Jacob M. Myers – författare

The books of Ezra and Nehemiah, treated here as one larger work, continue the story of Israel’s experience begun in the biblical books of I and II Chronicles. In the wake of Persia replacing Babylon as the ruling empire in the ancient Near East, the Judahites exiled in Babylon find reason to hope again. Their hope is rooted in the fulfillment of the prophetic promises that they would one day return to their homeland. Not only do the exiles return from Babylon with the support of the Persian ruler, but they renew their commitment to God.Two remarkable personalities – with strikingly different approaches to the same objective – are the architects of this rebuilding of a people so long without roots. Ezra, “the second Moses,” bases the renewal on the Torah and spiritual reform. Nehemiah, the accomplished politician and diplomat, keeps the renewal alive with his deft administrative hand.For all its usefulness in painting the historical picture, Ezra-Nehemiah presents an exceedingly complex textual jigsaw puzzle. The heart of the matter lies not in reconciling all the parallel lists, quotes, and different accounts of the same story, but in coming to a better understanding of how and when the Bible came to be written. The factors of spiritual renewal, national reconstruction, and biblical composition make Ezra-Nehemiah a key to biblical interpretation then and now.

I and II Esdras is Volume 42 in the Anchor Bible series of new book-by-book translations of the Old and New Testaments and Apocrypha, each by a preeminent scholar.  Jacob M. Myers is Professor of Old Testament at the Lutheran Theological Seminary in Gettysburg and the author of three earlier volumes in the series: I Chronicles and II Chronicles and Ezra, Nehemiah.  The present work constitutes the first English commentary on I Esdras in sixty years and the first on II Esdras in forty.  Written about 10 BCE, I Esdras is a history ranging from the pious reign of Josiah to the religious reforms of Ezra.  For this period Josephus follows I Esdras in his Antiquities of the Jews.  An apocalyptic work, written 250 years later, II Esdras seeks to offer strength, courage, and hope to those whose faith was severely shaken in the gloom and despondency that followed upon the fall of Jerusalem in A.D. 70.  Its chief purpose was to inspire trust in God and the ultimate triumph of righteousness, if not in this world, then in the world to come.  “Tracts for the times such as II Esdras,” writes Dr. Myers in his preface, “have a message for us who in a revolutionary age are obsessed with the impatience reflected by Ezra; it was not that he lacked faith in God but that he, like Job, questioned his ways and the delay, perhaps seeming inactivity, in the face of what appeared to the prophet to be terrible urgencies.  The questions posed are still asked in the context of our age.” Eight photographs of ancient Near Eastern sculpture and coins help the reader visualize both the events recounted in I Esdras and the apocalyptic imagery in II Esdras.  Each book has its own introduction and bibliography.