Ezra and Nehemiah Resources

Want to read the Bible in Tagalog? Check this website out. It has tons of different translations in English, and in other languages. It's a great resource.

The Hasidic Jewish organization Chabad offers a traditional Jewish take on Ezra.

This webpage records the various conflicting opinions of different Islamic scholars on Ezra and Islam. Was he a prophet? Was he the same as "Uzair," who is mentioned in the Qur'an? Discover the debate.

An interesting and thorough analysis from a Jewish perspective, this article views Ezra and Nehemiah as presenting a somewhat frustrating, if ultimately positive period in the history of Israel. The Jews' hopes for their land are fulfilled but in a less glorious way than they expected. They'll have to wait for that.

What Nehemiah would have done if PowerPoint had been around in 445 BCE.

To be fair, this miniseries doesn't cover Ezra and Nehemiah in too much detail—they're just not really thrilling narratives, and aren't meant to be. But it technically does cover the bare facts of the return to Jerusalem after the Babylonian Exile, so we're gonna go ahead and assume that counts.

This 18th-century Bible commentary offers a really in-depth look at every book in the Bible—including Ezra and Nehemiah.

Wesley, the founder of Methodism, provides another, super-extensive commentary on the Bible.

Commentary on fragments from the Dead Sea Scrolls of the Book of Nehemiah will be published in 2015. Until a few years ago, scholars thought that Nehemiah was one of the few books not found in the Scrolls. We're glad they were wrong—he worked so hard on those walls. He'd be happy people thought to write all that down.

Chabad Rabbi Mendel Dubov gives a little talk on the meaning of Ezra, speaking from a Hasidic Jewish point-of-view.

Professor Christine Hayes explains it all: Ezra and Nehemiah in the context of a broader exploration of the Bible. (This is from a free, awesome Yale lecture series and you don't even have to take the exam.)

This bas-relief from the Persian city of Pasgardae shows Cyrus dressed in a pretty zany get-up: weird hat, two pairs of wings. Kind of like Prince.

This relief from the old Persian capital of Persepolis shows Darius rocking the Z.Z. Top look.

The German artist von Carosfeld made this 19th-century wood-cut, depicting exiles—some of them wounded and bandaged and ill, but all of them apparently happy—making their way back home.

This 16th-century depiction shows Ezra as another bearded, Biblical-looking kind of guy.

After King Herod's renovations in the 1st century B.C.E., the Second Temple was looking pretty snazzy—much different from when Zerubbabel and Jeshua oversaw its construction as described in Ezra and Nehemiah.

Dore, a great 19th-century French illustrator, gives us a sad and possibly penitent Nehemiah, lamenting the ruined state of Jerusalem's walls. He's gonna need a bigger truck.

And finally, here's Ezra's tomb (at least according to legend) near the banks of the Tigris in Iraq.