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Welwyn Commentary #15
Doing a Great Work: Ezra and Nehemiah Simply Explained
The books of Ezra and Nehemiah continue the story of God's people after the exile in Babylon... Ezra and Nehamiah call us back to a renewed obedience to God's Word, a fresh realisation of the power of prayer, and a wholehearted commitment to the work of God in fellowship with God's people.
224 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 1, 1996
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October 3, 2024
Imagine living in a strange land, far away from home, where a different language is spoken and you have to build a new life. Think of all the problems that would cause you. Then one day you are given permission to return to your native land. This was the experience of the Jews…
In this way, Stan Evers begins his commentary on the book of Ezra in a chapter entitled ‘Home at last!’ Clearly, this is not a commentary in the formal, traditional sense. It reads more like a series of devotional talks, working through Ezra and Nehemiah a chapter at a time.
The Welwyn Commentary Series, of which this book is part, has a place among conservative evangelical commentaries alongside the Tyndale Old and New Testament commentaries. The latter, while relatively brief and inexpensive, are primarily exegetical and technical, seeking to make the meaning of the Bible text clear. They are suited, perhaps, to the Bible student. The Welwyn Commentaries, however, while also of modest size and cost, are more devotional and pastoral. They seek not only to make the meaning of the text clear in an accessible way but also to draw out its teaching and apply it to the reader. They are a helpful aid to any serious Bible reader.
The tone of Doing a Great Work is very much discursive and pastoral. It reads as if a pastor has written up a sermon series on the two books. In fact, the author wrote as a Baptist pastor and reveals that the book began as a series of Bible studies on the book of Ezra. One imagines that the Bible studies were delivered in a way very similar to a sermon. The result is a book that is full of homely touches, expressions and examples. After a mercifully brief (four-page) introduction, a chapter is allocated to each chapter of the Bible text. At the beginning of each chapter, the writer seeks to draw in the reader, much as a preacher would at the beginning of a sermon.
In other words, this is not a formal commentary but a book that is written to help an ordinary Bible reader understand the Bible books of Ezra and Nehemiah and benefit spiritually and practically from reading them through. If you have a question about the meaning or significance of a specific word or phrase, you probably won’t find an answer unless it is significant to the main sense or teaching of the passage. The text is explained and applied in narrative sections, rather than verse by verse. Bible words are quoted in bold lettering and usually from the New International Version.
The book is suited to using as an aid to daily, devotional Bible reading. You could read a chapter of the Bible text a day alongside the relevant chapter of this book. It very much lends itself to being used like that, though many readers might want to progress a little more slowly. Sunday School teachers would certainly find the book helpful when preparing to teach children. One early chapter ends with points for prayer and another with points to think about but for some reason those features are never repeated.
A preacher preparing a sermon would want something more substantial and technical, at least to start with, but might be glad of this book later on to help crystallise his teaching points or for ideas on how to apply them. Inevitably, with a book of this size and style, some things are simply stated without their basis being fully explained. Sometimes I was left wanting that explanation. Evers says that the rebuilt temple (Ezra 3), for example, was smaller than the original but I cannot find that explicitly stated in the text. Ezra 6:3 (cf. 1 Kings 6:2) suggests that it may even have been larger. Evers simply asserts that the larger design was never implemented, basing this on the distress of the older Jews as work began and Haggai’s words, “Does it not seem to you like nothing?” (Ezra 3:12; Haggai 2:3). But at that point, work had hardly begun—and it is a common experience that a new building looks tiny when only the foundations are in place.
What about the difficult issue of the breaking up of the marriages of over a hundred Jewish men who had married pagan women (Ezra 9-10), who (presumably) had not converted to worship of the true God? Some helpful points are made to put the issue into perspective but they do not allay all the questions. Why, for instance, with such a small proportion of the population involved (more than 40,000 returned to Jerusalem with Zerubbabel), were the offenders not simply separated from, along with their wives and children, rather than the families being broken up? When Nehemiah was faced with a similar situation, decades later, he tore out the hair of the offenders and beat them but did not demand that the wives and children be sent away.
