Ezra is a man of fixed purpose. He set his heart. He is focused. He is determined. He is consumed with his passion to study the law of the Lord. He wants to know God's Word. He believes it is God's Word, and since it is God's Word it is worth knowing. It is something to study and be devoted to. It is something to focus on and be determined about, to be consumed with. He has a fixed purpose: he set his heart to study. Literally what it says is to seek and some of the translations reflect that:
to seek the law of the Lord.That is, to seek the knowledge of it, and hence it is translated to study that law; to know that law. To understand it accurately and faithfully. Then it says to practice, literally to do it. In other words, he seeks not merely an academic or intellectual knowledge of God's Word, but he wants to know what it means practically. He wants to know what we are to do; how we are to live; what it is that God requires of us in terms of our moral practice and religious practice. What is God's expectation? What is God's desire? What is it that we must do to please God? That is his fixed purpose: to study and to do that which God commands in his Word.It is no accident that Ezra is going to be used. He is a man of fixed purpose to study, to practice, and then to teach. He has this zeal for others to know as well; to teach God's statutes and his ordinances in Israel. He is not content just with knowing for his own sake and practicing for his own sake, but to teach others so that they will know the truth and so that they will then practice that truth as well. Is this not the great need of our church today? That God would raise up ministers, young men who are of fixed purpose, determined to set their hearts to study, practice, and teach God's Word. We are in need of a generation of Biblicists—those who are devoted to the study of God's Word in depth, who have integrity, whose lives are consistent with that Word, and who are determined not just to know, but to practice and actually do and live out what the Bible says. They teach what they live and live what they teach. They are eager, and as it were, restless to make that truth known.1
Terry L. Johnson
10 For Ezra had set his heart to study the Law of the LORD, and to do it and to teach his statutes and rules in Israel.