Ezra 7:21

The king's letter of authorization empowered Ezra to act. It defined the aim of his mission. And through the king's treasurers beyond the river, it supplied the means to carry out his service in setting the house of Jehovah in order.

The king issued a decree to all the treasurers on Israel's side of the River Euphrates. They were to give Ezra whatever he might need. The only limits were 100 talents of silver, 100 cors of wheat, and 100 baths each of wine and oil — with no limit to the salt (vv. 21-22).

More than this, the king ruled that no one could lawfully impose tax, tribute or custom on any of the priests, Levites, singers, gatekeepers, temple servants or servants of the house of God (v. 24). Rehum and Shimshai had once urged an earlier Artaxerxes to stop the Jews from building, claiming that the Jews would not pay tax, tribute or custom (ch. 4:9-13). Now the king was ready to give up these payments for the heads of Israel, so that Judah would prosper.

We cannot fail to notice that this Gentile king refers everything to the will of God — or more precisely, that he directs everything to be ordered in subjection to that will. Gentile though he was, he almost seems to be in full fellowship with Ezra's aim. And from his confession of Jehovah as the God of heaven (vv. 21, 23), it is not impossible that grace had visited his heart.

They had a certain fear of God, but without living faith. Like his grandfather Darius, Artaxerxes acknowledged the God of heaven… but in his decree he goes further. He acknowledges the God of Ezra (v. 14), the God of Israel (v. 15), and the God of Jerusalem (v. 19). He also acknowledges his responsibility toward this God whose wrath is to be feared (v. 23).

God had prepared him beforehand, as a special gift, to be the leader of His people. But that was not enough to qualify him for his ministry: "Ezra had directed his heart to seek the law of Jehovah, and to do it" (v. 10). He prepared his heart to seek it first, and then to do it. For his own part, he did not separate practice from knowledge… The precepts of the Word he fed on soaked through his daily life. Only after this did he set his heart "to teach in Israel statutes and ordinances."

He traced everything up to God. He lost sight of himself, and to his soul God was all and in all. It was not his asking (v. 6) that moved the king to act; it was God who put the thing into the king's heart. It was not Ezra's influence that commended him to the king and his princes; it was God who extended mercy to him in their presence. It was not by his own power that he gathered the chief men to go up with him; it was God who strengthened him with His own hand upon him.

The silver and gold and other gifts out of the treasuries would doubtless increase the natural beauty of the house being built. But we venture to think that the teaching of the law, which Ezra planned to do, would produce a piety in the people, if they received it. And piety adorns any house more than any amount of silver and gold can.