Exegetical and Hermeneutical Commentary of Ezra 9:13
And after all that is come upon us for our evil deeds, and for our great trespass, seeing that thou our God hast punished us less than our iniquities [deserve], and hast given us [such] deliverance as this;
13. great trespass ] R.V. great guilt. Cf. on Ezr 9:7. Not an isolated offence, but the condition of deep obligation for sin.
seeing that thou hast, &c.] According to this rendering, Ezra asks as it were in grief and dismay, ‘After all that is past, shall we take advantage of God’s mercy to sin yet once more and offend against His majesty?’ Another rendering, more difficult but quite admissible, translates the conjunction ‘seeing that’ ( ki), as the mark of an exclamation. ‘After all that has happened, to think that God should have so spared us! shall we then provoke Him again by our disobedience?’
hast punished us less than our iniquities deserve] The words in the original are difficult. Literally, ‘hast kept back, downward, from our sins’. Some have rendered ‘hast as it were held back, and kept down from rising to view, many of (partitive) our sins’. Others, ‘hast spared beneath our sins’, i.e. thy mercy has been out of all proportion greater than our sins, has as it were gone deeper than our iniquities. The R.V. gives the general sense. The LXX. and Vulg. ‘liberasti nos de iniquitate nostra’ are paraphrastic.
such deliverance as this ] R.V. such a remnant. The same word as in Ezr 9:8.
Fuente: The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges
13 14. Great as have been our punishments in the past, they have been less than we deserved. Now that we have sinned yet again, what do we deserve but extermination?
Fuente: The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges
Deliverance – Or, remnant, as in Ezr 9:8.
Fuente: Albert Barnes’ Notes on the Bible
Verse 13. Hast punished us less than our iniquities] Great, numerous, and oppressive as our calamities have been, yet merely as temporal punishments, they have been much less than our provocations have deserved.
Fuente: Adam Clarke’s Commentary and Critical Notes on the Bible
After all our sore sufferings for our sins, and after all thy favour showed to us in the mitigation of thy judgments.
Such deliverance as this; so full, so sudden, and unexpected, and amazing, not only to our enemies, but also to ourselves.
Fuente: English Annotations on the Holy Bible by Matthew Poole
And after all that is come upon us for our evil deeds, and for our great trespass,…. As famine, sword, pestilence, and captivity, for their idolatries and other heinous sins:
seeing that our God hast punished us less than our iniquities deserve; for they deserved eternal punishment, whereas it was temporal punishment that was inflicted, and this moderate, and now stopped; the sense is, according to Aben Ezra,
“thou hast refrained from writing some of our sins in the book of remembrance, and thou hast let them down below in the earth, according to the sense of thou wilt cast all their sins into the depths of the sea;”
but Jarchi better,
“thou hast refrained thyself from exacting of us all our sins, and hast exacted of us beneath our sins (or less than they deserve), and hast not taken vengeance on us according to all our sins:”
and hast given us such deliverance as this; from captivity, which they now enjoyed.
Fuente: John Gill’s Exposition of the Entire Bible
Ver. 13. Seeing that thou our God hast punished us, &c. Shall it be, that when thou, our God, withholdest the rod from our iniquities, and leavest for us this remnant, ver. 14. Shall it be that we shall again break, &c.? Houbigant.
REFLECTIONS.1st, All things appeared very fair and promising; but there were concealed abominations, which some of the princes, zealous for the honour of God, discovered and complained of.
1. They informed Ezra, as the person set in authority over them, of the strange marriages which the people had contracted with the heathen; and that the priests and Levites, who should have been the first to reprove such wickedness, were equally concerned, and the princes and rulers chief in this trespass; to the great dishonour of God’s law, and of their nation, as well as thereby exposing themselves and their children to the peril of idolatry. Note; (1.) To be unequally yoked with unbelievers, is the readiest way to apostatize from God. (2.) When princes lead the way in evil, and priests, instead of remonstrating against it, comply with and copy after them, it can be no marvel that iniquity among the people reigns triumphant: surely these shall receive the greater damnation. (3.) They who are zealous for God’s honour, cannot see sin committed without grief, and a desire to restrain it.
