Day 261
God did not just bring the Israelites home. He blessed His kingdom by advancing it and allowing the Gentiles who turned their hearts and separated themselves from the pagan culture to join. God worked life out better for the Israelites and gave the Gentiles a chance to see, feel, and understand Him.
Zerubbabel was right in keeping those who mixed the worship of God with other gods from working on the temple. But in Ezra 6, there was another group: people who left the pagan ways in order to seek the Lord, and they sat at the Passover table with the Jews who returned. That is not a loophole. It was God. He allowed the Gentiles to learn from the Jews and turn to Him. He is full of love, patience, and grace. He makes room at the table for anyone who separates themselves from idols.
Who in your life looks mixed up with the world, and how can you tell the difference between someone who only wants a share in the work and someone who has truly left idols to seek the Lord?
The people left in the land of Judah, later called Samaritans, had mixed with other nations. They said they worshiped God, but they also worshiped other gods. Remember, Jeremiah wrote to the exiles to build houses in Babylon and seek the good of that city (Jeremiah 29). Cyrus of Persia let the Jews go back to Judah in 538 BC,and Zerubbabel was the appointed governor over those who returned. He turned down help from those mixed groups for political and spiritual reasons. He did not want the temple built with people who followed the Lord and other gods at the same time.
After Zerubbabel turned down the help, the neighboring areas then tried to stall the new temple. They discouraged the Jews, made them afraid, and bribed officials so the work would stop. The first return of exiles was in 538 BC. The altar was rebuilt soon after. The foundation was laid, then the work sat still for about 16 years. Darius took the throne in 522 BC. In his second year, 520 BC, God sent the prophets Haggai and Zechariah to encourage the work to start again. The temple was finished in 516 BC.
Cyrus had already ordered the temple rebuilt. Darius confirmed that order and even gave them the money to pay for it. The people who were upset were the local officials and settlers “Beyond the River,” the same ones who first offered to help. When the Jews who had come back said they could not join them, those neighbors worked to shut the project down.
They also wrote to Artaxerxes I. They said Jerusalem had always been rebellious, that the Jews were restoring foundations and walls and not just building a shrine, and that if the city was fortified again the Jews might stop paying tax, tribute, and duty. Then the king would lose money, control, and his hold on the west. He searched the records, saw that Jerusalem had rebelled before, which was why Babylon had conquered it, and he ordered the city work to stop. They did not have to hate the Jews. They just did not want a strong, walled city. Money and power drove the letter.
This was the restart; God is in charge of all nations, including Judah and Jerusalem. The prophets, Haggai and Zechariah, named the time to rebuild and stayed to help. This was when the book of Haggai started. Tattenai was the governor of the Trans-Euphrates (“Beyond the River”). He and other leaders wanted to know who authorized the rebuild. Darius had just seized the throne after a bloody war, and all of a sudden, here was a building project taking place in a rebellious city. Tattenai gave the Israelites the benefit of the doubt and did not shut down the building while he looked into it. He was diligently doing his job. The Jewish people did not hide that they had been in exile, did not hide that Cyrus gave them permission, and they also did not mention the prophets Haggai or Zechariah. They only presented themselves as restorers of the temple. Persian kings often loved to restore temples, so this fit their narrative.
He wrote a letter to Darius which was much different factually than the letter from chapter 4 smearing the Jews’reputation. He wrote that the Jews were building a temple to God, and that the work was diligent and fast. Then he quoted the Jewish people’s own answer about the rebuild: that they were building a house of the King of Israel, they had been deported by Nebuchadnezzar when they made God angry, but that Cyrus let them rebuild and gave them back the temple vessels that were taken as plunder, which Sheshbazzar the governor used to lay the foundation. Darius agreed that the temple could be rebuilt. He funded the building supplies and the daily offerings. He also told the officials to stay away from the rebuilding, and if they disobeyed his orders or if they defiled the temple, then a beam from their own house would be torn down, and they would be shish kabobbed on it. (This is not the first time in Scripture we read about wood being the tool of death: Haman and Mordecai in Esther 7:9-10, and Sisera killed with a wooden peg to the head in Judges 4-5.
Darius was not a Jew, so his generosity had brought loyalty and appeased the local gods. The king’s decree could not be altered; therefore, if it was changed, then that was considered treason. This showed the seriousness of the issue as well as his support for the work. God used an entire empire, working together to rebuild the temple. Now that the rebuilding was complete, they had a dedication and Passover. They were a small remnant but were considered a unit of all 12 tribes again. Now poor, and without the glory of the Lord filling the temple like in Solomon’s days, the Jews did what they could, with JOY! And those from the nations who had turned from idols celebrated beside them.
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