamson ’s arguments for viewing the section typologically, suggests that in fact all of 2:1-4:3 refers to the time of Darius. In his view, there were actually two returns, one under Sheshbazzar in Cyrus’s reign and another under Zerubbabel in Darius’s reign. The reason the text presents the founding of the temple as occurring under Cyrus is “to suggest that work on the temple started and continued. The ‘people of the land’ obstructed it.” “A Historiographic Commentary on Ezra 1-6: Achronological Narrative and Dual Chronology in Israelite Historiography,” in The Hebrew Bible and Its Interpreters, ed. William Henry Propp, Baruch Halpern, and David Noel Freedman (Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 1990), 108-111.
There are several reason to reject this view of Ezra 3 and to regard Ezra 3 as a chronologically straightforward presentation. First, if one compares the dates given in Haggai and Zechariah with those in Ezra, it is clear that Haggai and Zechariah prophesied on the first of the sixth month of Darius’s second year (6/1/520 B.C.) and that work commenced on the temple by the twenty-fourth of the month (6/24/520 B.C.). Ezra, however, records Zerubbabel and Jeshua as beginning their work on the temple in the second month of “the second year of their coming to the house of God, to Jerusalem” (3:8 ). Appeal to a difference in civil and religious calendars will not suffice to explain the conflict between Haggai’s sixth month and Ezra’s second month, for the second month of the civil calendar is the eighth month of the religious calendar, not the sixth. Second, Williamson ’s proposal does not account for the statement in Ezra 4:5 that the people of the land hindered the Returnees all the reign of Cyrus unto Darius. If the temple reconstruction was not initiated before Darius’s second year, this statement by the narrator (who is reliable at all other times) is bogus. There was nothing for the people of the land to hinder. Third, although Ezra 3:10 says the temple was “founded” in the second year after the return and Haggai 2:18 indicates that it was “founded” in the second year of Darius, as Eugene Merrill notes, the verb yasad may refer to the “resumption of work recounted in [Ezra] 5:1-5 … . One must remember that there are no separate Hebrew verbs to distinguish between build and rebuild or even found and refound.” Haggai, Zechariah, Malachi (Chicago: Moody Press, 1994), 51. For a further discussion of yasad, see Chapter Four, note 252. The explanation that best fits all of the biblical data is that the temple was founded during Cyrus’s reign (3:6-13 ) and then recommenced in the second year of Darius (5:1-3) .

⁷¹ The term “Samarians” is used throughout this dissertation for the people who describe themselves as deported by Asshurbanipal and “settled … in the city of Samaria” (4:10 ). As Blenkinsopp notes, “It would be anachronistic to call these people Samaritans, as Josephus does (Ant. 11:84), since the Samaritans did not exist as a separate religious community in the early Persian period” (107). For a similar conclusion on philological grounds, see John MacDonald , “The Discovery of Samaritan Religion,” Religion: Journal of Religion and Religions 2 (1972): 143-44.

⁷² To avoid repetition, the reasons for omitting 4:24-6:22 from its proper historical order will be delineated together with those for omitting chapters 7-10 .

⁷³ The particle /ydab normally marks action that is subsequent to the preceding action (e.g., Ezra 6:1 ; Dan. 3:13 , 26 ).

⁷⁴ The verb lfb occurs once in 4:23 and twice in 4:24 .

⁷⁵ In H. G. M. Williamson ’s words, “the narrative structure itself points to past achievement as a model for future aspiration” (lii).

⁷⁶ For the view that the destruction referenced in Neh. 1:3 was only that accomplished by Nebuchadnezzar in 586 B.C. and was not compounded by any subsequent violence, see Fensham , 152, and Keil , 100-101.

⁷⁷ The Aramaic of this phrase reads: anylu itwl-/m. Keil argues that the pronouns “you” and “us” are general geographic designators and that the letter refers to the migration during the time of Cyrus (43, 100-101). Besides ignoring the natural contextual sense of the pronouns, this view also runs counter to the Jews’ and Samarians’ consistent pattern of specifying the monarch during whose reign the events to which they refer took place (4:2 , 10 ; 5:12 , 13 ). One would expect them to indicate that the “coming up” of 4:12 was in the time of Cyrus. The text as it stands supports the conclusion that the members of a Jewish migration during the time of Artaxerxes were in the process of rebuilding the city walls.

⁷⁸ Some OT scholars have taken 4:12 as an indication that groups had periodically returned to Israel. John Bright , A History of Israel, 2d ed. (Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1972), 377-78. However, this supposition is inevitably founded upon a previous conclusion that Ezra arrived in Jerusalem after Nehemiah in the reign of Artaxerxes II (404-358 B.C.). For example, see Raymond S. Foster , The Restoration of Israel: A Study in Exile and Return (London: Darton, Longman & Todd, 1970), 187-89.

⁷⁹ The term used here, rx, differs from that used when describing the enemies lying in wait along Ezra’s return route to Jerusalem (8:22 , 31 ; bya). There does not, however, appear to be any contextual significance to the use of alternate terms for “enemy.”

⁸⁰ For a discussion of an alternate sense of djy here translated “alone,” see S. Talmon , “The Sectarian djy—A Biblical Noun,” VT 3 (1953): 133-140. Talmon argues that the word yahad in Ezra 4:3 is a noun and has the sense “community, congregation.” Given this understanding, the verse would read “We, the congregation, will build … .” Based on this rendering of yahad, Talmon concludes that the primary motivation behind the elders’ refusal was religious (135-36).

⁸¹ See Chapter Seven for an extended discussion of the mixed-marriages and Ezra’s resolution to the crisis.

⁸² The repetition of the phrase Jrah <u explicitly supports this linkage. This phrase occurs in both sections of the narrative, only in negative contexts. In the first section (chs. 1-6 ) “the people(s) of the land” are first a cause of great fear for the Returnees (3:3 ) and then the instigators of all the opposition to God’s work (4:4 ). In the second section (chs. 7-10 ) these “people(s) of the land” are the very ones with whom the Israelites have intermarried (9:1 , 2 , 11 ; 10:2 , 11 ). For an extended analysis of the referential and connotative significance of this phrase, see Chapter Six, pages 160ff.

⁸³ The Aramaic geographical designator hrhn-rbu occurs fourteen times in Ezra and has been variously translated “Trans-Euphrates” (NIV, NJB), “this side the river” (KJV), “beyond the river” (KJV, NASB), “West-of-Euphrates or west of the Euphrates” (NLT, NAB), “the other side (pera(n)) or west (eJspera") of the river” (LXX). The translation followed here, “Beyond the River,” is an attempt to reflect the literal meaning of the term. The capitalization reflects the fact that hrhn-rbu functions as a proper noun.

⁸⁴ The BHS fourth edition lists no variants in the MSS at this point. Neither LXX Ezra nor 1 Esdras offers variant readings on this verse (1 Esdras 7:4-5), granting no ground to those who would posit editorial activity at this point. See, for example, Ackroyd , 237, or Batten , 150-51, who excises it from the text despite the unanimous versional evidence. The Septuagint’s transliteration, Arqasasqa, and 1 Esdras’s use of the Greek name
Artaxhrxe" have the same referent and therefore do not constitute variant readings.

⁸⁵ Eskenazi argues cogently that 6:14 serves as a “retrospective and proleptic summary, encapsulating one of the book’s central points: the building was finished ‘by the command [<uf] of the God of Israel and by the decree [<uf] of Cyrus and Darius and Artaxerxes, King of Persia’” (In an Age of Prose, 40).

⁸⁶ If one regards the waw on <ufmw as a waw explicativum, this would strengthen this conclusion: in other words, “from the command of God, even the command [of] Cyrus, Darius, and Artaxerxes, king of Persia” (6:14). While a construct relationship in which a series of proper nouns follows a singular, construct head-noun is not uncommon (Gen. 14:11 ), it is uncommon for the head noun to be absolute as <uf is here. Williamson suggests that the Massoretes vocalized <uf differently to distinguish the command of God from that of the Persian kings (72). The LXX does not distinguish the forms in its translation (gnwmh").

⁸⁷ For a compelling presentation of the centrality of curiosity, surprise, and suspense in narrative, see Sternberg ’s article, “Telling in Time (II): Chronology, Teleology, Narrativity,” 529-38. Sternberg makes brilliant application of this theory to various Biblical narratives in The Poetics of Biblical Narrative, 264-320.

⁸⁸ The book of Esther is a prime example of the use of chronological order to generate suspense.

⁸⁹ He minimizes suspense from the start, but the retardatory effect of Artaxerxes’ letter and the gathering of the people creates enough distance from that initial effect that suspense could easily be brought into play in 8:22 , where Ezra indicates that there were “enemies in the road.” Rather than recording their prayer and then allowing events to demonstrate that God had heard them, he explicitly states that God was entreated on their behalf before they started on the trip. The reader is thereby assured that nothing will happen to them. Ezra 8:31, rather than alleviating suspense, serves as a post-event confirmation that God had, as he said, been entreated for them.