2. The information deeply affected the pious Ezra; in distress, he rent his clothes, plucked off his hair, and sat down astonished at the base ingratitude of the people, and trembling for the consequences. Note; (1.) Though careless sinners have no concern about their own souls, their zealous pastors mourn over and tremble for them. (2.) The sins of professors have especial aggravations; and, as they bring the greatest dishonour upon God, they awaken the deepest grief and indignation of the faithful.
3. Ezra’s affecting grief soon drew to him at the temple, where he seems to have been, all those who, like him, reverentially trembled before God, and feared for the consequences of the people’s sin. Note; (1.) The word of God is an awful thing to the true-hearted Israelite; he trembles before it for himself, lest he should offend; and for others, whom he sees offending. (2.) We are bound to strengthen the hands of those, and to join with them, who zealously desire to purge out every abomination from the congregation of the Lord.
2nd, Deep was Ezra’s distress, and long it continued. Till the time of the evening-sacrifice he sat, astonished, on the ground: then, when the lamb went to the altar, he rose; and in the hope of this atoning blood, the only refuse of the miserable, with deep abasement of body and soul he poured out his penitent confessions and humbling acknowledgments before God.
1. He approaches God as his covenant God, and therefore encouraged, almost desperate as the case seemed, to draw near unto him. Note; (1.) There can be no true prayer where faith does not lead us to God as our reconciled God in Christ. (2.) Our repentance will ever be most deep and humbling when we have the surest confidence in the pardoning mercy of God.
2. With shame and confusion of face he appears before him, blushing to think of the baseness and disobedience of the people. Note; (1.) Holy shame will cover us in the view of our transgression. (2.) We shall blush for those who take no shame to themselves. (3.) Though we can say my God, we shall only the more loath ourselves for our ingratitude against him.
3. He confesses the greatness and aggravation of their sins. Though not personally concerned in the transgression, he looks on himself as involved in the national guilt. Like the stormy billows, their iniquities were ready to overwhelm them: heaped up as mountain on mountain, they reached to the clouds, and cried for vengeance; long continued, and like hereditary diseases more inveterate, transmitted from ungodly fathers to ungodly children. Neither the severe corrections which they had suffered had reclaimed them, nor the late astonishing mercies, which he enlarges upon, constrained them to return to God. Their deliverance was recent, and the pure effect of God’s mere grace; the favour great, that they were permitted to escape from the house of their prison; greater, that they should be fixed in God’s holy place, Jerusalem; greatest of all, that they should see the temple raised, and the glorious worship of God restored, as light rising up in the darkness to revive them after the long night of their captivity: and to prove ungrateful notwithstanding all these favours, what an aggravation of their transgressions! Note; (1.) True penitents go to the bottom, and bring forth the worst they can say of themselves; they desire not to hide, but to confess their iniquities. (2.) Every sin increases in malignity according to the means and mercies that we have ungratefully abused.
4. He appears at a loss what apology to make, or, rather, as almost ashamed to ask God for any farther forgiveness; the sin was so wilful against a precept so evident and clear.
5. He acknowledges all their past punishments to be less than their iniquities deserved; and expresses his just apprehensions, lest this repeated provocation should weary out God’s patience, and bring upon them final and utter extirpation. Note; (1.) In every affliction, it becomes us to acknowledge God’s mercy as well as justice, and to own, while we are out of hell, that we have less, unspeakably less, suffering than our sins deserve. (2.) It is justly to be feared, that they are near reprobacy whom neither corrections humble, nor mercies constrain.
6. In entire acquiescence with God’s righteousness, however he should deal with them, he refers their miserable case to him, if yet there might be hope; renouncing every plea, justifying God if he should utterly consume them, and lying down as self-condemned before him, to hear their doom; deserving wrath to the uttermost, but, if yet spared, would stand monuments of the astonishing mercy, and transcendantly rich and infinite grace of God. Note; When we cast our souls, as desperate, upon God, justifying him in all his judgments against us, and glorifying his righteousness, he will not, cannot thrust us from him: his bowels yearn; his pity moves; and, magnifying his mercy upon us, “Where sin hath abounded, there,” saith he, “shall grace much more abound.”
Fuente: Commentary on the Holy Bible by Thomas Coke
DISCOURSE: 438
USE OF GODS DIVERSIFIED DISPENSATIONS
Ezr 9:13-14. After all that is come upon us for our evil deeds, and for our great trespass, seeing that thou our God hast punished us less than our iniquities deserve, and hast given us such deliverance as this; should we again break thy commandments?
