Biblion Bible Commentary
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No Levites Among Them
Ezra 8:15-20
15 I gathered them together to the river that runs to Ahava; and there we encamped three days. Then I looked around at the people and the priests, and found there were none of the sons of Levi. · WEB
Three days into the journey Ezra counts his people and finds the one group the temple could not run without is missing entirely.
I gathered them together to the river that runs to Ahava; and there we encamped three days.
A staging camp, and the three days are used for an inspection. Then I looked around at the people and the priests, and found there were none of the sons of Levi.
Not few. None. A caravan assembled to serve the house of God contained priests and no Levites — the order that carried, sang, guarded, and did the daily work. The first return had produced seventy-four of them against four thousand two hundred eighty-nine priests Ezra 2:40, and sixty years later the imbalance has become an absence.
The book states the fact without explaining it. Nothing is said about why the Levites would not come, and no blame is assigned.
What follows is a recruitment. Ezra names eleven men he sends — Eliezer, Ariel, Shemaiah, Elnathan, Jarib, Elnathan, Nathan, Zechariah, and Meshullam, chief men; also for Joiarib and for Elnathan, who were teachers. Two of them are identified by function rather than rank, and the function is teaching, which is the same word attached to Ezra himself Ezra 7:10.
They are sent to Iddo the chief at the place Casiphia, and Ezra records that he briefed them: I told them what they should tell Iddo. A delegation with a prepared message, sent to persuade rather than to summon.
The result is credited the way the book credits everything: according to the good hand of our God on us they brought us a man of discretion. Sherebiah with eighteen, Hashabiah and Jeshaiah with twenty — thirty-eight Levites in all, produced by an errand rather than by a decree.
And then two hundred twenty temple servants, with a note on their standing: whom David and the princes had given for the service of the Levites. Six times as many assistants as Levites to assist.
The last clause of the paragraph is the register's habit applied to the smallest group in it: all of them were mentioned by name. Thirty-eight men who had to be talked into coming are entered individually.
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