Ezra 9:13

5-15 The sacrifice, especially the evening sacrifice, was a type of the blessed Lamb of God, who in the evening of the world, was to take away sin by the sacrifice of himself. Ezra's address is a penitent confession of sin, the sin of his people. But let this be the comfort of true penitents, that though their sins reach to the heavens, God's mercy is in the heavens. Ezra, speaking of sin, speaks as one much ashamed. Holy shame is as necessary in true repentance as holy sorrow. Ezra speaks as much amazed. The discoveries of guilt cause amazement; the more we think of sin, the worse it looks. Say, God be merciful to me sinner. Ezra speaks as one much afraid. There is not a surer or saddler presage of ruin, than turning to sin, after great judgments, and great deliverances. Every one in the church of God, has to wonder that he has not wearied out the Lord's patience, and brought destructi...

Verse 13. _HAST PUNISHED US LESS THAN OUR INIQUITIES_] Great, numerous, and oppressive as our calamities have been, yet merely as temporal punishments, they have been much less than our provocations have deserved....

DELIVERANCE - Or, “remnant,” as in Ezra 9:8....

§ 2. REFORMATION OF RELIGION ACCOMPLISHED BY EZRA AT JERUSALEM. EXPOSITION IN the interval between Zerubbabel's rule and the coming of Ezra from Babylon with a special commission appointing him governor of Judaea, the Jews seem to have been left without any strong controlling authority. The civil administration devolved upon a certain number of chiefs or "princes," who maintained order in Jerusalem, collected and remitted the tribute due to the Persian crown, and held courts to decide all causes, criminal and civil, in which only Jews were concerned. Tranquillity and order were sufficiently maintained in this way; but the governing power was weak, and in matters outside the range of the civil and criminal law men did pretty nearly "as it seemed good in their own eyes." During this interval of governmenta

AND AFTER ALL THAT IS COME UPON US FOR OUR EVIL DEEDS, AND FOR OUR GREAT TRESPASS,.... As famine, sword, pestilence, and captivity, for their idolatries and other heinous sins: SEEING THAT OUR GOD HAST PUNISHED US LESS THAN OUR INIQUITIES DESERVE; for they deserved eternal punishment, whereas it was temporal punishment that was inflicted, and this moderate, and now stopped; the sense is, according to Aben Ezra, "thou hast refrained from writing some of our sins in the book of remembrance, and thou hast let them down below in the earth, according to the sense of thou wilt cast all their sins into the depths of the sea;'' but Jarchi better, "thou hast refrained thyself from exacting of us all our sins, and hast exacted of us beneath our sins (or less than they deserve), and hast not taken vengeance on us according to all our sins:'' AND HAST GIVEN US SUCH DELIVERANCE AS THIS; from cap...

CHAPTER 9 _ 1. Ezra's astonishment and grief (Ezra 9:1)_ 2. Ezra's confession and prayer (Ezra 9:5) Ezra 9:1. When all these things had been done (that are related in chapter 8:33-36) Ezra was confronted by a very sad condition of the people, and even the priests and the Levites. The princes (civil leaders) came to Ezra and told him that the demanded separation according to the law, between God's people and the Canaanitish inhabitants of the land, had not been obeyed. The people had taken of their daughters for themselves and of their sons “so that the holy seed have mingled themselves with the people of the lands; yea the hand of the princes and rulers hath been first in this trespass.” Not alone had they intermarried, b

EZRA'S CONFESSION. Ezra 9:5. at the evening Oblation: therefore in the presence of the assembled worshippers. Ezra 9:7. from the days of our fathers: _i.e._ from the times of the patriarchs onwards. Ezra 9:8. a nail in his holy place: lit. - a tent-peg in, etc.; the rendering in the Greek Ezra is to be preferred, viz.: a root and a name in the place of thy sanctuary. IN OUR BONDAGE: the expression is a strong one; the Jews, though dependents of the Persian king, were not in servitude in the sense that their fathers had been in Egypt. Ezra 9:9. a wall: lit. a fence; _cf._...

EVIL. Heb, _ra'a'._ App-44. SUCH DELIVERANCE: or, such. reserved survival....

Ezra's Confession 5. _And at the evening sacrifice_ R.V. AND AT THE EVENING OBLATION, i.e. at the time of its being offered. _I arose up from my heaviness_ R.V. I AROSE UP FROM MY HUMILIATION. Marg. _fasting_. The Hebrew word -Taanith" occurs only here in the O.T.: in later Hebrew it became the accepted for religious fasting. This passage favours the original application to general humiliation rather than to abstinence from food. So the LXX. ταπείωσις. _and having rent my garment and my mantle_ R.V. EVEN WITH MY GARMENT AND MY MANTLE RENT; AND. There is no need to render as the A.V. and most commentators, as if Ezra for a second time rent his clothes. He calls attention to the fact that in the presence of the assembled people he stood before them with these evident signs of his grief and dismay, and thus by a mute appeal united them with him in his act of prayer. fell upon my knees, a...

DISCOURSE: 438 USE OF GOD’S DIVERSIFIED DISPENSATIONS Ezra 9:13. _After all that is come upon us for our evil deeds, and for our great trespass, seeing that thou our God hast punished us less than our iniquities deserve, and hast given us such deliverance as this; should we again break thy commandments?_ THE intention of God in all his dispensations, whether of providence or of grace, is to deter men from sin: and it becomes all his people to co-operate with him in this important work. Rulers in particular are invested with power by God himself for this very end: nor do they ever appear to more advantage than when they exert themselves to the uttermost in the support of God’s authority, and in promoting the best interests of those over whom they are placed. Ezra, perhaps about eighty years after the return of the Jews from Babylon, was permitted by Artaxerxes king of Persi