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Ezra the Scribe was a priest and official in the Achaemenid government which ruled the province of Judah in the 5th century BCE. The exact dates are a bit hard to pin down. Biblical scripture says he traveled to Jerusalem in the "seventh year of Artaxerxes", but inconveniently fails to specify which Artaxerxes. Usually, since he is said to be a contemporary of another Jewish official, Nehemiah, it is assumed that Ezra's Artaxerxes was Artaxerxes I, son of Xerxes, which would set his arrival in 458 BCE. Not everyone agrees with this conclusion, but for my purposes, I decided to stick with this time frame. Regardless, the story is the same: Ezra was the leader of the Jews still living in Babylon even after Cyrus decreed they could return to Jerusalem in 539 BCE. Fed up with hearing of how much Judaism had shattered into factions and immorality during the Babylonian Exile period, Ezra received an appointment from the Iranian King of Kings to travel to Jerusalem as governor and fix things himself.

The supposed sins of the Jewish people included breaking the law, low public and private morality (whatever that means) and the worst offense of all… marrying foreigners oh… oh no. Yeah pretty much everything I read made Ezra out as a total xenophobe. Apparently he was so distraught by seeing his people marry in with these "dirty pagans" that he just ripped his clothes off in the middle of the street. Okay dude, chill. This was one of the biggest issues he sought to "reform", and apparently he was able to convince everyone to divorce their wives and swear never to marry a foreigner ever again, pinky promise. Good lord, that is such a step beyond cockblocking I kinda struggle to take his word for it. In fact, it's pretty obvious that the faith he sought to "cleanse" would still go on to be heavily influenced by the different philosophers and theologians of the Achaemenid Empire. The apocalyptic genre which defined later literature and culminated in the Jesus movement of the 1st century was very much inspired by the cosmology of Iran's national religion, Zoroastrianism, for example.

Despite Ezra's reputation for getting into everyone's personal business like your weird grandpa who clearly got stuck in some antebellum time loop, he is otherwise remembered as one of the most important figures in the development of modern Judaism. As part of his reforms, he is said to have organized the Torah into a more coherent form, with a special emphasis on law code. Ezra is also traditionally said to have been the author of the Book of Chronicles and Ezra-Nehemiah (Catholics split these into two separate books, but Jewish authors always considered them one scroll). Through these works, he established a way for all Jews, regardless of their distance from the Temple, to be able to live as one unified society following the same code. This precedent of prioritizing law and the interpretation of it over literal belief in the Bible's more mythological tales continues to define Jewish culture to this day, no matter how scattered they may be across the globe. Thankfully, most Jews have since used this system to disregard Ezra's more tasteless opinions. Free love is like totally radical, man.

Design notes, STRIPES, I hate stripes. Stripes are my nemesis. They're fine in small patches, but it gets really difficult to use stripes on a wide swath of cloth. It can be a major pain in the ass to figure out how they're supposed to align with the folds of the fabric, and obviously I didn't do a very successful job here. It's not the worst, and I'm too lazy to redraw the whole piece just to try again, but man it makes me pull my hair out. Maybe I should strip in anger like Ezra. I don't think that's what lesson I'm supposed to take away from the Bible story but hey who am I to judge. I mainly sampled three references for the composition. The primary one was Gustave Dore's 19th century illustration of Ezra reading the law to the people, simple enough. The second was "The Return of the Exiles to Zion", a 1900 work by William Hole, though nothing has actually expressly stated the figure in the center to be Ezra. I think this may have come up in my search results moreso because it's depicting a scene from the Book of Ezra. But nothing says it isn't the man himself, so I'm comfortable enough drawing from it. The third was an illustration from a 1947 publication titled "Standard Bible Story Readers" by Lillie A. Faris, though the internet seems uncertain as to whether this depicts Ezra or instead the prophet Ezekiel. If it is Ezekiel then… whoops. If anyone can confirm that for me, I'd be happy to amend my mistake. That may actually give me the kick in the pants to redo this piece and those accursed stripes.