⁹⁰ 7:6 , 9 , 7:27 , 28 ; 8:18 , 22 , 23 , 31 [2x] .

The concept of “plot” received its first definitive treatment in the Poetics, Aristotle’s analysis of Greek tragedy.¹⁶² Aristotle regarded plot as the most important component of tragedy and defined it as that “ordered arrangement of the incidents … which has a beginning and a middle and an end.”¹⁶³ Though the literary world has expanded the analysis,¹⁶⁴ definition,¹⁶⁵ and varieties¹⁶⁶ of plot since the Poetics, it has steadfastly affirmed Aristotle’s basic contention that plot is an indispensable element of mimetic literature.¹⁶⁷

The significance of analyzing plot for the Biblical theologian lies in the fact that narrative meaning, the object of exegetical study, is largely a function of plot.¹⁶⁸ The arrangement of the incidents in a narrative plays a major role in shaping the implied relations between the incidents and, ultimately, the meaning of the narrative.¹⁶⁹ Any close reading of Biblical narratives reveals the exacting care with which the authors arranged their narrative materials. Consequently, exploring the plot of Ezra is a vital part of the exegetical process.

Following Aristotle’s lead, plot, as used here, denotes the united sequence of events presented in Ezra’s narrative. This definition incorporates the elemental components that are a part of all Biblical plots: events,¹⁷⁰ and the selection, arrangement, and presentation of those events.¹⁷¹ The purpose of this chapter is to expose the relations between Ezra’s plots¹⁷² and the message of the book as a whole. This will be accomplished by analyzing the structure and composition of Ezra’s plots.

Plot Structure in Ezra

In a narrative covering fewer than one hundred years in ten chapters, one might expect the plot to span the entirety of the book, perhaps with subordinate plot structures supporting and illuminating various facets of the main plot. Other Biblical narratives such as Ruth, Esther, and Jonah employ this basic pattern. The application of three traditional models for analyzing plot structure reveals, however, that Ezra cast his narrative in a different mold.¹⁷³

The first traditional model comes from Aristotle’s dictum that every good plot must have a beginning, a middle, and an end.¹⁷⁴ This approach is helpful, for it provides a means of ascertaining and verifying plot boundaries.¹⁷⁵ Application of this model to Ezra yields two distinct plots. In the first section of Ezra, chapters 1-6 , the first two chapters constitute the beginning, chapters 3-4 the middle, and chapters 5-6 the end. Chapter six fits the Aristotelian criteria for “an end” perfectly: it logically follows from the action of the preceding chapter and requires nothing after it.¹⁷⁶ Table 6 charts the structure of the episodes, phases, and scenes in Ezra 1-6 .¹⁷⁷

Table 6 — Episodes, Phases, and Scenes in Ezra 1-6

Rebuilding the Temple: Ezra 1-6
Episodes	Phases	Scenes
Return 1-2	Return initiated 1:1-11	Edict and response 1:1-11
	Return completed 2:1-70	List of returnees 2:1-67
		Free will offerings given 2:68-70
Rebuilding 3-6	Temple started 3:1-13	Temple sacrifice restarted 3:1-6
		Temple foundation laid 3:7-13
	Opposition–successful 4:1-24	Help offered and refused 4:1-5
		Xerxes and opposition 4:6
		Artaxerxes and opposition 4:7
		City wall effort stopped 4:8-24
	Opposition–reversed 5:1-6:12	Building resumed 5:1-2
		Tatnai’s questioning 5:3-17
		Darius’s response 6:1-12
	Temple completed 6:13-22	Temple completed 6:13-18
		Passover celebrated 6:19-22

In the second section of Ezra, chapters 7-8 are the beginning, chapter 9 the middle, and chapter 10 the end. Chapter seven clearly constitutes an Aristotelian “beginning”: it has no necessary logical or actional antecedents, and the events of the following chapters proceed from it. The narrative action ends in chapter ten, completing the second plot. Table 7 provides a breakdown of the episodes, phases, and scenes of Ezra’s second plot.

Table 7 — Episodes, Phases, and Scenes in Ezra 7-10

Restoring the Community: Ezra 7-10
Episodes	Phases	Scenes
Second Return 7-8	Ezra’s commission 7:1-28	Introduction to Ezra 7:1-5
		Second return summarized 7:6-10
		Artaxerxes’ commission 7:11-28
	Preparation to leave 8:1-30	Genealogical enrollment 8:1-14
		Levites missing 8:15-20
		Prayer for protection 8:21-23
		Securing of offerings 8:24-30
	Journey and arrival 8:31-36	Return journey 8:31-32
		Temple vessels weighed 8:33-34
		Burnt offerings offered 8:35
		Officials informed 8:36
Marriage Crisis 9-10	Problem discovered 9:1-16	Princes’ report 9:1-2
		Ezra’s humiliation 9:3-4
		Ezra’s prayer 9:5-16
	Problem resolved 10:1-44	Solution proposed 10:1-6
		Meeting and covenant 10:7-14
		Divorce commission 10:16-44

The second traditional model analyzes plot structure in terms of a pyramidal model of conflict development and resolution.¹⁷⁸ In chapter one, the decree of Cyrus disrupts the equilibrium of exiled Israel, sending the Returnees on a mission to build the house of God (1:1-4 ). The action rises with the return and initiation of work on the altar and temple (1:5-3:13 ). When the Jews face the Samarians’ request to help build the temple, their choice to refuse that offer generates the primary plot crisis in which all building efforts come to a halt (4:1-24 ). The advent of Haggai and Zechariah initiates the falling action (5:1-6:12 ), and the completion of the temple along with the celebration of Passover marks the conflict’s unraveling and a return to a condition of stability (6:13-22 ). The plot resolves in a grand demonstration of God’s sovereign power.

Figure 2 — The Rise and Fall in Israel’s Fortunes in Ezra 1-6

In chapters 7-10 a Persian decree again disrupts the status quo of Babylonian Jewry, commissioning Ezra to seek the welfare of Judah and Jerusalem (7:1-28 ). The action rises as Ezra prepares to lead the returning Jews to Jerusalem (8:1-36 ). The apparent return to stability accomplished by the safe arrival of the Returnees is shattered by Ezra’s discovery that his people have been intermarrying with the peoples of the lands (9:1-2 ). The plot’s emotional climax coincides with its actional crisis in Ezra’s intense prayer of repentance (9:3-15 ). The action begins its descent as God-fearing Israelites respond to Ezra’s prayer, and the conflict resolves through divorce, leaving God’s people purified once again (10:1-44 ).

The third analytical model, again Aristotelian, examines plot structure in terms of the rise or fall of the protagonist’s fortune as he attempts to reach his objective.¹⁷⁹ Figures 2 and 3 provide visual graphs of the rise and fall in the Returnees’ fortunes along the lines of Ezra’s plot.¹⁸⁰ In chapters 1-3 the Returnees’ fortunes rise unhindered toward the completion of God’s word through Cyrus. In chapter four, the Samarian opposition and Artaxerxes’ decree create the impression of a huge peripety in fortune. The building effort makes a tenuous resurgence in chapter five and then soars to a grand conclusion in chapter six.

In the second plot, Ezra’s fortunes rise in Artaxerxes’ grant and with it the fortunes of God’s people. The Returnees’ successful journey marks the highest point of their fortune. In chapter nine the report of the people’s

unfaithfulness in marrying foreign women reveals the precarious state of their fortunes. The first half of chapter ten records the people’s response to Ezra, followed by the resolution to the crisis as they put away their foreign wives. Though the crisis is resolved and the law enforced, the fortunes of Israel fail to rise to the height they attained by the end of chapter eight.

Each of the three traditional models employed in analyzing the plot structure of Ezra leads to the same conclusion: the Book of Ezra is composed of two stories, each with a distinct plot.¹⁸¹ The changes in protagonists (the Returnees versus Ezra), time (538-516 B.C. versus 458 B.C.), and topic (temple versus community) all support this conclusion. This is not to argue that Ezra 1-6 and 7-10 are structurally or thematically unrelated. In fact, the opposite is true.¹⁸² Rather, the point is to establish the plot perimeters in Ezra, so that an accurate assessment of each plot may be made.

Plot Composition

After establishing the boundaries and overall structure of Ezra’s plots, the next step is to examine the composition of the plots. Plot composition is the result primarily of three activities: selection, arrangement, and presentation.

