I am using the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Today, I am reading and commenting on Ezra 3-5.

As soon as the Returned Exiles got themselves settled into their new homes, they rebuilt the altar and began offering sacrifices upon it.  The following spring the Returned Exiles began rebuilding the Temple.   When they completed the foundation of the Temple the people who had been living in the land during the Exile claimed a stake in the rebuilding of the Temple.  The local people claimed to have worshiped God since they were settled in the land by the Assyrians.  I have always read this passage and thought that the Returned Exiles should not have so bluntly rejected the offer of assistance.   However, today it struck me, if the locals had been worshiping God and offering Him sacrifices for all of these years, why didn’t they rebuild the Temple before this?  Further, as soon as their help was rejected the locals began working to disrupt the building project.  In fact, after Cyrus died, the locals reached out to the King of Persia and slandered the Returned Exiles by implying that they had begun restoring Jerusalem behind the back of the Persian authorities. 

Reading between the lines here we learn an important lesson about working with non-believers to carry out God’s will.  The locals offered to help the Returned Exiles, but considering the ways in which they immediately began working against the project when their help was rejected we see that their offer was not sincere.  Perhaps they wanted to be involved so as to have a say in how worship was carried out in the new Temple.  Or perhaps they were planning to frustrate the plans from the inside.  The key factor here is that the locals did not share the priorities of the Returned Exiles.  When non-believers offer to partner with believers to accomplish some goal, we must be very careful about accepting their aid because they do not share our desire to do God’s will.  Their reasons for seeking goals which they may have in common with us will be different from ours and they will attempt to redirect our efforts to further their other goals.

As I mentioned the local government officials not associated with the Returned Exiles had sent a letter to the King of Persia and received a reply ordering a halt to rebuilding the city of Jerusalem.  Initially, this also caused the Returned Exiles to cease work on the Temple.  However, after Darius took the throne, the prophets Haggai and Zechariah inspired the people to resume work on the Temple.  I find this interesting.  When the local government officials received orders from the King of Persia to halt the rebuilding, they intervened with sufficient force to stop the work.  However, when the rebuilding resumed, the local government officials refrained from using force to stop work.  The passage does not tell us what had changed besides who was King of Persia.  I suspect that a significant factor was that Darius was a king more in the mold of Cyrus, while the two kings who reigned in between ruled more with an iron-fist (incidentally, both of their reigns were relatively short).  If all parties were aware of this change in attitude at the top, the Returned Exiles would have been more willing to stand up for themselves and the local officials less willing to initiate a violent confrontation.  Under the intermediary kings, both parties would have been aware that imperial forces were likely to back up such a show of force.  Under Darius, the Returned Exiles would have had reason to believe they would get a chance to argue their side before imperial forces acted.  Additionally, it appears that someone among the Returned Exiles produced a copy of Cyrus’ decree authorizing their return.  It appears that the local officials suspected the copy was a forgery and hoped to use that as leverage on their side over the Returned Exiles