Ezra (Priest living at the time of Exile and Return)

The priest-scribe who leads a second return from exile and reads the Law aloud to a weeping crowd (Ezra 7-8, Nehemiah 8). Josephus's chapter on the Persian king Xerxes' favor toward the Jews is the political backdrop that makes Ezra's whole mission possible in the first place.

Two priests named Ezra appear in the Old Testament. The famous one led a second wave of exiles back from Babylon to Jerusalem and is remembered as the scribe who restored the law's central place in Jewish worship after the exile, reading it aloud to the assembled people in Nehemiah 8. A different priest by the same name is listed simply among those who returned earlier under Zerubbabel.