Ezra 3

Worship and Temple Foundation Restored

National Worship Established (1-6)

A year after the exiles arrived in Jerusalem and settled into their homes, in the seventh month, our September/October, they reassembled in Jerusalem—no doubt a pre-arranged meeting (1). The High Priest, Jeshua, and the governor, Zerubbabel, readied themselves to rebuild the Temple. First, they rebuilt the altar, using the Mosaic pattern for size and shape, in obedience to God (2).

Israel had no standing army and no military force; they were on the edge of the Persian Kingdom, fulfilling an edict of Cyrus, but their safety would not have been his primary concern. They started with the altar before all else because they feared their vulnerability as newcomers in the land. With such fear of their vulnerability, they appealed to Yahweh for protection by dedicating their whole lives to Him through the reinstitution of daily sacrifices (3). Israel had moved from Egypt to the wilderness and camped for 40 years, receiving the word of Yahweh through Moses. They had entered the land with military might but mostly with Yahweh going out before them. The exiles, however, returned to their land with no might for Yahweh to go before. All they had was 70 years without a temple or inheritance, but they did have the word of Yahweh. During those 70 years, Ezra, along with scribes, turned oral words and fragments of Scripture into the first edition of the Old Testament. In the wilderness of Sinai, Israel had the word through Moses; in the wilderness of Babylonian exile, Israel had the word through Ezra. Ezra and Israel learned that the power of God did not depend on military might but upon hearts devoted to Yahweh. Their protection did not form around their power and prowess but around Yahweh, to whom they had daily devoted their entire beings. Building a place to devote themselves ritually and daily to Yahweh became their priority.  

Next, they kept the Feast of Booths with all daily sacrifices required for that feast (Numbers 29:12-38).

The Feast of Booths was also known as the Feast of Tabernacles or by its Hebrew name, Sukkot. The celebration was the last feast of the year, celebrated at the end of the agricultural year during the grapes and olives harvest. This was a time to thank God for all His great provision and to pray for the coming rainy season, which lasted from October through March. Along with the Feast being a great tradition of celebration of thanks, the Feast was also designed to cause Israel to remember Yahweh's care of them in the wilderness, as they lived in tents or booths and as God provided for them supernaturally (Leviticus 23:33-43, especially verse 43).

The Feast of Booths was comprised of three celebrations:

• Day One: The Feast of Trumpets (Leviticus 23:23-25)

• Day Ten: The Day of Atonement (Leviticus 16:29; 23:26-32)

• Day Fifteen: The Festival of Booths, lasting seven days (Leviticus 23:33-42)

The Jews built the altar as prescribed in the Law (Exodus 20:24) and celebrated the Feast of Booths according to what was prescribed in the Law (4). They did not stop at the festivals; they also reestablished all the regular and new moon sacrifices. While they offered their offerings according to the Law, they did so voluntarily and with hearts willing to give Yahweh their very lives (5).

All of this was done before the Jews turned any focus on the Temple. The returned exiles placed their worship of Yahweh ahead of even rebuilding the site where worship would be centered (6).

We need to consider all of this history in the context of the lack of established security systems in homes or neighborhoods. The exiles were genuinely concerned for their safety and the protection of their homes, but they had also learned it was better to worship God than to focus on human logic. Instead of staying home and guarding their belongings, they gave themselves to worshiping Yahweh.

Laying the Foundation (7-9)

After the exiles gave themselves to Yahweh by offering burnt offerings, they next focused on the Temple, hiring tradesmen to build it. Then they purchased cedar from Tyre and Sidon, paying for it with agricultural products and with King Cyrus’s permission. The logs were brought down from the mountains of Lebanon to Tyre and Sidon, then floated in the Mediterranean Sea to Joppa, and finally dragged uphill to Jerusalem by animals  (7).

Seven months after rebuilding the altar, Jeshua the High Priest and Zerubbabel the governor appointed the Levites 21 years and older to supervise the work of rebuilding while “all who had come up to Jerusalem from captivity” served as the workforce. This “all who had come up” meant all the returned exiles volunteered; the people had a great dedication in the beginning to rebuild the Temple (8). Three families took to overseeing the Levite supervisors (9).

Celebrating the Foundation’s Completion (10-13)

The Jews finished the foundation and took a break to celebrate. The priests put on their sacred robes, picked up their trumpets and cymbals, and began to praise God according to the directives laid out by David. Again and again, the Jews followed the sacred text in their worship (10). The emphasis of the celebration was on Yahweh's goodness and faithful covenant love. The priests used Psalm 136 as their theme chorus for the event. As the celebration mounted, the people let out a great shout of praise because the foundation had been laid (11). 

In the middle of the celebration were some older Jews who had seen the Temple of Solomon as children, some 50 years before this. For the first time, those too old to work on the Temple but not too old to attend the celebration came to see the progress on the Temple. Those older Jews began to weep as loud as the celebratory shouting for one of two reasons. First, they may have wept because the foundation was a small replica of the former Temple, or maybe because they never imagined they would see the Temple being rebuilt again. In the first Exodus, the men were 500,000 strong; in the second Exodus, they were 50,000 strong. If one has ever been exiled from somewhere or someone well-loved for a long time, one might begin to understand the weeping. To recognize that they, only 50,000 strong, were home and rebuilding the Temple may have meant overwhelming joy; likely, they wept for this second reason (12). The loudness of the praise and weeping were indistinguishable, heard some distance away (13). 

