The Jewish church puts on quite another face in this book from what it

had appeared with; its state much better, and more pleasant, than it

was of late in Babylon, and yet far inferior to what it had been

formerly. The dry bones here live again, but in the form of a

servant; the yoke of their captivity is taken off, but the marks of

it in their galled necks remain. Kings we hear no more of; the crown

has fallen from their heads. Prophets they are blessed with, to

direct them in their re-establishment, but, after a while, prophecy

ceases among them, till the great prophet appears, and his fore-runner.

The history of this book is the accomplishment of Jeremiah’s prophecy

concerning the return of the Jews out of Babylon at the end of seventy

years, and a type of the accomplishment of the prophecies of the

Apocalypse concerning the deliverance of the gospel church out of the

New-Testament Babylon. Ezra preserved the records of that great

revolution and transmitted them to the church in this book. His name

signifies a helper; and so he was to that people. A particular account

concerning him we shall meet with,

ch. vii.,

where he himself enters upon the stage of action. The book gives us an

account,

I. Of the Jews’ return out of their captivity,

ch. i., ii.

II. Of the building of the temple, the opposition it met with, and yet

the perfecting of it at last,

ch. iii.-vi.

III. Of Ezra’s coming to Jerusalem,

ch. vii., viii.

IV. Of the good service he did there, in obliging those that had

married strange wives to put them away,

ch. ix., x.

This beginning again of the Jewish nation was small, yet its latter end

greatly increased.