Was I Ever Right!

I was right when I wrote in my first blog post about Ezra that "I'm probably just not an experienced enough Bible scholar yet to understand the intricacies of this magnificent work of historical documentary!" Haha! (Not that I am now . . . but the book has drastically risen on my interest level!)

It's day number 5 (chapter 5 as well) and Ezra has turned around. But not just in chapter 5 . . . this turnaround is retrospective of the previous 4 chapters I've read. Especially the rather "dry" chapter no. 1.

Let me see if I can explain it well. ; )

In chapter 4 the enemies sent a letter to the king basically tattling about what the Israelite's were doing. The same thing happened again in chapter 5. First, however, the enemies (Tattenai and Shethar-Boznai) tried to stop the progress but were unable so they sent the a letter to King Darius in hopes that just as in the past (chapter 4) they could get a king to stop the progress. (Just so you know these weren't the same letter writers from chapter 4.)

The King's response comes tomorrow so I'm not sure what's going to happen . . . but I did find some other interesting things out. ; )

This whole time in Ezra, Ezra hasn't shown up yet. This is probably why I haven't found the book too exhilarating when compared with Nehemiah. In Nehemiah, he was in the picture from the very beginning . . . so there was no waiting for the main character to arrive.

This whole time I'm thinking, this is why the first GYC Eboard mentions wanting to be like Nehemiah in their mission statement and not Ezra! haha.

However, now in chapter 5 of Ezra I realize that the first main character of this book might not be the namesake, but rather a guy named Sheshbazzar, who wasn't just any guy, but a prince of Judah who was in Persia. He was the guy that King Cyrus, sent back with the temple articles which Nebuchadnezzar had confiscated. From chapter 1 you would think that he was the guy in charge of the whole mission back to Jerusalem. But then >BAM< he's not mentioned again, and in chapter 2 this guy Zerubbabel is named as the one people are leaving Persia with. I totally missed all this the first time around . . . I was too board reading all the names of the people leaving! Bible names . . . yeah. (I didn't even blog that day.)

So anyway . . . I get to chapter 5, still plodding along finding little things here and there that are interesting when I read, " . . . King Cyrus issued a decree to build this house of God. Also, the gold and silver articles . . . were given to one named Sheshbazzar, whom he [Cyrus] had made governor" 5:13, 14.

Not overly thrilling, but being one that likes finding out the meaning of names (with my amazing little concordance that I bought at the ABC for 5 cents during the campmeeting sidewalk sale one year), I looked it up . . . but there was NO meaning! Just the reference to where I could find it in the Bible! So I tried Google. This is where I realized I'd read the name at the beginning of the book (they also had references listed) and that it might be a synonym for Zerubbabel. Other sources stated that Zerubbabel might also be a relative of Sheshbazzar and that Sheshbazzar started the work but Zerubbabel finished it. Whatever the case, I was intrigued.

But it doesn't end there.Through checking out the different references for Zerubbabel, discovered that the whole book of Haggai is the prophesy for this event—the building of the temple by Zerubbabel. So . . . that might be my next read.

I think that's it for now . . . and Sheshbazzar (according to birthvillage.com) means: joy in tribulation; joy of the vintage. And according to my concordance, Zerubbable means: scattered in Babylon.

I'll see tomorrow how King Darius responded to those tattle tales! haha. ; )