Returning from exile and rebuilding the temple in Jerusalem.
Ezra describes two waves of return from Babylonian exile: the first rebuilds the temple despite local opposition, and the second, led by the scribe Ezra, focuses on teaching and enforcing the law.
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ReadExiles come home under Zerubbabel and lay the temple's foundation.
Learn MoreNeighboring officials stall the work for years before it resumes.
Learn MoreA scribe arrives to teach the law and address intermarriage.
Learn MoreWith Persian permission and funding, a group of exiles returns to Judah under Zerubbabel and the priest Jeshua. They rebuild the altar, resume sacrifices, and lay the foundation of a new temple, an occasion the book describes as mixing celebration with the weeping of those who remembered the first temple.
Local officials write to the Persian court and succeed in halting construction for a period. Encouraged by the prophets Haggai and Zechariah and confirmed by a renewed royal decree, the community resumes work and completes the temple, which is then dedicated with a Passover celebration.
Years later Ezra, described as a scribe skilled in the law of Moses, travels from Babylon with another group and a royal commission. He is alarmed to find that community leaders have married into surrounding peoples, and the book ends with a contested public effort to dissolve those marriages, reflecting anxieties about identity in a small post-exilic community.