Ezra 4:1-6 English Standard Version Adversaries Oppose the Rebuilding 4 Now when the adversaries of Judah and Benjamin heard that the returned exiles were building a temple to the LORD, the God of Israel, 2 they approached Zerubbabel and the heads of fathers' houses and said to them, “Let us build with you, for we worship your God as you do, and we have been sacrificing to him ever since the days of Esarhaddon king of Assyria who brought us here.” 3 But Zerubbabel, Jeshua, and the rest of the heads of fathers' houses in Israel said to them, “You have nothing to do with us in building a house to our God; but we alone will build to the LORD, the God of Israel, as King Cyrus the king of Persia has commanded us.” 4 Then the people of the land discouraged the people of Judah and made them afraid to build 5 and bribed counselors against them to frustrate their purpose, all the days of Cyrus king of Persia, even until the reign of Darius king of Persia. 6 And in the reign of Ahasuerus, in the beginning of his reign, they wrote an accusation against the inhabitants of Judah and Jerusalem. Even though Ezra and the Exiles were sent back with a proclamation that was made known to the "whole world" (all of the world that Cyrus ruled, which was a vast empire) that this was being done with his blessing, at his direction, and all of his authority and resources backing it, there would be people that had taken advantage of the fact that the Twelve Tribes were in exile and they would assume they could take their inheritance and possession of the Land for themselves--that somehow they LORD had forsaken and abandoned them, no longer loved them, and would give their blessings to others. However, the LORD had made an eternal, unconditional covenant with His people where He swore by Himself, because there was nothing or no one greater that He could swear by. He would love them with and everlasting, unfailing love--even when they weren't lovely, and even when they behaved badly, and even when they were in outright rebellion against Him, He would still love them and not break His covenant with them--though sometimes as part of His covenant love, He would withhold blessings from them so they would understand that obedience led to the LORD's best and disobedience gets us in all kinds of trouble, and the LORD's covenant people should both love and obey His commandments. These "enemies" hated God's Law, God's people, His covenant with His people, and they hated the LORD Himself (probably because they hated that the LORD had chosen the Hebrew people by Election and had not chosen them--yet they missed the fact that anyone could become a member of God's covenant family by "Adoption," even in the Old Testament--see Rahab as an example of this).
These enemies came to Zerubbabel, the political head of the exiles that returned to Jerusalem and the heads of the families that were also in leadership with him and asked them if they could join the project to help rebuild the Temple of the LORD claiming, though they were Gentiles that had been relocated into the Land when the northern ten tribes were taken into exile, that they too worshiped the LORD and had been sacrificing to Him every day--this is somewhat true, but these are "Samaritans" (that is what they will be called later). My understanding from reading the other passages related to this people is that these people were only interested in a faith that got them to the point of removing God's curse and to experience the peace and blessing of His covenant, but they weren't really interested in having their lives changed and transformed or knowing God more deeply, nor were they concerned with being His agents to help Him accomplish His mission of salvation and redemption. They wanted to claim that the blessing and birthright came simply from living in the Land and had nothing to do with God's Election. While God always welcomed Gentiles into the family, that wasn't going to change His plan that He had a special purpose for Jesus to come as a Jewish man born under the Law to be obedient to the Law so that He could save His people (the Jews) and the whole world from their sins. These Samaritans didn't get that and having them "help" with this project would mean they would try to claim ownership and take credit for it. We see their heart that when they were excluded from having any part in this, they built their own copy of the Temple of Temple in the area where Jesus met the woman at the well--that is why she was interested in having a conversation with Jesus about where was the right place to go worship the LORD and Jesus plainly tells her, "You worship what you do not know, but the Jews worship what they do know." (The LORD had revealed Himself to the Jews in ways that He had not revealed Himself to the Samaritans, and the Samaritans didn't like that and would not humble themselves to come to the texts of the books of History, Poetry, and the Major and Minor Prophets to understand the full revelation of the LORD to His people). They told them to go away, that they had no part in this project that was given to them by the LORD and at the command of King Cyrus, king of Persia. That should have been the end of it, but it wasn't. They tried to use all other types of techniques to discourage the people who were being obedient (maybe hoping the LORD would send them back into exile), bribing political leaders to try to frustrate the plans of the LORD and King Cyrus (most likely trying to keep the local government officials from giving the exiles the materials and resources they needed, even though King Cyrus had made a proclamation saying to give them whatever they needed). When the days of King Cyrus ended, and the days of Darius, king of the Medes and the Persians, began, these enemies thought they had their opening--Darius probably wouldn't know anything of Cyrus's proclamation, and the project had been going on for quite some time and had cost the empire a lot of resources. It also probably wouldn't make sense to Darius if he probably didn't share the same love for the LORD and His people as Cyrus (though we'll see how he would come to love the LORD and His people in the book of Daniel). In the reign of Ahasuerus (the king that we see in the book of Esther), they wrote letters of accusation to the king regarding the inhabitants of Judah and Jerusalem, trying to turn the empire's favor away from the LORD's people. We see some of these political tactics at work in the books of the Bible that I mentioned (and we'll see more in the book of Nehemiah as well). We know of King Darius's advisors in the book of Daniel that persuaded him that no one should worship any other god other than the king for 30 days, for they said, “We shall not find any ground for complaint against this Daniel unless we find it in connection with the law of his God.” (Daniel 6:5). Whether this was the direct influence of the bribes of these enemies of the LORD or not, the same spirit was at work in the king's court as was here in the area near Jerusalem. Also, we know the story of Esther and Haman tries to devise a plot for King Ahasuerus to exterminate all the Jews that is upset, and Haman is ordered to be hanged on his own gallows. This is the story of the feast of Purim where what seems like the random roll of the dice (part of the story where they selected the date for the execution to occur by casting a lot using dice) was directed by the LORD and turned to favor the LORD and His people. It's quite the story of irony. All this is going on in the background while Ezra is trying to rebuild the Temple--a project that is taking a long time with few people working on it. This section gives a very broad overview of the entire history of the politics of the first trip that Ezra took back to Jerusalem with the Exiles. You may find this timeline of the book of Ezra with cross-references to other events in other books of the Bible helpful: Chronology of Ezra | ESV.org. The events of the book of Esther happen in-between Ezra 5 and Ezra 6 (when there is no work being done on the Temple). I'll admit it's tricky to try to figure out which king is being talked about in certain places because their proper names are almost never used--instead titles are used over and over again and it's more complicated that they had different names and titles in different areas of their empire that spoke different languages and to confuse things even more, the Greeks came up with their own names for them, and much of what we know of the Old Testament is from the Greek Septuagint. The events are about real people and they actually happened how the Bible says they did. Since the books of Ezra and Nehimah cover a long period of time they can somewhat help us organize all these facts but suffice it to say that they overlap with the events of Esther and Daniel and some work of the Minor Prophets. Don't worry if you can't make sense of all of this right now and can't square everything in your mind with these stories running in parallel. For now get the big picture that during this time of Exile, the LORD is still loving and blessing His people and Satan is still opposing that work in every way possible--whether that be through the Comments are closed.
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Daniel WestfallI will mostly use this space for recording my "journal" from my daily devotions as I hope to encourage others to read the Bible along with me and to leave a legacy for others. Archives
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