up to 100 talents of silver, 100 cors of wheat, 100 baths of wine, 100 baths of oil, and salt without prescribing how much.
Artaxerxes has just told his treasurers west of the Euphrates to give Ezra whatever he asks for the temple. Now he sets the ceiling. Silver, wheat, wine and oil are each capped at a hundred. Salt gets no figure at all. Why does a Persian king pay for the worship of Israel's God? Why these four goods? And why is salt the one item left uncounted?
A blank cheque, with limits
This verse is the fine print of a royal order:
Leslie M. GrantThe king instructed that the king's treasury would supply anything more the temple needed for its furnishing (v. 20). A decree backed this up. It went to all the treasurers on Israel's side of the River Euphrates, telling them to give Ezra whatever he might need. It limited only the silver, to 100 talents, the wheat to 100 cors, and the wine and oil to 100 baths each. There was no limit to the salt (vv. 21-22).
The funding was not a private favour. The empire's own system carried it:
Edward DennettThe king gave Ezra a letter of authorization. It empowered him to act. It defined the object of his mission. And through the king's treasurers beyond the river, it provided the means for carrying out his service in the ordering of the house of Jehovah.
Why wheat, wine, oil and salt
The list is not a supply of food for Ezra's party. These are the raw materials of Israel's sacrifices. An earlier Persian decree had already named the same four goods. One writer matches each item to its offering:
Arno Clemens GaebeleinThe material mentioned was for the sacrifices and offerings. Young bulls, rams and lambs for the burnt offerings. Wheat, oil and salt for the meal offering, and wine for the drink offering. All these things were to be given to the priests without fail day by day.
So the hundred cors and baths are altar supplies. A foreign treasury now kept the fire burning in Jerusalem.
Salt without a figure
This gap is not unique to Artaxerxes' order:
"Salt without prescribing how much" (Ezra 7:22).
What salt stood for explains the missing number:
Numerical Bible NotesSalt meant the very opposite of leaven. It was the symbol of what opposes corruption. So it was the type of what endures, and of the holiness that the "covenant of God" implies. A holy God can only go on with what is holy, and therefore salt is the "salt of His covenant." So it was never to be missing from any offering.
Silver can be counted. Holiness cannot.
A pagan king who defers to God's will
The letter does more than release supplies:
Edward DennettYou cannot fail to notice that this Gentile king refers everything to the will of God. To say it more exactly, he directs that everything be ordered in subjection to that will. Gentile though he was, he almost seems to be in full fellowship with the aim of Ezra. And from the confession of Jehovah as the God of heaven (vv. 21, 23), it is not impossible that grace had visited his heart. … The lesson lies on the surface: God is sovereign in His choice of instruments, and none can stay His hand. In this chapter "Artaxerxes, king of kings" and "Ezra the priest, a scribe of the law of God" are yoked together to carry out God's thoughts for His people and for His house in Jerusalem.
Commentators differ on how far to press this. One reads the decree as a sign of God's hidden control rather than of the king's faith:
F. B. HoleWe cannot help being struck by the wonderful work of God in the mind of a pagan king, which led him to grant such powers.
Where Ezra put the credit
Ezra had asked the king for this (v. 6). Yet in his own account, the credit goes elsewhere:
Edward DennettSo it was not his own asking (v. 6) that led 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 in his own power that he assembled the chief men to go up with him. It was God who strengthened him with His own hand upon him.
Summary
- Heart — It starts with God working in a king's mind. That is why the empire's own treasurers paid for the worship of Israel's God.
- Gift — The hundred talents, cors and baths were not travel money. They were altar material: wheat, oil and salt for the meal offering, wine for the drink offering.
- Measure — The king put a number on the silver, wheat, wine and oil. Only these carried a ceiling.
- Salt — Only salt went uncapped, and Scripture never fixes its amount anywhere. It stands for what resists corruption and endures, and it was never to be missing from any offering.
- Praise — Ezra received it all as God's doing, not his own: he had asked the king, but he thanked God.