When Commentaries Don’t Inspire

Last Sunday I preached on Ezra 2, which is no one’s favorite chapter in the Bible. It’s a long list of the exiles who returned from Babylon. But I’m preaching through Ezra, so I read the second chapter and preached from it. I admit there were times I stared at the text and prayed, “Lord what do you want to say to me and these people through these names and numbers.”

In my prayers and in my study, I was not helped by this assessment from the WBC volume on Ezra:

Chapters like Ezra 2 are among the most uninviting portions of the Bible to the modern reader both because of their tedious nature and because of their overtones of racial exclusivism and pride. However fascinating the chapter may be to the antiquarian, it is unlikely that his enthusiasm will ever be shared by more than a few (38-39).

Yikes, I thought. If you have a Ph.D. in this stuff and are passionate enough about Ezra to write a book on it, and yet this is what you think of chapter 2, what hope do the rest of us have?

Thankfully, I found inspiration from another source. I was greatly helped by a different author’s commentary on Ezra, actually his commentary on the whole Old Testament: “All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be competent, equipped for every good work” (2 Tim. 3:16-17). That’s what Paul, inspired by the Holy Spirit, said about Ezra 2 and every other chapter in our Bibles.

And sure enough, there were some powerful lessons to be learned in that boring list of exiles. I found three: we learn something about God, something about courage, and something about the church. Go here for the rest of the story.