Figure 3 — The Rise and Fall in Israel’s Fortunes in Ezra 7-10

Selection of Events

Selection, the first principle of plot composition, operates in two directions: inclusion and omission. An author must choose which events he will include and those he will omit.¹⁸³ No story can tell everything; therefore, it is reasonable to assume that an author’s communicative concerns will shape his selection of events and that the resulting plot will mirror those concerns in both its inclusions and its omissions.¹⁸⁴

Omission

At times more telling than what an author says is what he does not say.¹⁸⁵ Yet discerning the motivation for an omission is, as a rule, an exercise in speculation. The sheer volume of material omitted makes analysis impractical, and it is usually not possible to know what has been omitted.¹⁸⁶ Ezra 1-6, however, narrates the only portion of post-exilic history to receive triple coverage in Scripture. The books of Haggai and Zechariah, both of whom prophesied during the temple reconstruction, also cover this same period. This multiple coverage provides an objective basis for determining what events Ezra omits from his narrative. Comparison of these three accounts reveals that Ezra omitted two key events from his narrative record: the Returnees’ selfish decision to refrain from building the temple and the ensuing judgment upon the land (Hag. 1:2 , 7-10 ).¹⁸⁷

Had Ezra built into his narrative the Returnees’ self-centered unwillingness to build the temple and God’s consequent judgment, the distribution of blame would shift drastically from the Samarians to the Jews. Israel, in fact, deserved the greater share of blame.¹⁸⁸ Yet Ezra deliberately avoids including information that would dissipate his narrative picture of the Samarians as relentless enemies of God’s plan. As the narrative stands, the reader gets the distinct impression that the temple work halted because of the opposition of the Samarians. And that is Ezra’s purpose: He intends to highlight the wrongdoing of the people of the land.¹⁸⁹

Two significant spans of time are omitted from Ezra 7-10 : a 57-year gap between the end of chapter six and the beginning of chapter seven , and a four-month gap between the second return and the report that Jews were marrying foreign women. In these cases, however, there is no parallel record of that time period that might reveal whether or not these omissions color the reader’s perception of the events. The interpreter must rely entirely upon the events Ezra included.

Inclusion

Of the events an author selects for inclusion, not all have equal significance in the development of the plot. Two levels of plot events may be distinguished: kernel events and satellite events.¹⁹⁰ Kernel events create the story’s backbone. They develop the main topic and main theme(s) and are, therefore, the means by which an author mediates his primary message.¹⁹¹ Satellite events, on the other hand, provide a basis for deducing subsidiary theological concerns.

The kernel events of Ezra’s first plot may be summarized as follows. In response to Cyrus’s divinely motivated edict, a group of some 42,000 Jews returns to Israel to rebuild the temple. After arriving, they reestablish the Mosaic sacrificial system and lay the foundation of the temple. The peoples of the land ask to help rebuild the temple and, upon refusal, repeatedly frustrate the Jews’ building plans. In Darius’s second year, two prophets stir the leaders to renew their rebuilding efforts. The renewed work precipitates an investigation by the provincial governor who reports to Darius, seeking confirmation of the Jews’ right to build. Darius confirms their right and orders the governor to place imperial resources at their disposal. Four years later the Jews complete the rebuilding project and dedicate the temple with joy.

Two topics emerge clearly from the kernel events of this plot. The first topic, though less dominant, is the return from exile (Ezra 1-2 ). The second topic is the Jewish effort to rebuild the temple (Ezra 3-6 ). The rebuilding of the temple receives the greater attention and is the point around which most of the action revolves. The development of these topics, in part, reflects the historiographic aims of Ezra. In his narrative, he preserves for posterity significant events in the life of their nation.

The historiographic concern is not, however, the driving force of the narrative, for Ezra omits large segments of post-exilic history and provides only meager details for the events he does narrate. The concerns that drive his selection of narrative events are theological. His opening line, “To fulfill the word of Yahweh from the mouth of Jeremiah” (1:1 ), identifies one of his key themes:¹⁹² the fulfillment of God’s word through Jeremiah.¹⁹³ Cyrus’s return of the temple vessels (1:7-11 ) fulfills God’s promise that He would restore the temple vessels to His house (Jer. 27:21-22 ). The return of Jewish exiles from Babylon to Judah (Ezra 2 ) fulfills the oft-repeated promise that God would bring His people back to the land from which He had dispersed them.¹⁹⁴ The renewal of free-will offerings (Ezra 3:5 ) and the thankful singing of Yahweh’s goodness and loyal love (Ezra 3:11 ) fulfill the prophecy that “again shall be heard … the voice of those saying, ‘Give thanks to Yahweh of hosts, for Yahweh is good, for his loyal love endures forever’; and of those bringing thank offering to the house of Yahweh” (Jer. 33:10-11 ).¹⁹⁵

The sovereign power of God, the primary theme of Ezra 1-6 , develops through God’s orchestration of the fulfillment of His word, particularly in the rebuilding of the temple.¹⁹⁶ As God turns the opposition of His enemies into support for His plans, the greatness of His power becomes evident. Antagonistic neighbors, local officials, and the greatest monarchs on earth all serve His ends willingly or otherwise. The God of Heaven reigns sovereign over all.

Woven among the kernel events of Ezra’s first plot are three satellite events developing subthemes that complement and expand the plot’s main themes: (1) the exclusion of priests who lacked proof of their ancestry from eating the most holy things (2:58-63 ); (2) the presentation of free-will offerings upon arrival in Jerusalem (2:68-69 ); and (3) the account of the Passover celebration after the temple is built and dedicated (6:19-22 ).¹⁹⁷

Ezra 2:58-63 records an account of two groups of people who were “unable to declare the house of their father”: one lay, the other priestly. No explicit consequence is recorded for the laymen, but the priests were defiled¹⁹⁸ from the priesthood and denied their livelihood through priestly channels.¹⁹⁹ This brief incident, almost hidden in a long list of family names, introduces a significant theme that runs throughout the book: the importance of holiness—in the priesthood, in worship, and in the laity. Concern for holiness is the unspoken issue igniting the conflict in Ezra 4-6 , and it becomes the dominant theme in the second half of Ezra. Though this scene is tangential to the plot line of the first section, the issue at stake is crucial to the actional and theological dynamics of the whole book.

The second satellite event, the presentation of free-will offerings, characterizes the Returnees as willing supporters of God’s work. The positive impression created by their sincerity and fervor will heighten the contrast between them and the people of the land in the following chapters. The revelation in chapter six that Cyrus had decreed that the expense of rebuilding the temple was to be “given from the house of the king” heightens retrospectively the significance of this generosity (6:4 ).²⁰⁰ The gifts were not needed to finance the building project. Instead, the gifts evidenced the people’s heart for the work.

The final satellite event is the celebration of the Passover in 6:19-22 . The plot draws to a close with the resolution of the conflict (6:6-12 ) and the completion of the temple (6:13-18 ). Although the Passover celebration appears to be little more than an addendum,²⁰¹ this scene is far more than that. While highlighting the holiness of God’s people, this scene unobtrusively adds a significant dimension to the book’s holiness theme: the legitimate participation of non-Jews in the worship of Yahweh when they have separated themselves from the uncleanness of the nations of the land (6:20-21 ).²⁰² The final verse wraps the entire plot into an inclusio of divine action: God is the first actor in the story (1:1 ) and the last to leave the stage (6:22 ). God is shown to be both author and finisher of that segment of history’s plot. In these four verses Ezra’s main themes converge, reflecting in microcosm the message of the plot as a whole.

The kernel events of Ezra’s second plot, consisting of the commission, preparation, and execution of Ezra’s mission, may be summarized as follows. At Ezra’s request, Artaxerxes commissions him to return to Judah with all those willing to return and to promote its welfare by teaching and enforcing the law of God. Ezra prepares for the journey by gathering the people, appealing for Levites to join them, praying for protection, and appointing men to safeguard the valuables offered for the temple. After arriving in Jerusalem, Ezra learns that the Jews have been intermarrying with the peoples of the land. In mourning and self-humiliation, he confesses his people’s guilt. In response to Ezra’s prayer, Shecaniah proposes that the guilty divorce their wives, and at a following meeting, all the Israelites agree to separate from the peoples of the land and from the foreign women. A commission is established, and three months later 113 men have separated from their wives and children.

