“Then arose Jeshua the son of Jozadak, with his fellow priests, and Zerubbabel the son of Shealtiel with his kinsmen, and they built the altar of the God of Israel, to offer burnt offerings on it, as it is written in the Law of Moses the man of God.”
Ezra 3:2 ESV
This rather unassuming verse is amazing.
Jeshua (or Joshua) is the Aramaic version of the name of Jesus. He is the high priest for the temple they are about to build.
Zerubbabel the son of Shealtiel is the ancestor of Joseph, (of the house and lineage of David), who will marry a young woman named Mary, (Matt. 1:12-16).
These two men will show up a lot in Ezra, Nehemiah, Haggai and Zechariah.
In fact – PRO TIP! In your Bible at the start of Ezra, write a note to study it together with:
- Nehemiah
- Haggai
- Zechariah
And in each of those books put a note to remind you to include the others. They all work together to create a picture of life for the returned exiles.
So the exiles get to Jerusalem and build an altar just in time to celebrate the Festival of Booths / Sukkot / Tabernacles.
Do you remember how we read through chapters and chapters of Israel’s history? Did you realize we never once read an account of them observing this festival? There’s a note in 2 Chron. 8:13 that Solomon provided the sacrifices for the festivals, and it mentions Tabernacles, but we never actually read a single account of it being observed in Israel’s history until now.
It’s likely, that in their past apostasy, the keeping of most of the festivals had been sorely lacking. And they couldn’t have kept the festivals if they wanted to during the Exile; no temple in which to make the sacrifices.
The band of returned exiles in Jerusalem don’t have a temple yet either, but they DO have an altar and a high priest. It feels like they are almost anxious to keep the Law now that they have been given a second chance by Yahweh.
It took a couple years for them to establish themselves in the land and prepare to build the 2nd Temple. Zerubbabel and Jeshua lead the project and they have a special ceremony when the foundation was laid.
I LOVE that they sang praises to the LORD “according to the directions of David, King of Israel.” They had to have done some homework reading the Psalms and the books of the Kings. They reached back 450 years into their past to revisit and revive the spiritual foundation of their nation. We might learn something from that.
So here they are, as scripturally correct as they possibly can, building an altar, observing the Festival of Tabernacles, and then laying the foundation for a new temple. This is SUCH a contrast from the behavior of the nation before the Babylonian exile! It’s amazing what that period of correction and discipline did!
Even with the financial backing of Cyrus and having been given a good bit of treasure, this temple is much more modest than the golden marvel that was Solomon’s Temple. (We simply cannot get our heads around how insanely rich David and Solomon were) The foundation stone must’ve been telling in its size and cut and type. It wasn’t the fine white stone quarried and cut by the expert Sidonian craftsmen. The new temple would be made of sturdy white limestone, good, but cut by lesser craftsmen. And the very oldest among them who saw Solomon’s temple as small children, they realize how their children and grandchildren will never know the mind-blowing splendor and national pride that belonged to the former city of Jerusalem in her glory. They realize that the glory days are not coming back and they weep. Even as the younger ones cheer.
😒 And then the Karens from the neighborhood notice the Jews have a little building project going on and take it upon themselves to report it to the HOA.
Yup. Pretty much.
MEET THE KARENS
The name “Karen” has come to describe a woman (usually white and middle-aged) who behaves with a sense of entitlement and who weaponizes authority; intimidating and threatening those who do not abide by “the rules” and throwing a tantrum when they disregard her.
I did a little searching online and, apparently, this is the original idea:
I’m sure we’ve all encountered a person who makes it her business to make mountains out of mole-hills.
In case you’re a little older, here’s an original Karen personality from a beloved old TV show:
That basically describes the group of people in Ezra 4 who show up out of nowhere and invite themselves to help build the temple to Yahweh. They claim to have been worshiping Yahweh “since the days of Esarhaddon, King of Assyria who brought us here.”
We’ve read about these people before.
“The king of Assyria transported groups of people from Babylon, Cuthah, Avva, Hamath, and Sepharvaim and resettled them in the towns of Samaria, replacing the people of Israel. They took possession of Samaria and lived in its towns. But since these foreign settlers did not worship the Lord when they first arrived, the Lord sent lions among them, which killed some of them. So a message was sent to the king of Assyria: “The people you have sent to live in the towns of Samaria do not know the religious customs of the God of the land. He has sent lions among them to destroy them because they have not worshiped him correctly.” The king of Assyria then commanded, “Send one of the exiled priests back to Samaria. Let him live there and teach the new residents the religious customs of the God of the land.” So one of the priests who had been exiled from Samaria returned to Bethel and taught the new residents how to worship the Lord.