Description
Ezra the Scribe was a priest and official in the Achaemenid government which ruled the province of Judah in the 5th century BCE. The exact dates are a bit hard to pin down. Biblical scripture says he traveled to Jerusalem in the "seventh year of Artaxerxes", but inconveniently fails to specify which Artaxerxes. Usually, since he is said to be a contemporary of another Jewish official, Nehemiah, it is assumed that Ezra's Artaxerxes was Artaxerxes I, son of Xerxes, which would set his arrival in 458 BCE. Not everyone agrees with this conclusion, but for my purposes, I decided to stick with this time frame. Regardless, the story is the same: Ezra was the leader of the Jews still living in Babylon even after Cyrus decreed they could return to Jerusalem in 539 BCE. Fed up with hearing of how much Judaism had shattered into factions and immorality during the Babylonian Exile period, Ezra received an appointment from the Iranian King of Kings to travel to Jerusalem as governor and fix things himself.

The supposed sins of the Jewish people included breaking the law, low public and private morality (whatever that means) and the worst offense of all… marrying foreigners oh… oh no. Yeah pretty much everything I read made Ezra out as a total xenophobe. Apparently he was so distraught by seeing his people marry in with these "dirty pagans" that he just ripped his clothes off in the middle of the street. Okay dude, chill. This was one of the biggest issues he sought to "reform", and apparently he was able to convince everyone to divorce their wives and swear never to marry a foreigner ever again, pinky promise. Good lord, that is such a step beyond cockblocking I kinda struggle to take his word for it. In fact, it's pretty obvious that the faith he sought to "cleanse" would still go on to be heavily influenced by the different philosophers and theologians of the Achaemenid Empire. The apocalyptic genre which defined later literature and culminated in the Jesus movement of the 1st century was very much inspired by the cosmology of Iran's national religion, Zoroastrianism, for example.

Despite Ezra's reputation for getting into everyone's personal business like your weird grandpa who clearly got stuck in some antebellum time loop, he is otherwise remembered as one of the most important figures in the development of modern Judaism. As part of his reforms, he is said to have organized the Torah into a more coherent form, with a special emphasis on law code. Ezra is also traditionally said to have been the author of the Book of Chronicles and Ezra-Nehemiah (Catholics split these into two separate books, but Jewish authors always considered them one scroll). Through these works, he established a way for all Jews, regardless of their distance from the Temple, to be able to live as one unified society following the same code. This precedent of prioritizing law and the interpretation of it over literal belief in the Bible's more mythological tales continues to define Jewish culture to this day, no matter how scattered they may be across the globe. Thankfully, most Jews have since used this system to disregard Ezra's more tasteless opinions. Free love is like totally radical, man.

Design notes, STRIPES, I hate stripes. Stripes are my nemesis. They're fine in small patches, but it gets really difficult to use stripes on a wide swath of cloth. It can be a major pain in the ass to figure out how they're supposed to align with the folds of the fabric, and obviously I didn't do a very successful job here. It's not the worst, and I'm too lazy to redraw the whole piece just to try again, but man it makes me pull my hair out. Maybe I should strip in anger like Ezra. I don't think that's what lesson I'm supposed to take away from the Bible story but hey who am I to judge. I mainly sampled three references for the composition. The primary one was Gustave Dore's 19th century illustration of Ezra reading the law to the people, simple enough. The second was "The Return of the Exiles to Zion", a 1900 work by William Hole, though nothing has actually expressly stated the figure in the center to be Ezra. I think this may have come up in my search results moreso because it's depicting a scene from the Book of Ezra. But nothing says it isn't the man himself, so I'm comfortable enough drawing from it. The third was an illustration from a 1947 publication titled "Standard Bible Story Readers" by Lillie A. Faris, though the internet seems uncertain as to whether this depicts Ezra or instead the prophet Ezekiel. If it is Ezekiel then… whoops. If anyone can confirm that for me, I'd be happy to amend my mistake. That may actually give me the kick in the pants to redo this piece and those accursed stripes.