Table 8 — Artaxerxes’ Commission and Ezra’s Completion

Commission Tasks	Completion
Lead those who are willing to Jerusalem 7:13	8:1-14 , 31-32
Inquire concerning Judah and Jerusalem according to the law 7:14 of your God, which is in your hand	8:1-10 :44 203
Carry silver, gold, and free willing offerings; use them to 7:15-17 buy offerings; and offer them upon the altar in Jerusalem	8:24-30 , 35
Dispose of the rest of the silver and gold as you desire 7:18	--------
Render in full the sacred vessels before the God of Jerusalem 7:19	8:33-34
Provide the needs of the house of your God from the king’s 7:20 treasury	--------
Inform the king’s treasurers about the credit available to 7:21-24 Ezra and the proscription of taxes on temple personnel	8:36
Appoint magistrates and judges for all the people who are in 7:25 Beyond the River to teach the law of God204	9:1-2 ; 10:14 , 16
Punish those who disobey either the law of God or the king 7:26	10:16-44

The primary topic of this second plot is Ezra’s mission to “inquire concerning Judah and Jerusalem according to the law of … God” (7:14 ). Artaxerxes’ commission outlines nine tasks for Ezra to complete,²⁰⁵ and in one way or another nearly every event in the following chapters relates to one of the elements of Ezra’s mission.²⁰⁶ Table 8 above outlines the tasks Artaxerxes gives Ezra and the narrative reference of each task’s completion.

The close correspondence between Ezra’s commission and the events he includes suggests that Ezra is deliberately establishing a record of his faithfulness to the king’s assignment. Perhaps a report was expected at the palace in Persia, or Ezra may have been vindicating himself to a readership that was critical of the way he handled the marriage crisis. In either case, the events testify to the diligence and conscientiousness of Ezra.²⁰⁷

Besides its historical and personal concerns, this second plot develops several important theological themes. The events of chapters 7-8 reveal God’s gracious goodness to His people primarily in the munificence of Artaxerxes’ grant. In chapters 9-10 the theme of holiness comes to center stage. Ezra magnifies the seriousness of the Israelites’ unholy alliances by his actions, his prayer, and the drastic remedy he prescribes. The relation between these two themes is stated in Ezra’s brief explanation for not asking Artaxerxes for an armed guard. He had told the king, “The hand of our God is upon all those who are seeking Him for good, and His strength and His wrath are against all those abandoning Him” (8:22 ). This statement enunciates perhaps the most important element of Ezra’s message, for it explains the relationship between human responsibility and divine sovereignty, between his audience’s actions and God’s interaction with them, and more specifically, between their present situation (rebuilding of city walls stopped) and their past behavior (marrying foreign women): man’s behavior co-determines God’s interaction with him.²⁰⁸

Two noteworthy satellite events are included in Ezra 7-10 . The first is Ezra 8:31-32, which informs the reader of the Returnees’ safe arrival. Ezra’s introduction had already stated that the group under his leadership made it to Jerusalem (7:7-9 ). This brief notice of safety, however, gives historical verification of the theological affirmation made in 8:23 —“and [Yahweh] was entreated for us.” The second satellite is in Ezra 10:6 . Though unnecessary for the plot action, the inclusion of Ezra retiring to Jehohanan’s room to mourn rounds out the picture of the seriousness of the Returnees’ sin and the genuineness of Ezra’s sorrow. It also illustrates the response of a godly man to unfaithfulness to Yahweh and thereby contributes to the development of the character model that God wants to set before His people.

Arrangement of Events

The second principle of plot composition is arrangement.²⁰⁹ Having selected the events he wants to include, an author must then choose how he will arrange those events. Sequential relationships exist at all levels of a narrative: across the totality, between episodes, between scenes, and within scenes. Of the variety of logical relations that can exist,²¹⁰ Ezra arranges the main lines of his plots in accordance with the cause-effect pattern that is natural to life in time.²¹¹ All the actions of chapters 1-3 flow directly from the divine activity of verse one. The Jews and their “enemies” clash, and the work on the temple ends. In chapter five , prophetic leadership spurs renewed work on the temple, which in turn spawns an investigation resulting in imperial encouragement and provision. With the completion of the temple, the people celebrate God’s goodness in the Passover and feast of unleavened bread. In chapters 7-10 , the events follow cause-effect order as well.

The one significant deviation from this pattern takes place in chapter four. Here Ezra arranges the events thematically rather than in cause-effect order. Extracting similar events from an 80-year period, he concatenates them into a riveting display of the long-time opposition of the Samarians. Within chapter four, the inclusion of the city wall incident (4:8-23 ), which took place sometime after the events of chapter ten , adds complexity to the overall arrangement of the narrative with at least two effects. First, the situation of a current event in the past links Ezra’s original audience to their forebears. Their problems and enemies, shown side by side, appear virtually the same. Not only is there similarity in opposition, but more importantly, their fathers’ God is their God. As the narrative displays God resolving their fathers’ problem, it also implies hope for their current situation: what God did for their fathers, He can do again. Second, the nested arrangement of the city wall conflict within the larger temple setting temporarily obscures the fact that the conflict is not resolved. The overshadowing focus on the completion of the temple subtly defers scrutiny of the logical cause behind the wall-building conflict until the end of the narrative. At the end of the narrative, the exposure of Israel’s sin and the enunciation of how sin affects God’s dealing with men will place the incident in an entirely different light.

No other divergences from a cause-effect pattern manifest themselves in the inter-episodic and inter-scenic relations of Ezra 1-6 . At the intra-scenic level, however, Ezra’s reversal of his normal cause-effect ordering is interesting. At two points the effect is given before the cause. Human action takes place before the divine cause is revealed. In Ezra 1:3-4, Cyrus authorizes the people of the God of Israel to return to their ancestral home . The heads of the fathers of Judah and Benjamin, the priests, and the Levites then rise in response to this imperial decree (1:5). It is the moment the faithful have long anticipated. Finally, they may return to their own land, people, and culture. Pausing at Ezra 1:5 a, the reader is inclined to see the people’s response to Cyrus’s decree as indicative of their longing to return to the promised land. Ezra 1:5 b, however, overturns this hypothesis, revealing the apparently natural consequence to be the result of divine causation. Those who responded were not merely the ones with a heart for the homeland; rather, they were themselves objects of divine election through His stirring of their spirits. Ezra’s effect-cause arrangement forces the reader to reevaluate his understanding of the relation between decree and response, driving home the point that God was the prime motivator in all that took place.

The second reversal is located in Ezra 6:22 . This reversal is the more significant, for two causes are exposed after their effects: the cause of Israel’s joy and the cause of imperial favor. The first half of 6:22 states, “And they made the feast of unleavened bread seven days with joy.” The Jews had much to be joyful about: the Samarians had been foiled, the temple was finished, they could worship the Lord as He desired. The believing reader would likely attribute the good fortune Israel had experienced to the providential working of God. But that is not sufficient for Ezra. He is not willing to leave this conclusion to be inferred by the reader. He wants the linkage explicit: “For Yahweh had caused them to rejoice.”²¹² The fact that Ezra makes this cause-effect relation explicit reveals His concern that the reader not miss the relation between this event and God’s action.

Ezra immediately follows this statement of divine causation with a further revelation: “and [Yahweh] had turned the heart of the king of Asshur to them to strengthen their hands in the work of the house of God, the God of Israel.” Narrative tension builds with the progress of Tatnai’s investigation (5:3-6:5 ), intensifying the reader’s hope that the appeal to Cyrus’s decree will hold good. When Darius confirms the Jewish claim, the tension relaxes. At this point, the reader might be inclined to congratulate the Jews for their political acumen. Ezra, however, will not allow any credit to human ingenuity. Darius’s grant of permission was not merely the continuation of an imperial edict issued by Cyrus; it was the result of God turning Darius’s heart.²¹³

Two effects are evident in Ezra’s arrangement of the incidents in this plot. First, the adherence to the norm of cause-effect order complements and sustains the historical character of the narrative. Second, the reversal of this norm at the beginning and end of the first plot highlights the part God actually plays in real-life history. The reader must conclude that God is active in His world, working all things after the counsel of His will.

Presentation of Events

The final principle of plot composition is presentation. Having decided which events to include and in what order to place them, an author must then decide how to narrate his story. The principal modes of presentation available to an author are scene and summary.²¹⁴ How effectively an author uses these presentational modes determines the degree to which the narrative absorbs the reader into its world, involving him in its emotions and psychology.²¹⁵

Typically, an author uses summary to cover events that provide background information or to serve as a bridge between important events or dialogue.²¹⁶ On the other hand, the scenic mode, which usually involves a close correspondence between narration time and narrated time,²¹⁷ brings key events into sharper focus, creating narrative emphasis and accelerating thematic development.

Ezra achieves this relative match between narration time and narrated time primarily through dialogue and written discourse rather than through minute description of actions.²¹⁸ The high ratio of discourse²¹⁹ to narration indicates the significant role scenic discourse plays in the narrative.²²⁰ By discerning where the scenic mode is in operation, and particularly scenic discourse, an interpreter locates the narrative segments in which an author is striving to influence his reader most significantly.

