7:11 king Artaxerxes. This king was the successor to king Ahasuerus, who was king at the time of Esther and Mordecai (Esther 1:1). Thus the events described in the book of Esther took place in the approximate sixty years between Ezra 6, when the temple is completed, and Ezra 7, when Ezra himself first comes on the scene.

7:11 scribe of the words. One of the functions of Ezra, and no doubt of other scribes, was to “inscribe,” or copy, the revealed Scriptures, to make them continually available generation after generation, to God’s people.