Commentary on Ezra

Athanasius of Alexandria (296–373)

[Synopsis on Ezra] These two books were written by the man whose name they bear as a title. This Ezra, being a priest and a scribe, recounted the return of the children of Israel from Persia to Jerusalem. In the first book, he relates how the charge of organizing the return was in the hand of Josue the son of Josedec, and of Ezra, Zerubbabel, and Nehemiah, a Jewish eunuch. The return was occasioned as follows: three soldiers who guarded the king, one of whom was Zerubbabel, were engaged in a competition regarding a certain question, and a promise had been made that the winner should ask the king for whatever he wanted. When the first soldier had said that wine was stronger, and the second that the king was stronger, Zerubbabel contended that women were stronger, and that truth excelled over all things. Because Zerubbabel spoke these things, he won. When he was told to ask what he wanted, he asked for the captives to be released and for Jerusalem to be rebuilt. And it was done as he asked, and the captives were let go. For at that time sixty years of wrath had been completed. The people of the tribes of Juda and Benjamin, together with the Levites, who went up from the captivity to…

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• More works by Athanasius of Alexandria

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