Scenic discourse contributes to the continuing development of the two key themes in Ezra 1-6 . Ezra builds the theme of God’s sovereign power through (1) Cyrus’s written acknowledgment of the sovereignty of Yahweh and his own implied subordination (1:2-4 ), (2) the Jews’ confession that God had delivered them into the hand of Nebuchadnezzar (5:12 ), and (3) God’s control of Darius to overturn the Samarians’ opposition and accomplish His word (6:3-12 ). The opposition faced by God’s people, the second main theme, develops almost entirely through dialogue or letters (4:2-3 , 9-22 ; 5:3-4 ). Though a flinty Jewish rebuff sparks the opposition,²²¹ Ezra brings the reader into sympathetic alignment with the Jews and puts him at odds with the people of the land by allowing his audience to hear their far-fetched rhetoric. Their letter reveals them to be political connivers, affecting dutiful loyalty to the crown while seeking to accomplish their own nefarious ends. Ezra’s use of the enemy’s words magnifies the conflict and thereby creates a narrative foil for the greater display of God’s power. This display also sets the stage for Ezra’s second plot so that when mandated divorce is executed, the reader has seen the wickedness of the people of the land and his sympathies are arrayed against them. Rather than reacting negatively to the abrupt displacement of women and children, the reader is inclined to give a grim approval to the decision. In this way Ezra presents a subtle defense of the drastic measures he undertook to restore God’s people to purity in their marriages.

The two main themes of Ezra 7-10 identified earlier, God’s goodness and the importance of holiness, also develop primarily through scenic discourse. The reader’s awareness of Artaxerxes’ generosity rises as he moves through the extended length of his grant. Ezra’s spontaneous outburst of praise to God for His goodness (7:27-28 ) frames the appropriate reader-response and directs the reader’s attention to Israel’s true Benefactor.

In chapter nine, the immediate juxtaposition of Israel’s unfaithfulness against the background of God’s sovereign goodness creates a jarring contrast. Omitting any information that might forewarn his reader, Ezra lets the prince’s report (9:1-2 ) crash upon his reader with the same startling rudeness as it had fallen upon him. Their words unveil Israel’s precipitous fall from holiness. Ezra’s prayer (9:6-15 ), along with the following dialogues (10:2-5 , 11-14 ), reveals the true nature and significance of that fall as abandonment of God’s commands (9:10 ), addition to Israel’s already great guilt (9:13 , 15 ; 10:10 ), unfaithfulness (10:2 , 10 ), rebellion (10:13 ), and ultimately a provocation of God’s “fierce anger” upon them (10:14 ). Ezra’s rhetorical control reaches its zenith at the moment in which he seems most out of control.²²² Dialogue and supporting narration together sweep the reader into Ezra’s maelstrom of emotion as he pours out his heart, “weeping and falling down before the house of God” (10:1 ). If the pathos of Ezra’s prayer is insufficient, the congregation’s weeping models the appropriate response for the reader. Shecaniah’s rejoinder pierces the gloom of Ezra’s despondency, identifying hope for Israel in repentance, covenant renewal, and separation from the foreign women and children (10:3-4 ). As the narrative shifts from dialogue into narration and indirect discourse (10:5-9 ), its emotional grip on the reader diminishes in intensity. The final interchange between Ezra and the people, the only instance in the book where the people speak, brings Ezra, the leaders, and the congregation into a unified denunciation of the mixed marriages, ensuring the reader’s solidarity with the decision.

After the divorce commission has fulfilled its task, the names of the guilty file past one by one, and the story ends. The ending makes no attempt to tie the narrative together, and its suddenness denies the reader a sense of satisfactory completion. The abruptness, however, is a purposeful device intended to trigger a search for the principle that will bring the narrative to closure. As the reader reexamines the narrative’s earlier events in the light of the theological truths communicated in chapters 7-10 , two principles fill in the gap created earlier by glossing over the unresolved conflict in 4:8-23 . First, since God’s sovereignty encompasses even earth’s mightiest monarchs and His strength and wrath are against those who abandon Him, Artaxerxes is acting as a messenger of God’s judgment in stopping all wall building efforts. The disaster is caused, in fact, not so much by the Samarians as it is by the Jews’ unholiness. Their sin hindered the work on the walls.²²³ Second, since God’s hand is upon those who seek Him for good, resolution of the city wall problem hinges on their personal holiness. If they will seek the Lord and, like Ezra, set their hearts to do His commands, they will again experience God’s gracious goodness and blessing. These two principles tie together the past and present, providing a sufficient closure to the narrative while directing the reader’s mind toward the potential for a hope-filled future.

Conclusion

From the post-exilic history of Israel, Ezra presents a narrative in which holiness, human responsibility, and divine sovereignty operate in complex functional dynamics. Analysis of the narrative’s plot structure and composition clearly identifies the primary theological themes of the book: God’s sovereign power in the fulfillment of His word and in turning all opposition to His own ends; the magnitude of God’s gracious goodness; the importance of holiness and the consequences of impurity; and the relation between man’s holiness and God’s interaction with him. The book’s structural parallelism invites comparison between the plots, suggesting two main conclusions: first, the recent setback in building the city walls was a result of Israel’s failure to maintain holiness; and, second, God’s past dealings, illumined by an understanding of the principle governing His dealings with men, provide direction and hope for Israel’s future.

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¹⁶² Leon Golden and O. B. Hardison Jr., Aristotle’s Poetics: A Translation and Commentary for Students of Literature (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1968). All quotations are from this translation.

¹⁶³ Poetics, VI-VII. Aristotle’s conclusion continues to be a key tenet of traditional literary criticism: “Of all the aspects of narrative, plot [is] … the most essential.” Robert Scholes and Robert Kellogg , The Nature of Narrative (New York: Oxford University Press, 1966), 238; hereafter Scholes-Kellogg.

¹⁶⁴ Among modern treatments of plot that regard meaning as inherent in the text and not something conferred upon the text by the reader, the most valuable are Seymour Chatman , Story and Discourse: Narrative Structure in Fiction and Film (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University, 1978), 43-95; Scholes -Kellogg , “Plot in Narrative,” in The Nature of Narrative, 207-39; E. M. Forster , “The Plot,” in Aspects of the Novel (New York: Harcourt, Brace, and Company, 1927), 126-54; R. S. Crane , “The Concept of Plot and the Plot of ‘Tom Jones’,” in Critics and Criticism, ed. R. S. Crane (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1952), 616-47. Although the following authors do not share the previously mentioned assumption about the relation of text and meaning, their treatments of plot are nonetheless enlightening: J. P. Fokkelman , Reading Biblical Narrative: An Introductory Guide, trans. Ineke Smit (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 1999), 73-96; Kieran Egan , “What is a Plot?” New Literary History 9 (1978): 455-73; Jonathan Culler , “Defining Narrative Units,” in Style and Structure in Literature, ed. Roger Fowler (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1975), 123-139.

¹⁶⁵ Three lines of definitional focus are evident in the literature on plot. The first line focuses on what plot is. Philip Brooks states, “Plot is the principle of interconnectedness and intention which we cannot do without in moving through the discrete elements—incidents, episodes, actions—of a narrative.” Reading for the Plot: Design and Intention in Narrative (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1984), 5. Simpler and more helpful is Forster ’s conception: “A plot … is a narrative of events, the emphasis falling on causality” (130). The second line focuses on what plot does. For example, Shimon Bar-Efrat defines plot as the narrative
element that “serves to organize events in such a way as to arouse the reader’s interest and emotional involvement, while at the same time imbuing the events with meaning.” Narrative Art in the Bible, trans. Dorothea Shefer-Vanson, 2d ed. (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1989), 93. Kieran Egan goes even further, defining plot variously as “a set of rules that determines and sequences events to cause a determinate affective response” or as “a profound mental process which we use in making sense of [narrative] experience” (470). The third line synthesizes the first two approaches. M. H. Abrams defines plot as “the structure of [the narrative’s] actions, as these are ordered and rendered toward achieving particular emotional and artistic effects.” A Glossary of Literary Terms, 4th ed. (New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1981), 137. Most Biblical scholars have followed the synthetic approach, recognizing that plot’s function is as important as its constitution. Grant R. Osborne ’s treatment of plot reflects this synthesis: “The plot encompasses the united sequence of events that follow a cause-effect order; these build to a climax and involve the reader in the narrative world of the story.” The Hermeneutical Spiral (Downers Grove: Inter-Varsity Press, 1991), 158. Paul R. House ’s definition of plot provides another clear example of this synthesis: “Plot is a selected sequence of logically-caused events that solve a conflict by utilizing established literary conventions such as introduction, complication, crisis and denouement.” “Plot, Prophecy and Jeremiah,” JETS 36 (1993): 299.