The author emphasises the importance of the issue and suggests helpfully that Nehemiah may have seen the harmful consequences of what had been done under Ezra and, while being equally zealous for the religious purity of God’s people, did not condone the way the previous generation sought to maintain it. One is still left wondering about Nehemiah’s slightly less than ideal pastoral behaviour. The godly men and women in the Bible, while being examples to us in many ways, did not always act wisely or well and it does no harm to say so when it is appropriate.
In this way, Stan Evers begins his commentary on the book of Ezra in a chapter entitled ‘Home at last!’ Clearly, this is not a commentary in the formal, traditional sense. It reads more like a series of devotional talks, working through Ezra and Nehemiah a chapter at a time.
The Welwyn Commentary Series, of which this book is part, has a place among conservative evangelical commentaries alongside the Tyndale Old and New Testament commentaries. The latter, while relatively brief and inexpensive, are primarily exegetical and technical, seeking to make the meaning of the Bible text clear. They are suited, perhaps, to the Bible student. The Welwyn Commentaries, however, while also of modest size and cost, are more devotional and pastoral. They seek not only to make the meaning of the text clear in an accessible way but also to draw out its teaching and apply it to the reader. They are a helpful aid to any serious Bible reader.
The tone of Doing a Great Work is very much discursive and pastoral. It reads as if a pastor has written up a sermon series on the two books. In fact, the author wrote as a Baptist pastor and reveals that the book began as a series of Bible studies on the book of Ezra. One imagines that the Bible studies were delivered in a way very similar to a sermon. The result is a book that is full of homely touches, expressions and examples. After a mercifully brief (four-page) introduction, a chapter is allocated to each chapter of the Bible text. At the beginning of each chapter, the writer seeks to draw in the reader, much as a preacher would at the beginning of a sermon.
In other words, this is not a formal commentary but a book that is written to help an ordinary Bible reader understand the Bible books of Ezra and Nehemiah and benefit spiritually and practically from reading them through. If you have a question about the meaning or significance of a specific word or phrase, you probably won’t find an answer unless it is significant to the main sense or teaching of the passage. The text is explained and applied in narrative sections, rather than verse by verse. Bible words are quoted in bold lettering and usually from the New International Version.
The book is suited to using as an aid to daily, devotional Bible reading. You could read a chapter of the Bible text a day alongside the relevant chapter of this book. It very much lends itself to being used like that, though many readers might want to progress a little more slowly. Sunday School teachers would certainly find the book helpful when preparing to teach children. One early chapter ends with points for prayer and another with points to think about but for some reason those features are never repeated.
A preacher preparing a sermon would want something more substantial and technical, at least to start with, but might be glad of this book later on to help crystallise his teaching points or for ideas on how to apply them. Inevitably, with a book of this size and style, some things are simply stated without their basis being fully explained. Sometimes I was left wanting that explanation. Evers says that the rebuilt temple (Ezra 3), for example, was smaller than the original but I cannot find that explicitly stated in the text. Ezra 6:3 (cf. 1 Kings 6:2) suggests that it may even have been larger. Evers simply asserts that the larger design was never implemented, basing this on the distress of the older Jews as work began and Haggai’s words, “Does it not seem to you like nothing?” (Ezra 3:12; Haggai 2:3). But at that point, work had hardly begun—and it is a common experience that a new building looks tiny when only the foundations are in place.
What about the difficult issue of the breaking up of the marriages of over a hundred Jewish men who had married pagan women (Ezra 9-10), who (presumably) had not converted to worship of the true God? Some helpful points are made to put the issue into perspective but they do not allay all the questions. Why, for instance, with such a small proportion of the population involved (more than 40,000 returned to Jerusalem with Zerubbabel), were the offenders not simply separated from, along with their wives and children, rather than the families being broken up? When Nehemiah was faced with a similar situation, decades later, he tore out the hair of the offenders and beat them but did not demand that the wives and children be sent away.
The author emphasises the importance of the issue and suggests helpfully that Nehemiah may have seen the harmful consequences of what had been done under Ezra and, while being equally zealous for the religious purity of God’s people, did not condone the way the previous generation sought to maintain it. One is still left wondering about Nehemiah’s slightly less than ideal pastoral behaviour. The godly men and women in the Bible, while being examples to us in many ways, did not always act wisely or well and it does no harm to say so when it is appropriate.
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