Ezra’s Exiles

Darius I introduced the gold daric into his kingdom during the latter half of the sixth century BCE. At least four versions of the coin were minted. The type II version of the coin depicted here reveals the image of a bearded king, running with his knees bent. His raised left-hand clasps a bow, and his right hand wields a spear, with a quiver of arrows tucked between his arm and body. Much of the detail, impressively, remains visible in these tiny masterpieces: the ornamented crown, arrows from the quiver, together with the king’s beard and eye. The intricacy of the coin’s design complements its monetary value. Weighing approximately 8.5 grams, the coins were minted with a high percentage of gold (95%).

Coins such as these contributed to the inordinate wealth with which the Israelites returned from captivity. After the Persians defeated the Babylonians in 539 BCE, the Persian king, Cyrus the Great, permitted all nations exiled by the Babylonian empire to return to their homelands. Then in 458 BCE, Ezra led a group of Israelites from Babylon to the district of Judah. Ezra 7 repeatedly reminds readers of the wealth with which the returnees left the land of their captors. Specifically, the phrase ‘silver and gold’ repeats in verses 15, 16, and 18, and further references to wealth appear in verse 22: ‘100 talents of silver, 100 cors of wheat, 100 baths of wine, 100 baths of oil’. Additionally, the king offers ‘all the silver and gold which you will find in the whole province of Babylon’ (v.16).

Artaxerxes I, king of Persia, primarily offered such wealth to procure the blessing of Israel’s God, ‘so that there will not be wrath against the kingdom of the king and his sons’ (v.23). From a biblical perspective, however, emphasizing the wealth with which Israel returned to Judah reinforces the faithfulness of God’s promise to restore his people to their land: ‘Your sons shall come from afar … the wealth of the nations shall come to you’ (Isaiah 60:4–5).

References

Alram, M. 1994. ‘Daric’, in Encyclopaedia Iranica, VII/1, ed. by E. Yarshater (Costa Mesa, California: Mazda), pp. 36–40

Hill, A. and J. Walton. 2009. A Survey of the Old Testament, 3rd edn (Grand Rapids: Zondervan), pp. 335–36

In this work, the last of sixty painted panels in a series, Jacob Lawrence captures a scene of faceless migrants from the American South. They are crowded on a railway platform waiting for the next train north, hoping for an escape from oppressive segregation. The partial representation of individuals at the left and right margins of the painting intimate a larger group of travellers than those captured within the frame. The migrants’ vividly coloured clothes dotted against the dull brown background serve as a metaphor of bright hope against the dismal background of the life they are seeking to escape in the South. Within the panel, figures both young and old are crowded onto the platform, along with items of luggage of various sizes.

Like Lawrence’s migrants, a sizeable community led by Ezra embarked on a life-changing trek from Babylon to Judah. They too journeyed with young and old alike, and all their worldly possessions. For the travellers in the mid-1900s, however, the journey was relatively quick and straightforward when compared with the migration led by Ezra.

Despite Ezra 7’s succinct account, Ezra and his company experienced all the hardships of travelling on foot. Without the luxury of a train, they were compelled to journey 900 miles across the Fertile Crescent, which would have taken approximately four months. Furthermore, because of the substantial quantities of silver and gold in their possession, they faced the constant threat of attack from thieves and robbers.

Both Ezra’s community and the migrants from the South in Lawrence’s day were relentlessly driven by a sense of hope, a hope that enabled them to overcome the hardships and risks of travel and prepare them for an uncertain future. For Ezra’s community, however, the hope represented more than just a desire for material prosperity. Their motivation was additionally inspired by spiritual goals. When the Jews returned to the land of Israel, they could reconnect with their past by once again living in the land that God promised to their forefathers. Furthermore, Artaxerxes empowered them to rebuild the temple of Solomon and re-establish worship in the place where God placed his name.

Lawrence’s immigrants remained less certain of where they would settle.

References

Roberts, J. 2015. ‘The Migration Series: Panels 1–60’, in Jacob Lawrence: The Migration Series, ed. by L. Dickerman and E. Smithgall (New York: Museum of Modern Art), pp. 12–45, 166

Yamauchi, E. 2009. ‘Ezra and Nehemiah’, in The Illustrated Bible Background Commentary of the Old Testament, Vol. 3, ed. by J. Walton (Grand Rapids: Zondervan), p. 339

In this wall painting—one of many uncovered from the western wall of the Dura Europos synagogue—the viewer is faced with a single, full-frontal figure. Thought to be Ezra, he is dressed in chiton and himation, and reads from an unfurled Torah scroll. The unusually large scroll—depicted occupying the full width of the picture plane—gives it particular prominence in the composition, subordinating the figure and emphasizing the scroll’s importance and sacred nature.

The work is located to the upper right of a small Torah shrine cut into the wall to house the synagogue’s Torah scroll. Appropriately, we find the Torah ark-chest depicted at the bottom left of the mural, adjacent to the shrine, covered with a rust-coloured cloth.

The work highlights two critical aspects of sacred scrolls in the days of Ezra. First, they were publicly read; second, they were carefully preserved, both in scroll boxes, as seen here, and in written reproduction.

Ezra 7:6 describes Ezra as ‘a scribe, skilled in the law of Moses that the Lord, the God of Israel, had given’. Scribes were skilled at reading and writing texts of various kinds and were generally responsible for writing legal documents during the fifth century BCE. What distinguishes Ezra, however, is his ‘skill in the law of Moses’. Ezra, undoubtedly, bore responsibility for writing, copying, preserving and transmitting Israel’s sacred scrolls (like the one depicted here), and later Jewish traditions ascribe the very rewriting of the Old Testament to Ezra (4 Ezra 14).

Additionally, however, being a scribe generated a high social standing, both in the eyes of the Persian court and among the remnant of Israel. This high standing, together with knowledge of the Law, enabled him to serve as an effective teacher of that Law. Emphasizing his role as a teacher, Ezra 7:10 states that:

Ezra had set his heart to study the law of the Lord, and to do it, and to teach his statutes and rules in Israel.

References

Charlesworth, J. 1983. The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha, Vol. 1 (Peabody: Hendrickson), pp. 553–55

Kraeling, C. 1979. The Synagogue [The Excavations at Dura-Europos Conducted by Yale University and the French Academy of Inscriptions and Letters: Final Report VIII, Part I] (New Haven: Yale University Press), pp. 232–39

Lee Levine, L. 2012. Visual Judaism in Late Antiquity: Historical Contexts of Jewish Art (New Haven: Yale University Press), p. 144

Saldarini, A. 2008. ‘Scribes’, in The Anchor Yale Bible Dictionary, ed. by D. Freedman (New York: Doubleday), pp. 1012–16