Abstract

This article starts from the observation that Ezra 8, the story of Ezra's journey from Babel to Jerusalem, does not live up to the expectation awakened by Ezra 7,1-10 that the story about Ezra will deal with Ezra's occupation with the law. Of course, Ezra 7,1-10 interpretes Ezra 8 by taking up its theme clause in 7,6.9: Ezra had a good journey because God helped him for his plan's sake to teach the law in Jerusalem . But this is an external interpretation. Ezra 8 itself speaks another language. An analysis of the syntactical hierarchy and the verbal repetitions shows that the story consists of a prologue , an epilogue and in between five scenes whicg form a concentric pattern: 7,28b-8,15c[A1].15d-20[B1].21-23[C].24-30[B2].31-32[A2] . The two subthemes, the journey to Jerusalem and Ezra's care for the temple , are combined in the central scene : God protects this community because they search for him in praying and fasting and are on their way to the best place to do so: the temple in Jerusalem . The last section reflects upon the contrasts between this internal point and the external point and states that the redactor, responsable for 7,1-10, missed the opportunity to integrate his own perspective with that of the text before him, Ezra 8