These new residents worshiped the Lord, but they also appointed from among themselves all sorts of people as priests to offer sacrifices at their places of worship. And though they worshiped the Lord, they continued to follow their own gods according to the religious customs of the nations from which they came.”
2 Kings 17:24-28, 32-33 NLT
These people are NOT children of Abraham.
They are a mishmash of very bad people. The passage in 2 Kings includes details of how some of them even practiced child sacrifice.
Now, since one of the exiled “priests” from Bethel had been sent to live among them, it’s possible that there was a teeny bit of Hebrew DNA among them. Perhaps his family intermarried with them. But he may or may not have been even a Levite, let alone a descendant of Aaron. Recall that the worship at Bethel had involved a golden calf and no real regard for the scriptures.
This would be a good time to note that a lot has changed in 70 years. This is what the land looks like now:
Idumea is a group of mainly Edomites (Idum/Edom, to-may-to / to-mah-to). They intermarried with a few of the poorest Jews who were in the land after the fall of Jerusalem. They moved into the territory that once belonged to southern Judah. Ashdod and Gaza are Philistine.
Samaria is populated with these non-Jewish people who were taught to add (a probably very messed up version of) Yahweh to their pantheon of gods. They were told to offer Him sacrifices and observe the Sabbath and that would keep Him happy.
Josephus records that in the time of Antiochus Epiphanes, the Samaritans had a temple on Mount Gerizzim where they sacrificed to Yahweh and they said they had descended from people who had observed the Sabbath and had been placed there as a colony by the Medes and Persians. So it became an even more mixed up melting pot of people but they still claimed some connection to Yahweh and the Jewish people.
But when the Samaritans saw how badly Antiochus was persecuting the Jews, they wrote to Antiochus (addressing him as a god), denied ANY connection with the Jews. They claimed to be descended from the Sidonians and asked permission to rename the temple on Mount Gerizzim to “the Temple of Jupiter Hellenius.” They begged Antiochus to leave them alone so they could be good little workers to increase his revenue from their “quiet occupation.” Insufferable!
I suspect that THIS was the reason that the Jews HATE the Samaritans by the time we get to the NT. The Samaritans kowtowed to the Hitler of the Intertestamental Period. Probably also why the Jews refused to recognize the Samaritans as having any Jewish decent and refused to have any dealings with them. I always heard preachers say that the Samaritans in the NT were “half Jews.” I dunno. Sounds to me like they were Gentile settlers who did just enough Jewish worship to appease the local Jewish God.
😒 And they were Karens.
Right. AND they were Karens.
They demanded to “speak to the manager” and wrote a letter to the king complaining about the Jews building the temple and how it would lead to rebellion and wickedness and total devastation.
🙄 Karens also tend to be overly dramatic.
But Jerusalem DID have a pretty bad reputation and the historical records of other lands proved it. I can imagine the Samaritans huffing up to the construction site, arrogantly waving their letter from the king that ordered the work to stop.
So the Jews had to stop rebuilding the temple and the city. For YEARS.
It took 19 years to build the temple because of all the waiting.
I think sometimes our lives can feel like that. The returned exiles had a word from the LORD saying that Jerusalem and the temple would be rebuilt. He freed them from Babylon to do it. So they take this big step for God and they get started with open doors and confidence and God’s miraculous favor shining on them. Then all of sudden, it stops.
They can’t do what they are called to do. They’re stuck in bureaucratic red tape as YEARS go by. The older ones who wept at the laying of the foundation have been laid to rest. They never saw the work completed. The younger ones who were so exuberant to start the work are now busy raising growing families and doing the daily grind.
The worksite is an embarrassment. Half-built block walls. Piles of stone and timber gradually hauled off to be used for other projects. But they’re afraid to ignore the rules and take big risks and just build it without permission. A million things could go wrong with that. So the work just sits there in indefinite limbo. It feels like a failure. A colossal failure. Where has the favor of the LORD gone? Has He written them off? Is He finished with them?
I think not.
To The Reader 