saying: “O my God, I am ashamed and blush to lift my face to you, my God, for our iniquities have risen higher than our heads, and our guilt has mounted up to the heavens.
The people who came back from exile have married into the surrounding nations, and the priests and leaders led the way. Ezra sat stunned until the evening sacrifice, then prayed — not asking for anything, but in shame, saying "our" for a sin that was not his.
Standing among the guilty
Ezra was not one of the offenders. Yet he refuses to stand apart from them. One writer sees in that refusal the very thing that made him fit to plead for the nation.
Edward DennettHe does not separate himself, even in spirit, from those who had sinned. He and they — indeed, all the people — are one before God, counted together as one people. God Himself saw it this way. When Achan sinned, He said to Joshua, "Israel has sinned." Ezra understood this, and that is what qualified him to become an intercessor for the people with God. Unless we grasp our oneness with God's people — that their sin and sorrow are our sin and sorrow — we cannot truly carry them on our hearts before the Lord in their time of need.
Confession, not accusation
A faithful man can meet failure another way: by telling God it is someone else's fault. Commentators contrast Ezra with Elijah, who told God how unfaithful Israel had been while he alone stayed true.
Leslie M. GrantInstead of this, Ezra prayed as though he was just as guilty as the rest of Israel in this sad mixing of the Jews with the nations. He confessed the sin of all as though it had been his own, though he was not personally involved in it. He saw this: Israel had sinned, and he was part of Israel. As God's priest, he was eating the sin offering (Lev. 6:25-26). That means feeling before God how serious Israel's sin was, and the priest was to count himself involved in it.
The same writer sees this most clearly in words the Lord Jesus speaks in Psalm 69:5.
Leslie M. Grant"O God, you know my folly; the wrongs I have done are not hidden from you." The Lord Jesus certainly had no sins of His own. But He took the responsibility on His own shoulders for the sins of Israel, confessed them before God, and in fact bore them "in His own body on the tree" (1 Peter 2:24).
Iniquity above the head, guilt up to the heavens
The verse gives two measurements: sin risen higher than the head, guilt piled as high as the sky. One writer reads them as showing how far the trouble had gone, and how long it had run.
Leslie M. GrantTheir sin was far beyond their control or their ability to check it. But he does not limit his thoughts to the guilt of that moment. He confesses that it had been there "since the days of our fathers" (v. 7). Speaking this way, he remembered that such guilt had led to their captivity. Their kings and priests were handed over to foreign kings because of it, and brought down to shameful humiliation.
Ashamed — and still looking up
Ezra says he is too ashamed to raise his face, and in the same breath calls God "my God" twice. One writer pictures a person weeping over sin, dreading to look at the God he had wronged.
William J. HockingThe truth he had not grasped was that God, to whom he was answerable as a sinner, was ready to pardon. A divine invitation went out to him and to every other guilty person: "Turn to me and be saved, all the ends of the earth! For I am God, and there is no other" (Isa. 45:22). Ezra the priest confessed his own sin and the sins of his people. He acted on this invitation and lifted up his eyes to God despite his sense of guilt.
Why this prayer changed things
Ezra could have answered the crisis with a plan. He answered it with feeling instead.
F. B. HoleEzra called together no committee; he laid no elaborate plans for reforming this abuse; he just FELT things before God, and as they affected God. He felt things so much that he tore his clothes, pulled out his hair, and sat down astonished. Then, realising the full extent of it all, he fell on his knees and began a memorable prayer of confession: "O my God, I am ashamed and blush to lift my face to you, my God."
Summary
- Ours. Ezra does not separate himself from the offenders, even in spirit. Before God the people are one, as when God said of Achan's sin, "Israel has sinned."
- Not theirs. Elijah reported Israel's unfaithfulness and his own loyalty. Ezra prays as though the guilt were all his own — the priest eating the sin offering.
- Higher. Sin had risen past the head, and guilt to the heavens. It was past their power to control, and it reached back to the days of their fathers.
- Upward. Too ashamed to raise his face, he raises it anyway, acting on the invitation of a God ready to pardon.
- Deeper. No committee, no reform plan — he felt the failure as God felt it, and that is where his power to help his people began.