¹⁶⁶ The primary contributions of later critics include recognition of more types of plots than Aristotle identifies (the tragic and the comic) and what the plot does in terms of reader-effects. For two key treatments of plot typology, see R. S. Crane , “The Concept of Plot,” 620-21; and Northrop Frye , Anatomy of Criticism (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1957). For a brief but valuable application of Aristotelian plot typology to Scripture, see Meir Sternberg , The Poetics of Biblical Narrative: Ideological Literature and the Drama of Reading (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1985), 172-73; hereafter Poetics of Biblical Narrative.

¹⁶⁷ This literary consensus has frayed some over the twentieth century as a growing number of authors and critics have dissented, even revolted outright, against the Aristotelian view of plot. Authors such as James Joyce, Thomas Mann, D. H. Lawrence, William Faulkner, and Alain Robbe-Grillet contend that an ordered arrangement of incidents is not a necessary component of narrative, for life itself, the object of narrative imitation, lacks rational order (Scholes -Kellogg , 5). Therefore, they purposely avoid connecting events into meaningful sequence and refuse to grant resolution to the conflicts they engender in their narratives. For example, in one of Robbe-Grillet’s novels “the same character is murdered four times over.” Frank Kermode , The Sense of an Ending (New York: Oxford University Press, 1967), 21. However, as Kermode has observed, the very existence of such attacks indicates that plot is essential to narrative. When absent, the conspicuousness of its absence substantiates its essentiality (ibid.). Plotless narrative is oxymoronic. For a similar analysis of “antistories,” see Chatman , Discourse and Narrative, 56-59.

¹⁶⁸ Osborne , 159: “[Plot] is the best indicator of the basic message(s) of a literary work.” As Chatman notes, “[Plot’s] function is to emphasize or de-emphasize certain story-events, to interpret some and to leave others to inference, to show or to tell, to comment or to remain silent, to focus on this or that aspect of an event or character” (43). The following works provide helpful discussions of plot in Scripture: Bar-Efrat , “The Plot,” in Narrative Art in the Bible, 93-140; Jean Louis Ska , “Plot,” in “Our Fathers Have Told Us”: Introduction to the Analysis of Hebrew Narratives (Rome: Pontifical Biblical Institute, 1990), 17-38; Leland Ryken , Words of Delight: A Literary Introduction to the Bible, 2d ed. (Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1992), 62-71; Richard L. Pratt , Jr., “Structure in Individual Episodes,” in He Gave Us Stories (Phillipsburg, NJ: Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Co., 1990), 179-204; Sternberg , Poetics of Biblical Narrative, 132-515 passim, esp. 172-176; House , “Plot, Prophecy and Jeremiah,” 297-307.

¹⁶⁹ Bar-Efrat , 93. For an excellent study of the relation between the order of a text and its meaning, see Menakhem Perry , “Literary Dynamics: How the Order of a Text Creates its Meanings,” Poetics Today 1-2 (1979): 35-64, 311-61.

¹⁷⁰ “A proper narrative event occurs when the narrative tempo slows down enough for us to discriminate a particular scene.” The use of a verb, then, does not constitute an event. There must be a close parity between “narrating time and time narrated.” Robert Alter , The Art of Biblical Narrative (New York: Basic Books, 1983), 63. Since plot consists of events, non-events such as the lists in chapters 1 , 2 , 8 , and 10 , and Ezra’s genealogy are excluded from this chapter’s analysis. For a helpful discussion on the definition of an event, see Frank J. Matera , “The Plot of Matthew’s Gospel,” CBQ 49 (1987): 233-53.

¹⁷¹ See Wesley Kort for an alternative, though less compelling, analysis of the components of plot. Story, Text, and Scripture: Literary Interests in Biblical Narrative (University Park: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 1988), 16.

¹⁷² The assertion that Ezra employs two distinct plots will be supported in the following section that analyzes plot structure in the book.

¹⁷³ “Plot structure” may include both the macro- and the micro-structural elements of plot. In this section, plot structure refers to the large-scale layout of the plot in terms of episodes, phases, and scenes. The logical relations between individual scenes or phases are discussed below in the section on plot composition.

¹⁷⁴ Aristotle clarifies what he means by these terms: “By a ‘beginning’ I mean that which is itself not, by necessity, after anything else but after which something naturally is or develops. By an ‘end’ I mean exactly the opposite: that which is naturally after something else, either necessarily or customarily, but after which there is nothing else. By a ‘middle’ I mean that which is itself after something else and which has something else after it” (Poetics, VII).

¹⁷⁵ Establishing the boundaries of the literary unit under consideration is the first step in any literary analysis, and the second step is to “recognize the structure of a composition and to discern the configuration of its component parts.” James Muilenburg , “Form Criticism and Beyond,” JBL 88 (1969): 8, 10.

¹⁷⁶ The tightness of this unity prompted H. G. M. Williamson ’s proposal that chapters 1-6 were written after chapters 7-10 “with the purpose of justifying the legitimacy of the Jerusalem temple and its cult after a possible split in its priesthood, the establishment of the Samaritan community, and the first moves to build a temple on Mount Gerizim.” “The Composition of Ezra i-vi,” JTS 34 (1983): 30. For a fuller statement of this view, see Williamson , Ezra, Nehemiah (Waco: Word Books, 1985), xxxv-xxxvi, 89.

¹⁷⁷ A “phase” is a group of logically or thematically related scenes, and a “scene” is an event or event sequence that is complete in itself. For a general discussion of these terms, see Gerald Prince , Dictionary of Narratology (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1987). Richard Pratt ’s treatment of plot structure provides numerous illustrations of these divisions in Biblical plots (He Gave Us Stories, 179-204).

¹⁷⁸ This pyramidal model originated with Gustav Freytag’s analysis of a five-act tragedy. Technique of the Drama, trans. Elias J. MacEwan, 3d ed. (Chicago: Scott, Foresman and Company, 1900), 114-15. Despite the fact that the original context of Freytag’s pyramid was a formal five-act structure in drama, Holman notes that “the fundamental dramatic structure seems impervious to change” even when applied to narrative (154). The analyses here draw heavily on Ronald A. Horton ’s helpful explanation of Freytag’s model in Companion to College English, 2d ed. (Greenville: Bob Jones University Press, 2000), 301. For a visual development and application of this model to Biblical narrative, see Tremper Longman III, Literary Approaches to Biblical Interpretation, vol. 3 of Foundations of Contemporary Interpretation, ed. Moiss Silva (Grand Rapids: Zondervan Publishing House, 1987), 150-52.

¹⁷⁹ Aristotle discusses the significance of the rise and fall of the protagonists’ fortune for plot structure in Poetics, X-XI. O. B. Hardison ’s commentary on these sections explains and expands Aristotle’s discussion quite helpfully (Aristotle’s Poetics, 151-67).

¹⁸⁰ “Fortune” as used in this chapter refers to the relative favorableness of a character’s circumstances and should not be construed to imply that those circumstances are regarded as resulting from random or impersonal forces.

¹⁸¹ Literary critics typically distinguish story and plot, though not always with those terms. A story is “any account of actions in a time sequence” or “the collection of things that happen in a work.” A plot, on the other hand, “takes a story, selects its materials in terms not of time but of causality; gives it a beginning, a middle, and an end; and makes it serve to elucidate character, express an idea, or incite to an action.” C. Hugh Holman and William Harmon , A Handbook to Literature, 6th ed. (New York: Macmillan Publishing Company, 1992), 456-57. Russian formalists make a related distinction between the fabula and sujet of a narrative. For an excellent discussion of the similarities and differences between story and plot and fabula and sujet, see Meir Sternberg , Expositional Modes and Temporal Ordering (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1978), 8-14. In simple terms one may say that the story of Ezra 1-6 or Ezra 7-10 is what happens, and the plot is the arrangement of what happens.

¹⁸² Both of the plots in Ezra begin with a decree from a Persian monarch. The first is “Go, Rebuild the temple,” and the second is “Go, Establish the law.” The subdivisions of each plot reflect these two-part commands. Chapters 1-2 and 7-8 both recount the “going” of exiles back to Judah. Chapters 3-6 narrate the rebuilding of the temple, and chapters 9-10 recount Ezra’s establishment of the law. In this way the Book of Ezra exhibits a parallelism between its plots. The thematic implications of this parallelism are developed below in the section on plot presentation and in Chapter Eight.

¹⁸³ Classic examples of this negative selection in Scripture include Moses’s omission of the fact that Enoch announced the second coming of the Lord with his holy angels to judge the world (Jude 14-15 ), and the omission of David’s sin with Bathsheba in 1 Chronicles 20 .