THE intention of God in all his dispensations, whether of providence or of grace, is to deter men from sin: and it becomes all his people to co-operate with him in this important work. Rulers in particular are invested with power by God himself for this very end: nor do they ever appear to more advantage than when they exert themselves to the uttermost in the support of Gods authority, and in promoting the best interests of those over whom they are placed.
Ezra, perhaps about eighty years after the return of the Jews from Babylon, was permitted by Artaxerxes king of Persia to go and visit his brethren in Judea, and was empowered by him to rectify all abuses that he might find among them. After his arrival, he heard, to his unspeakable grief, that many of them had joined in marriage with heathen women. He therefore humbled himself before God on their account; and looking back upon all that they had suffered for their iniquities, and on the marvellous deliverance which God had vouchsafed unto them, he expressed his surprise, his horror, his indignation at their great impiety.
From his words we shall take occasion to consider,
I.
Gods diversified dispensations towards us
God visited his people of old with alternate mercies and judgments: and thus he has dealt with us also.
He has visited our sins with judgments
[The judgments which we have of late experienced, have been exceeding heavy [Note: Here particulars should be mentioned.] And it is of the utmost importance that we should acknowledge the hand of God in them. They spring not out of the dust: they arise not merely from the ambition of our enemies, or the errors of our own government. God uses men as instruments, just as he did the Assyrians and Chaldeans, to punish his people: but still it is His hand alone that inflicts the stroke [Note: Psa 17:13. Isa 10:5-7; Isa 10:13-15; Isa 37:24-26. Gen 45:8.]: and, if we do not trace his displeasure in all that we have suffered, it is not possible that we should ever make a proper improvement of it.
We must confess, however, that our sufferings have by no means equalled our deserts [Note: Psa 103:10.]. Take any one of our national sins [Note: Our contempt of the Gospel, our open profaneness, our traffic in human blood, &c.], and it might well bring down upon us all that we have endured. If God had proceeded against us according to the tremendous aggregate of our iniquities, we should have been made as Sodom and Gomorrha.]
He has now also vouchsafed us a deliverance
[The deliverance granted to the Jews in their return from Babylon, was not inferior to that which they had formerly experienced in their departure from Egypt. And has not ours also been exceeding great [Note: Here it should be set forth.]? In this too must we view the hand of God. Whoever were the means, God was the author of it. It is he who produces all the changes that arise in the state of individuals [Note: 1Sa 2:6-8.], or of kingdoms [Note: Jer 18:6-7; Jer 18:9.]. And as the discerning of his agency in our afflictions is necessary to effect our humiliation, so the beholding of it in our mercies is necessary to excite our gratitude.]
To promote a suitable improvement of these dispensations, let us consider,
II.
The effect they should have upon us
If the destruction of sin be the end which God proposes to himself in all his conduct towards us, then we should endeavour to make every thing subservient to that end. The pointed interrogation in the text strongly shews in what light we should view a renewed violation of Gods commandments, after he has taken such pains to enforce the observance of them.
1.
How unreasonable would it be!
[No man can read the account of Pharaohs obstinacy in the midst of all his successive judgments and deliverances, and not stand amazed at his more than brutish stupidity. Yet it is precisely thus that we shall act, if we do not now put away our sins, and submit ourselves entirely to Gods revealed will. And how unreasonable, or rather we should say irrational, such conduct would be, God himself tells us: he even calls heaven and earth to express their astonishment at it, as not only levelling us with the beasts, but reducing us to a state far below them [Note: Isa 1:2-3.]. And if we be guilty of it, he will justly vent his indignation against us, as he did against his people of old; They are a perverse and crooked generation. Do ye thus requite the Lord? O foolish people, and unwise [Note: Deu 32:5-6.]!]
2.
How ungrateful!
[Ingratitude is considered as one of the greatest aggravations that can be found in any offence of man against his fellow-man: and how much more must it enhance the guilt we contract in our disobedience to God! See what stress God himself lays upon this in the transgressions of David [Note: 2Sa 12:7-9.], and Solomon [Note: 1Ki 11:9.], and Hezekiah [Note: 2Ch 32:25.]; and will it not stamp a ten-fold malignity also on our offences [Note: See what construction God himself puts upon such conduct, Jer 7:9-10.]?]
