Hey Bible readers, I'm Tara Lee Cobble and I'm your host for the Bible recap.

Even though this book is named after Ezra, we don't meet him until later in the book.

This short book covers almost a century and it's a historical narrative, not a prophetic

book.

We start out with King Cyrus of Persia.

We've read about him before.

If you recall, God has prophesied to both Isaiah and Daniel that Cyrus would play a key

role in rebuilding Jerusalem after the 70 years of the Babylonian exile are complete.

And now that Persia has defeated Babylon where all the exiles live, King Cyrus is on the

scene and God is setting the wheels in motion.

The Lord stirred up his spirit, the spirit of a pagan, to rebuild the temple in Jerusalem

for the exiles who live in his land.

This sounds great, but if he's a pagan and God is stirring up his spirit, doesn't that

violate his free will?

Put a pin in that, we'll cover that term a bit more later in today's podcast.

Cyrus tells all the exiles from Judah that they can return to Jerusalem and that he'll

sin provisions with them so they can rebuild God's house.

Verse 5 tells us that God stirred up the spirits of lots of the exiles to return.

They bring all the best things back to Jerusalem.

Not only that, that Cyrus also goes into the China cabinet and pulls out the temple

vessels, you know, the ones King Nebistol and the same ones King B was partying out

of right before God struck him dead.

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