While Ezra is not as well known as the “major prophets” like Isaiah and Jeremiah, he mattered as much as anyone to the development of the Judaism which formed Jesus, and hence the Christian Church. After the experience of the Babylonian Exile with the destruction of nation, kingshiip and temple what it meant to be a Jew shifted. Ezra suggested two key ideas to make that possible. First, the idea of a faithful remnant as continuing the legacy of the people of God. “Mercy came to us from the LORD, our God, who left us a remnant.” They might not have the institutions which sustained Israel before but as long as some people were faithful the word of God would endure. The second idea was that of a fence: “Our God has granted us a fence in Judah and Jerusalem.” Around the core belief in the one God the various laws of Jewish practice serve as a fence to protect the central message. Jesus warned that at times his contemporaries were concentrating more of the fence than on what the fence protected but the fence mattered. He insisted that “not the smallest letter, not the least stroke of a pen, will by any means disappear from the Law until everything is accomplished.”