3.
How dangerous!
[This is particularly noticed by Ezra, in the words following the text: and the state of the Jews at this moment is an awful comment upon it. We are yet in the hands of our God; and if we still rebel against him, he can easily bring again upon us the calamities which he has just removed, or send others far more afflictive. He tells us, that, as the impenitence of the Jews was the reason of his continuing to afflict them [Note: Isa 9:12; Isa 9:17; Isa 9:21; Isa 10:4.], so he will punish us seven times more for our sins [Note: Lev 26:18; Lev 26:21; Lev 26:24; Lev 26:28.], if we now continue in them. To what a state of misery and dereliction we may in that case expect to be reduced, we may judge from what was actually experienced by the Jewish nation [Note: Jdg 10:11-14.]. But the Lord grant that we may not so provoke the Majesty of heaven!]
Address
[Remember that God is not an indifferent spectator of our conduct. Sin is that abominable thing which his soul hateth [Note: Jer 44:4.]: and he will surely destroy either it, or him that retains it. And if his judgments be not inflicted on the sinner in this life, there still is a future day of retribution, when every man shall give account of himself to God, and receive the just recompence of all his actions.
Let this then be the improvement which we determine, through grace, to make of Gods present dispensations. Let us reflect upon them as means of exciting us to holy obedience; and let every one of us shudder at the thought of ever again breaking the least of Gods commandments.]
Fuente: Charles Simeon’s Horae Homileticae (Old and New Testaments)
Ezr 9:13 And after all that is come upon us for our evil deeds, and for our great trespass, seeing that thou our God hast punished us less than our iniquities [deserve], and hast given us [such] deliverance as this;
Ver. 13. And after all that is come upon us ] Affliction, like foul weather, cometh before it is sent for; yet not but of God’s sending; and then it is ever either probational, as Job’s; or cautional, as Paul’s prick in the flesh; or penal, for chastisement of some way of wickedness, as here.
For our evil deeds
Seeing that thou our God
Hast punished us less than our iniquities deserve
And hast given us such deliverance as this
Fuente: John Trapp’s Complete Commentary (Old and New Testaments)
evil. Heb, ra’a’. App-44.
such deliverance: or, such a reserved survival.
Fuente: Companion Bible Notes, Appendices and Graphics
after all: Neh 9:32, Eze 24:13, Eze 24:14, Gal 3:4
hast punished: etc. Heb. hast withheld beneath our iniquities
less: Psa 103:10, Lam 3:22, Lam 3:39, Lam 3:40, Hab 3:2
hast given us: Psa 106:45, Psa 106:46
Reciprocal: Lev 26:41 – and they Num 32:14 – to augment Jos 22:17 – from which Jos 22:18 – and it will Jdg 16:14 – went away 1Sa 12:24 – consider 1Ki 21:1 – after Neh 13:18 – Did not your Job 11:6 – God exacteth Job 34:23 – he will Job 34:31 – General Psa 28:4 – render Psa 51:14 – righteousness Isa 49:24 – lawful captive Isa 59:12 – we know Jer 30:15 – for the Lam 1:18 – Lord Dan 9:7 – righteousness Zec 1:2 – Lord Luk 23:41 – we indeed Joh 5:14 – sin
Fuente: The Treasury of Scripture Knowledge
Ezr 9:13-14. After all that is come upon us for our evil deeds After all our sore sufferings for our sins. Seeing thou hast punished us less than our iniquities deserve After all thy favours shown us in the mitigation of thy judgments. And hast given us such deliverance as this So full, so sudden, so unexpected and amazing, not only to our enemies, but also to ourselves. Should we again break thy commandments, &c. Was this a fit and just requital of all thy kindnesses? Was this thy end and design in these actions? Wilt thou take this well at our hands? That there should be no remnant nor escaping Can we reasonably expect any thing from thee less than utter ruin?
Fuente: Joseph Bensons Commentary on the Old and New Testaments
9:13 And after all that is come upon us for our evil deeds, and for our great trespass, seeing that thou our God hast punished us less than our {g} iniquities [deserve], and hast given us [such] deliverance as this;
(g) Has not utterly cast us down and destroyed us for our sins, De 28:13.