¹⁸⁴ J. P. Fokkelman enunciates well the significance of selection for understanding plot: “The series [of events] that we see [in a narrative] is a radical selection, and when we understand what it is that governs the writer’s choice, we will have found the main point of access into his linguistic work of art. Our understanding will increase considerably if we are able to retrieve the writer’s criteria for rejection (omission from the text) and selection (inclusion in the text). Every word that the writer allows to participate has a relation to his vision and themes” (76).

¹⁸⁵ For an insightful treatment of the use of omission in Biblical narrative, see Sternberg , Poetics of Biblical Narrative, 186-222; 259ff.

¹⁸⁶ In terms of omissions it is worthwhile to distinguish events that are omitted because they are irrelevant, and the omissions of relevant events. Sternberg terms them blanks and gaps, respectively (Poetics of Biblical Narrative, 235-38). There are large segments of history that are blanks in Ezra’s narrative. Examples include the events associated with the first Return and all the activity between the Returnees’ arrival and first assembly.

¹⁸⁷ Ezra also omits the fact that God stirred the spirits of Jeshua, Zerubbabel, and the people to respond to Haggai’s message (Hag. 1:14 ). The rationale for this omission, however, is difficult to discern because the record of God’s stirring seems to be consonant with the material Ezra does include in his narrative. Ezra’s omission (5:2 ) of the lay response to the prophets’ messages argues against Tamara Eskenazi ’s view that one of the primary functions of Ezra(-Nehemiah) is to shift “the focus from leaders to participating community, … [to make] the people as a whole … the significant actors in the book” (In An Age of Prose, 2). Exclusion of the very ones who are supposed to be center stage suggests that magnification of lay participation is not a motif in Ezra.

¹⁸⁸ It is fascinating to notice that Haggai omits any reference to the opposition the Jews faced from the Samarians. His prophetic indictment was trained wholly on Israel.

¹⁸⁹ Alternately, one could argue that Ezra did not want to duplicate the material already in Haggai. Regardless of the original reason, however, the effect is the same: the Returnees are seen to be the victims of a relentless campaign to hinder their efforts to rebuild God’s house.

¹⁹⁰ Seymour Chatman develops these helpful terms in his chapter on plot (Story and Discourse, 53-56). He defines a kernel as an event that “advances the plot by raising and satisfying questions. Kernels are narrative moments that give rise to cruxes in the direction taken by events. They are nodes or hinges in the structure, branching points which force a movement into one of two (or more) possible paths… . Kernels cannot be deleted without destroying the narrative logic” (53). This definition, however, leaves something to be desired, for as Jonathan Culler points out, almost any action involves a choice between alternatives (Style and Structure in Literature, 135-36). More helpful is Chatman ’s definition of satellite events. Satellite events are “minor plot events [which] … can be deleted without disturbing the logic of the plot, though [their] omission will … impoverish the narrative aesthetically… . Their function is that of filling in, elaborating, completing the kernel” (54).

¹⁹¹ One may distinguish a narrative’s “topic” from its “theme(s)” in this fashion: the topic of the narrative is that subject that is talked about most, whereas the theme(s) of a narrative is the theological message it is intended to communicate. Fabian Gudas, “Theme,” The New Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics, ed. Alex Preminger and T. V. F. Brogan (New York: MJF Books, 1993): 1281-82.

¹⁹² Each of the themes mentioned throughout this chapter receives a thorough treatment in the theological section of this dissertation. The object of this chapter is to point out the relationships between the literary features of Ezra and the theological message Ezra intends to communicate.

¹⁹³ Williamson has suggested that “the word of the Lord through Jeremiah” refers not to promises of return from exile, but to “a passage [Jer. 51:1-14 ] predicting that the Lord would stir up the spirit of Cyrus in such a way that he would order the rebuilding of the temple and the return of the exiles” (Ezra, Nehemiah, 9-10 ). The problem with Williamson ’s view is that Jeremiah 51 says nothing about the rebuilding of the temple. The focus of the entire passage is on the Lord’s destruction of Babylon through Cyrus in vengeance for the Babylonian destruction of the temple.

¹⁹⁴ Jeremiah 16:15-16 ; 23:3-4 , 7-8 ; 24:4-7 ; 29:10-14 ; 31:16-17 , 20-21 , 23-24 ; 32:6-15 , 37-38 ; 46:27-28 .

¹⁹⁵ Edwin Yamauchi , “Ezra-Nehemiah,” in The Expositor’s Bible Commentary, ed. Frank E. Gaebelein (Grand Rapids: Zondervan Publishing House, 1988), 4:623.

¹⁹⁶ Though Jeremiah makes no explicit mention of the rebuilding of the temple, it may be inferred from his prophecies that the city will be rebuilt (Jer. 30:18 ; 31:4 ) and that the temple vessels will be restored “to this place” (Jer. 27:22 ).

¹⁹⁷ The record of two incidents of opposition in the reigns of Xerxes and Artaxerxes (4:6 , 7 ) could be considered another satellite event. However, these incidents function more as connective tissue, providing thematic linkage between the initiation of the conflict between the Jews and the Samarians (4:1-5 ) and its most momentous incident (4:8-23 ). Their inclusion serves to create a sense that opposition was not an isolated phenomenon, but a recurring problem.

¹⁹⁸ Although lag II has the potential to be resultative (cf. Mal. 1:7 —iwnlag hmb “How have we defiled you?”), the nature of this event (a decision by the governor) argues for taking it as an estimative/declarative pu’al, that is, the priests had been esteemed to be or declared to be in a state of defilement. Ernst Jenni, Das hebrische Pi’el: Syntaktisch-semasiologische Untersuchung einer Verbalform im Alten Testament (Zurich: EVZ, 1968), 40-43, 241. Bruce K. Waltke and M. O’Connor use the more opaque expression ‘psychological/linguistic’ factitive.” An Introduction to Biblical Hebrew Syntax (Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 1990), 399-403.

¹⁹⁹ The Tirshathah or governor, probably Sheshbazzar, ruled that these unregistered priests could not eat of “the most holy things” (<yvdqh vdqm; cf. Lev. 2:3 ). In Numbers 18:9-22 God gives the Levites “from the most holy things” all the grain offerings, sin offerings, guilt offerings, wave offerings, first fruits and tithes of the people as their sustenance. Therefore, defilement from the priesthood and restriction from eating the most holy things meant these men could not function as priests. They were entirely excluded from that ministry and its provisions (Williamson , 37). Keil offers an alternate, though less compelling, conclusion: “The prohibition to eat of the most holy things … excludes from specific priestly acts: without, however, denying a general inclusion among the priestly order, or abolishing a claim to the priestly revenues, so far as these were not directly connected with priestly function” (27).

²⁰⁰ For a helpful analysis of the quantity of the gifts given in Ezra, Nehemiah, and 1 Esdras, see Derek Kidner , Ezra and Nehemiah (Downers Grove: Inter-Varsity Press, 1979), 44.

²⁰¹ Some have explained the celebration as a conscious harking back to the celebrations of Hezekiah (2 Chron. 30 ) and Josiah (2 Kings 23 ). See, for example, Jacob M. Myers , Ezra-Nehemiah, vol. 14 of The Anchor Bible (Garden City: Doubleday & Company, Inc., 1965), 53-54; and Mervin Breneman , Ezra, Nehemiah, Esther, vol. 10 of The New American Commentary (Nashville: Broadman & Holman Publishers, 1993), 121. This is a weak explanation, for Passover, as an annual feast, would have been celebrated anyway. The text does not imply that this was the first Passover that was celebrated since the Return, a fact that would likely have been mentioned if it were.

²⁰² The phrase “and all who had separated themselves unto them from the uncleanness of the nations of the land to seek Yahweh the God of Israel” (6:21 ) most likely refers to proselytes who had converted to Judaistic monotheism. This phrase shows the wideness of true holiness; it knows no racial or ethnic boundaries. All who will separate themselves unto the Lord may participate with His people in celebrating redemption. Among the commentators who take this phrase to refer to proselytes are Williamson , 85; Kidner , 60; Myers , 52; George Rawlinson , Ezra, vol. 7 of The Pulpit Commentary, ed. H. D. M. Spence and Joseph S. Exell (New York: Funk & Wagnalls Co., n.d.; reprint, Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1950), 88; Joseph Blenkinsopp , Ezra-Nehemiah, The Old Testament Library (Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1988), 133; and F. C. Fensham , The Books of Ezra and Nehemiah, The New International Commentary on the Old Testament, ed. R. K. Harrison (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1982), 96.

²⁰³ Ezra 8-10 records the completion of this task. Specifically, Ezra’s search for Levites (8:15-20 ) reflects his commission to improve the welfare of Judah and Jerusalem. The welfare of God’s people is a function of their relationship with Him, and the Levites were God’s appointed mediators between Himself and the people. Their services, therefore, were indispensable to Ezra’s mission.

