Keepers of the Covenant

Title: Keepers of the Covenant
Author: Lynn Austin
Series: The Restoration Chronicles, book 2
Major Themes: Israel, Babylon, Persia, Esther, Ezra, Jerusalem
Synopsis: Ezra has only one desire, to study and teach the Torah—but he is thrust into leadership of his people when disaster threatens them.

I am thoroughly enjoying The Restoration Chronicles. I thought the Chronicles of the Kings series was great—but I’m enjoying this series even more. Lynn Austin has brought Bible stories vividly to life, and I won’t read those accounts the same way again. Keepers of the Covenant helped me see the story of Esther in a new way.

Ezra had spent all his life in Babylon, and since he was a boy he has been studying the Torah with all his might. Now, suddenly, his comfortable scholarly life has been disrupted. An edict has arrived from the king in Susa that every one of the Jews is to be slaughtered on a particular day in the month of Adar. What can they do? Is there any hope of escape? Ezra searched the Torah even more thoroughly, hoping to find a reason for the annihilation of his people, or a way to escape.

Reuben, a young boy in a village near Babylon, helped his father in their forge. They began to secretly make weapons so their people could defend themselves, and when a second edict arrived permitting them to do so, they made the weapons openly. When the battle ended with disaster for Reuben’s family, the boy was embittered and turned his back on the God of his father.

Amina lived in a small Edomite village near Bethlehem. Rejected by her father because she was a cripple, she found acceptance with a Jewish woman at the market—but then her father led the attack on the Jews on the 13th of Adar. Disaster struck, and she found herself homeless. 

Years later, Ezra came to the conviction that the Jews who still lived in exile must return to Jerusalem. How could they, though? Immigration had been forbidden after the initial return when Cyrus came to the throne. As a leader of his people, he felt responsible for their spiritual well-being, but could he possibly find a way for them to leave Babylon?

What a story! Even though I have read these stories in the Bible many times, from the books of Esther and Ezra, Keepers of the Covenant helped me to see things I hadn’t thought about before. For example: It hadn’t occurred to me, for some reason, that some of the Jews would have died on the 13th of Adar when they were defending themselves from the people who were trying to annihilate them. I also hadn’t thought about what it meant that God protected the gold and silver donated to God’s house by the king from bandits on the way from Babylon to Jerusalem when Ezra led a caravan. I loved seeing how God worked in people’s hearts to make them more like Himself. Ezra’s observation that “It was easy to rise up in faith and heroism when we faced a clear-cut enemy. It’s much harder to resist the enemy of gradualism and assimilation, much harder to maintain a passion for God when we’re bogged down in the daily routine of life.” really struck home. That’s what we face in our culture today. I also had to chuckle at some of the descriptions of Ezra—I think the author was describing my husband! I wish I would be a bit more like his wife.

WARNING: Chapter 4: Description of killing animals. Chapter 5: Men threatening murder and rape. Chapters 13-19: Battles, men injured and killed, women trampled and killed. Chapter 26: Boy kidnapped at knifepoint, threatened. Chapter 28: Fight, men injured/killed. Chapter 30: Woman giving birth. Chapter 33: Drunkenness, mention of prostitutes. Chapter 49: Edomite festival, young people pairing off and going into the shadows together, a kiss between lovers.

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Related posts:

Return to Me Song of Redemption The Strength of His Hand Faith of My Fathers