There is a relationship here between Ezra's the kind of person that Ezra is (pious), and the kind of person that God uses. Certainly, God is sovereign in those whom he raises up, but there is a relationship between the sovereignty of God and our responsibility. Ezra 7:9–10 reads:
Terry L. JohnsonThe good hand of his God was upon him for Ezra had set his heart to study the law of the Lord.Ralph Davis' comment on this in his very brief study of Ezra and Nehemiah, is thatthis is a warning against sloth and carelessness and a sloppy view of grace.In other words, Ezra and we cannot fall into a kind of passivity and fatalism. That it is all up to God, as though there were no relationship between our choices and his choices. Ezra committed himself, and as a committed person God raises him up to use him. Now certainly, we would believe that God initiates that spirit of commitment and devotion, so that it is not something that arises out of the goodness and the virtue of his own heart. Nevertheless, the text is establishing a relationship between Ezra's commitments and his availability to being used.1
9 For on the first day of the first month he began to go up from Babylonia, and on the first day of the fifth month he came to Jerusalem, for the good hand of his God was on him.