²⁰⁴ Artaxerxes here commands not Ezra alone, but all the judges and magistrates he will appoint. This is indicated by the use of the second masculine plural verb form /wudwht in 7:25 . LXX, Aquila, and the Syriac have a singular rather than a plural verb here; however, BHS lists no variation among the Hebrew manuscripts.

²⁰⁵ Blenkinsopp lists five components to the decree, but he groups related instructions together. For example, he combines 7:14 and 7:25-26 into one component (146).

²⁰⁶ Tasks four and six, the only tasks whose completion is not recorded, are general and diffuse in contrast to the other seven tasks. It is not surprising, therefore, that Ezra omits their completion.

²⁰⁷ Chapter Four will discuss Ezra’s use of characterization in the development of his message. Clearly, these events play a large role in establishing Ezra’s character and implicitly making him a model of godliness for Israel.

²⁰⁸ Chapter Seven develops the ramifications of this theme. In short, Ezra is teaching his audience that their behavior in conjunction with God’s unchanging character co-determines how He interacts with them.

²⁰⁹ Bar-Efrat explains the significance of sequence in a story: each event in a story “receives its significance from its position and role in the system as a whole… . The plot serves to organize [those] events in such a way as to arouse the reader’s interest and emotional involvement, while at the same time imbuing them with meaning” (93).

²¹⁰ Bar-Efrat notes three types of logical relationships between scenes: “cause and effect, parallelism, and contrast” (93). Other potential relationships include paratactic coordination and synecdochic relations where new material specifies the preceding material, includes it, or uses it for generalization (Perry , “Literary Dynamics,” 50).

²¹¹ “Narrative coherence normally consists of a cause-effect chain of events in which one thing produces the next, or in some way grows out of an earlier event. The impact of a story depends on the presence of such coherence.” Ryken , Words of Delight, 70.

²¹² The piel form of jmc (<j*M=c!) in this verse is causative. This need not be taken as direct causation, that is, as meaning that God was producing joy in hearts where there was none or would have been none. Israel’s joy was a result of indirect causation in which God had done those things at which His people naturally rejoice.

²¹³ Though the precise vocabulary is somewhat different, the reader could hardly fail to miss the allusion to Proverbs 21:1: “As channels of water, the heart of the king is in the hand of Yahweh: wherever He desires, He turns it.”

²¹⁴ In the context of presentational modes, “scene” refers not to a block of text that is a subset of an episode, but rather to a method of presenting plot events and characters. The scene-summary distinction may also be expressed as “showing vs. telling” (Sternberg , Poetics of Biblical Narrative, 103, 122). “Telling” relates events in summary form, compressing time and action, whereas “showing” displays events with a relative fullness of action so that narration time approximates real time. For example, Ezra 7 and Nehemiah 1 both recount a request to Artaxerxes for a grant. Ezra summarizes the event with an indirect comment: “… and the king gave to him, according to the hand of his God upon him, all his request” (Ezra 7:6 ). Nehemiah, on the other hand, dramatizes his request with a verbatim account of his dialogue with Artaxerxes that runs nine verses (Neh. 2:1-8 ). While summary and scene differ markedly in this example, these presentational modes do not have entirely distinct vocabularies, syntactical constructions, or narrative conventions. As a result, scene and summary frequently shade into one another, making it difficult to determine the mode of a given segment of text (Bar-Efrat , 34). Two other presentational modes noted by J. Licht are “description and comment”; however, because neither of these modes involves the narration of events, they will be treated in the following chapter on point of view. Storytelling in the Bible (Jerusalem: The Magnes Press, 1978), 29.

²¹⁵ “Scenic representation creates the illusion of looking at the event itself, , … [and] increases the reader’s ability to be absorbed in the world displayed and to share in what happens” (Bar-Efrat , 34-35). As a result, “an event dramatized into a scene will assume greater importance than one telescoped into a summary” (Sternberg , 236).

²¹⁶ Sternberg , Expositional Modes, 24-26. Robert Alter observes that “third-person narration is frequently only a bridge between much large units of direct speech” (65). The functions of this summary narration, according to Alter , are (1) “the conveying of actions essential to the unfolding of the plot … , (2) the communication of data ancillary to the plot … , [and] (3) the verbatim mirroring, confirming, subverting, or focusing in narration of statements made in direct discourse by the characters …” (77). Summary narration in Ezra fulfills the first two of Alter ’s functions, but the third is accomplished by narratorial comment, which is treated in chapter four.

²¹⁷ Bar-Efrat , 147-49.

²¹⁸ Ezra 9:3-5 is perhaps the one clear exception to this rule. Ezra uses six action verbs as he pictures the scene of his distress at the Israelites’ unfaithfulness: “I tore my clothes … I made bare from the hair of my head … I sat appalled … I arose … I knelt upon my knees … and I spread my palms to Yahweh.” On the whole, however, the scenes in Ezra are predominantly driven by written discourse or dialogue.

²¹⁹ To avoid awkward repetition, the term “discourse,” without qualification, will serve to denote the various forms of dialogue and written communication Ezra uses throughout his book. Discourse comprises 10% of Ezra 1-2 (77 of 783 words), 51% of Ezra 3-6 (707 of 1144 words), 35% of Ezra 7-8 (322 of 907 words) and 49% of Ezra 9-10 (374 of 758 words). Ezra’s repertoire is not limited to direct speech (4:2-3 ; 5:3-4 ; 8:22 , 28-29 ; 9:1-2 ; 10:2-5 , 11-14 ) and written materials (1:2-4 ; 4:9-16 , 12-22 ; 7:12-26 ). He also uses indirect discourse (2:63 ), dialogue embedded in an epistolary framework (5:8-17 ), a decree quoted in a letter (6:3-12 ), and Scripture paraphrased in prayer (9:6-15 ).

²²⁰ Bar-Efrat , 147: “Conversations fulfil two principal functions in Biblical narrative. On the one hand they serve as a vehicle for the development of the plot … . On the other hand, conversations serve to illuminate the human aspect, revealing such psychological features as motives and intentions, points of view and approaches, attitudes and reactions.” As Adele Berlin notes, dialogue also yields much of the “evaluative material” in a narrative. Poetics and Biblical Interpretation (Sheffield: Almond Press, 1983; reprint, Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 1994), 106. Robert Alter , who was among the first to recognize the primacy of dialogue in Biblical narrative, contends that “the Biblical writers … are often less concerned with actions in themselves than with how individual character responds to actions or produces them; and direct speech is made the chief instrument of revealing the varied and at times nuanced relations of the personages to the actions in which they are implicated” (66). Rhetorically, dialogue grants immediacy to a narrative, drawing the reader into the circle of conversation and within range of the narrative’s emotional dynamics, ultimately aligning the reader in sympathetic identification with some side of the action. Written discourse, though not as powerful as dialogue, has many of the same rhetorical effects. For a fascinating analysis of the rhetorical use of dialogue in Biblical narrative, see Sternberg ’s chapter, “The Art of Persuasion” (Poetics of Biblical Narrative, 441-481).

²²¹ “In any given narrative event, and especially, at the beginning of any new story, the point at which dialogue first emerges will be worthy of special attention, and in most instances, the initial words spoken by a personage will be revelatory, perhaps more in manner than in matter, constituting an important moment in the exposition of character” (Alter , 74). The first instance of true dialogue in Ezra (4:2-3 ) initially appears to reveal rank Jewish prejudice against the people of the land. Closer attention to Ezra’s thematic development and a knowledge of religious practices of the people of the land (2 Kings 17:24-41 ), however, lead one to the conclusion that the Jews’ refusal was, in fact, a consequence of their passion for holiness.

²²² The irony of this narrative paradox is an inherent function of dialogue. As Sternberg has discerned, “Literary dialogue entails indirection by its very form, because in staging it the artist communicates with the audience through the communication held among his speaking characters … . As scriptwriter and stage manager rolled into one, even if he speaks in voices other than his own, he still speaks through voices and words and obliquities of his own devising. Hence every piece of dialogue enacts no less than a double message: two levels of communication, two pairs of communicators, each having its peculiar sphere, norms, horizons, intentions, rhetoric, but with the artistic one always overlaid or mediated by the lifelike.” “Double Cave, Double Talk: The Indirections of Biblical Dialogue,” in “Not In Heaven”, ed. Jason P. Rosenblatt and Joseph C. Sitterson, Jr. (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1991), 28. Ezra pushes this duality of dialogue to its outer limits by staging himself as a character in dialogue with his characters.

²²³ A more subtle inference which Ezra’s plot may suggest is that even the failure to build the temple may be traced to Israel’s sinfulness. The opposition of the people of the land was a hindrance, but their failure to fulfill God’s purpose was a function of their sinfulness. Opposition is normal; failure is a sign of sin in one form or another.