This volume, like each in the Brazos Theological Commentary on the Bible, is designed to serve the church through aid in preaching, teaching, study groups, and so forth and demonstrate the continuing intellectual and practical viability of theological interpretation of the Bible. - Publisher. This commentary employs the template of "holy people and holy land" that Michael Dauphinais and I put forward as a way of understanding the unity withing diversity of the biblical story from Genesis to Revelation. The commentary suggests that the books of Ezra and Nehemiah are best appropriated and understood in the light of other biblical texts. My commentary is distinguished by how it approaches the meaning of history itself : the non-chronological relationships through which past, present, and future human beings share in different ways in the same realities. - Introduction.