I assembled them at the canal that flows toward Ahava, and we camped there three days. When I checked among the people and the priests, I found no Levites there. – Ezra 8:15

Today’s Scripture Reading (August 20, 2017): Ezra 8

Author Leo Buscaglia, also known as Dr. Love, wrote that “your talent is God's gift to you. What you do with it is your gift back to God.” Every one of us has been gifted by God in some way. Too often we seem to bury the gifts we have been given because it is not the one that we wish that we possessed. But God never gifts us without some purpose. We are all important puzzle pieces, and when we are willing to put our pieces together, we have the potential to make a difference in this world. And this difference is the reason why we have been gifted in the first place. Buscaglia is right. Or maybe to phrase his words, God has gifted us with the expectation that we will make a positive difference in the world in which we live by acting together and, in this act, giving our gifts back to God.

It is apparent that as Ezra returns to Judah, he returns with a purpose. He intends to restart the practice of Temple Worship in the newly built Temple. To complete this task, he needs two groups of people who have been specially gifted to work in the Temple. Both groups are technically Levites or descendants of the Tribe of Levi. One group was the priests who were responsible for the sacrificial rituals within the Temple, and the other was the Levites who were not priests who were responsible for all of the rest of the activities of the Temple. Maybe the most important role of these Levites who were not priests was that they were the musicians required for the worship of the Temple.  

Ezra notes that he checks among the people and the priests and he finds that there are no Levites. Obviously, he has priests because he has spoken with them, but what is missing is this second group of Levites; the Levites support workers for the Temple, and possibly most importantly, the musicians.

In some ways, this is problematic because we know that Levites were part of this group. One solution is that the Levites had grown comfortable in Babylon. The Tribes of Israel had been instructed to give their tithe to the Temple in order to care for the Priests and Levites, allowing them the time to minister in Temple. But the Tribes had often not brought the whole Tithe into the Temple, leaving the Priests and the Levites living off of very little. It is possible that the Levites, being freed from the responsibilities of the Temple, were supporting themselves and did not want to go back to the responsibility of the Temple supported by the Tithe.

But another interesting option is that when the rulers in Babylon had ordered the Levites to provide music during the exile (Psalm 137), the Levites had cut off the tips of their fingers making the playing of their instruments impossible. So as Ezra checks among the people and the priests, he finds Levites, but none that can play the necessary music of the Temple.

And without the Talents of the Levites, the Temple worship could not be restarted. The Levites were necessary to give their talents back to the community – and back to God.

Tomorrow’s Scripture Reading: Ezra 9