Ezra 4

Letters

Adversaries to the Rebuilding of the Temple (1-5)

It took the completion of the foundation and subsequent shouts of celebration for the enemies of the returned exiles to begin their opposition. These adversaries approached Zerubbabel and the national leaders of the Jews and asked them to assist in building the Temple, claiming they had been worshiping Yahweh since the days of Esarhaddon. Esarhaddon was the king of Assyria after his father Sennacherib. Sennacherib defeated Israel and took most captive but left some in the land. Sennacherib then sent many Assyrians to migrate to Palestine. These immigrants eventually intermarried with Israelites and claimed to be monotheistic Yahweh-worshipers. It was all a lie because from the days of Esarhaddon, they had been polytheists (2 Kings 17:33), worshiping many gods (1-2).

The returned exiles needed to make friends and assuage any hostile neighbors; offending a potential nemesis was a great risk. If these pretend Yahweh-worshipers were allowed to help build the Temple, however, then their polytheistic (multi-god worship) would also have to be allowed a place of influence in the restoration of the worship of God’s people. This was unthinkable to Israel, for it was for this very reason they were exiled in the first place. Zerubbabel and the leaders saw through the ruse and forbade them to share in rebuilding but expressed their dedication and right to be the only ones involved in rebuilding the Temple as true Israelites and as commanded by the Persian ruler, Cyrus (3).

The people of the land, as they were called, discouraged the returned exiles in the building process by using two ploys:

• They made them afraid to work by likely sabotaging their supply lines and work sites or maybe even robbing those going to and from work at the site (4).

• They bribed officials to create all kinds of bureaucratic red tape for the workers to make it difficult to proceed with the construction.

This happened throughout the remaining reign of Cyrus and the reign of Cyrus's son Cambyses until the Jews lost all heart to work (5). It wasn’t until the reign of Darius that the temple work would resume (24).

The Letter to Darius (6-16)

The book of Ezra becomes a bit confusing here, as the author inserted examples of letters going back and forth between Persia and Palestine. These letters are out of chronological order. They are actual correspondence from a different time period.

It was during the reign of Ahasuerus (also called Xerxes or Artaxerxes), who reigned after Darius when these correspondences occurred (6).

So, the temple work that began during Cyrus's reign was frustrated, halted, restarted, and then finished during Darius’s reign.

The correspondence placed here in Ezra was written after Darius's reign and after the Temple had been built (7). The exiles returned to the land around 539 B.C. and began work on the foundation about 537 B.C. The work on the Temple essentially ceased in 520 B.C., meaning an approximate 17-year delay in which the following letter becomes the example of the slow process of straightening out the bureaucratic red tape in Persia. Haggai and Zechariah began to prophesy the work back into existence. The most important notation from this text is clear: faithfulness does not make opposition go away.

The letter was written in Aramaic by foreigners (Elamites and Babylonians) who had migrated and settled in Palestine before the rise of the Persian Empire. The Aramaic language was the language of the Assyrians and Babylonians, which came to displace Hebrew as the language of the Israelites during their captivity and became the mother tongue of Jesus (8-11).

The letter, in essence, was informing King Ahasuerus that the Jews were rebuilding not only their Temple, but also a wall around the city; thus, the city was being rebuilt as a fortress. The letter reported that the foundation to the walls was being finished (12). The king was warned that the Jews were building the fortress city to rebel against Persia in order not to pay tribute, customs, or tolls back to Persia (13).

Those writing the letter reminded Ahasuerus that they were devoted servants in covenant to the king. This was the meaning of the phrase, “We eat the salt of the palace”—salt being a symbol of their preserving loyalty (14). The writers then encouraged Ahasuerus to search the archives and be warned that the city had a history of seditiousness, and it was for that reason the city was laid to waste (15). The letter ended with their warning that if the construction were to continue, the city would no longer be under Persian jurisdiction (16). 

Ahasuerus' Response (17-23)

Ahasuerus sent an answer back to the foreigners living in Samaria. Ahasuerus made note that their letter had been read and completely understood (17-18). Ahasuerus had made a historical search and discovered that Jerusalem had at one time been a city just like his, receiving taxes from other nations, and then had also been in rebellion to nations that had conquered it (19-20).

Ahasuerus ordered the work on the city be stopped without delay, by force if necessary, so the rebellion would not grow (21-22).

The letter was read to the foreigners living in Samaria (the area north of Jerusalem), and they went and forced the Jews to stop their work on the wall (23). In Nehemiah, we learn these men went beyond the terms of the letter from Ahasuerus and demolished the walls, burning what had been constructed (Nehemiah 1:3).

Ezra Resumes the Storyline from Verse Six (24)

Ezra returned to his original story here, picking up where he left off in verse six, and reported that after a 16-year halt, the work on the Temple began again (24).

The reason for the insertion of the letter was to give a complete yet concise picture of what the Jews were up against and what a great miracle it was for Yahweh to navigate all circumstances so the Temple and city could be rebuilt.