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Ezra 4:1 World English Bible (WEB)

1 Now when the adversaries of Judah and Benjamin heard that the children of the captivity were building a temple to Yahweh, the God of Israel;

Cross Reference

Ezra 1:11 WEB

All the vessels of gold and of silver were five thousand and four hundred. All these did Sheshbazzar bring up, when they of the captivity were brought up from Babylon to Jerusalem.

1 Kings 5:4-5 WEB

But now Yahweh my God has given me rest on every side; there is neither adversary, nor evil occurrence. Behold, I purpose to build a house for the name of Yahweh my God, as Yahweh spoke to David my father, saying, Your son, whom I will set on your throne in your room, he shall build the house for my name.

1 Chronicles 22:9-10 WEB

Behold, a son shall be born to you, who shall be a man of rest; and I will give him rest from all his enemies round about; for his name shall be Solomon, and I will give peace and quietness to Israel in his days: he shall build a house for my name; and he shall be my son, and I will be his father; and I will establish the throne of his kingdom over Israel for ever.

Ezra 4:7-10 WEB

In the days of Artaxerxes wrote Bishlam, Mithredath, Tabeel, and the rest of his companions, to Artaxerxes king of Persia; and the writing of the letter was written in the Syrian [character], and set forth in the Syrian [language]. Rehum the chancellor and Shimshai the scribe wrote a letter against Jerusalem to Artaxerxes the king in this sort: then [wrote] Rehum the chancellor, and Shimshai the scribe, and the rest of their companions, the Dinaites, and the Apharsathchites, the Tarpelites, the Apharsites, the Archevites, the Babylonians, the Shushanchites, the Dehaites, the Elamites, and the rest of the nations whom the great and noble Osnappar brought over, and set in the city of Samaria, and in the rest [of the country] beyond the River, and so forth.

Ezra 6:16 WEB

The children of Israel, the priests, and the Levites, and the rest of the children of the captivity, kept the dedication of this house of God with joy.

Ezra 6:19-20 WEB

The children of the captivity kept the Passover on the fourteenth [day] of the first month. For the priests and the Levites had purified themselves together; all of them were pure: and they killed the Passover for all the children of the captivity, and for their brothers the priests, and for themselves.

Ezra 7:9 WEB

For on the first [day] of the first month began he to go up from Babylon; and on the first [day] of the fifth month came he to Jerusalem, according to the good hand of his God on him.

Ezra 10:7 WEB

They made proclamation throughout Judah and Jerusalem to all the children of the captivity, that they should gather themselves together to Jerusalem;

Ezra 10:16 WEB

The children of the captivity did so. Ezra the priest, [with] certain heads of fathers' [houses], after their fathers' houses, and all of them by their names, were set apart; and they sat down in the first day of the tenth month to examine the matter.

Nehemiah 4:1-11 WEB

But it happened that when Sanballat heard that we were building the wall, he was angry, and took great indignation, and mocked the Jews. He spoke before his brothers and the army of Samaria, and said, What are these feeble Jews doing? will they fortify themselves? will they sacrifice? will they make an end in a day? will they revive the stones out of the heaps of rubbish, seeing they are burned? Now Tobiah the Ammonite was by him, and he said, Even that which they are building, if a fox go up, he shall break down their stone wall. Hear, our God; for we are despised: and turn back their reproach on their own head, and give them up for a spoil in a land of captivity; and don't cover their iniquity, and don't let their sin be blotted out from before you; for they have provoked [you] to anger before the builders. So we built the wall; and all the wall was joined together to half [the height] of it: for the people had a mind to work. But it happened that when Sanballat, Tobiah, the Arabians, the Ammonites, and the Ashdodites heard that the repairing of the walls of Jerusalem went forward, [and] that the breaches began to be stopped, then they were very angry; and they conspired all of them together to come and fight against Jerusalem, and to cause confusion therein. But we made our prayer to our God, and set a watch against them day and night, because of them. Judah said, The strength of the bearers of burdens is decayed, and there is much rubbish; so that we are not able to build the wall. Our adversaries said, They shall not know, neither see, until we come into the midst of them, and kill them, and cause the work to cease.

Daniel 5:13 WEB

Then was Daniel brought in before the king. The king spoke and said to Daniel, Are you that Daniel, who are of the children of the captivity of Judah, whom the king my father brought out of Judah?

Daniel 9:25 WEB

Know therefore and discern, that from the going forth of the commandment to restore and to build Jerusalem to the Anointed One,{"Anointed One" can also be translated "Messiah" (same as "Christ").} the prince, shall be seven weeks, and sixty-two weeks: it shall be built again, with street and moat, even in troubled times.

1 Corinthians 16:9 WEB

for a great and effective door has opened to me, and there are many adversaries.

Commentary on Ezra 4 Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible


CHAPTER 4

Ezr 4:1-6. The Building Hindered.

1. the adversaries of Judah and Benjamin—that is, strangers settled in the land of Israel.

2. we seek your God, as ye do; and we do sacrifice unto him since the days of Esar-haddon … which brought us up hither—A very interesting explanation of this passage has been recently obtained from the Assyrian sculptures. On a large cylinder, deposited in the British Museum, there is inscribed a long and perfect copy of the annals of Esar-haddon, in which the details are given of a large deportation of Israelites from Palestine, and a consequent settlement of Babylonian colonists in their place. It is a striking confirmation of the statement made in this passage. Those Assyrian settlers intermarried with the remnant of Israelite women, and their descendants, a mongrel race, went under the name of Samaritans. Though originally idolaters, they were instructed in the knowledge of God, so that they could say, "We seek your God"; but they served Him in a superstitious way of their own (see on 2Ki 17:26-34, 41).

3. But Zerubbabel and Jeshua … said … Ye have nothing to do with us to build an house unto our God—This refusal to co-operate with the Samaritans, from whatever motives it sprang, was overruled by Providence for ultimate good; for, had the two peoples worked together, familiar acquaintanceship and intermarriage would have ensued, and the result might have been a relapse of the Jews into idolatry. Most certainly, confusion and obscurity in the genealogical evidence that proved the descent of the Messiah would have followed; whereas, in their hostile and separate condition, they were jealous observers of each other's proceedings, watching with mutual care over the preservation and integrity of the sacred books, guarding the purity and honor of the Mosaic worship, and thus contributing to the maintenance of religious knowledge and truth.

4, 5. Then the people of the land weakened the hands of the people of Judah, &c.—Exasperated by this repulse, the Samaritans endeavored by every means to molest the workmen as well as obstruct the progress of the building; and, though they could not alter the decree which Cyrus had issued regarding it, yet by bribes and clandestine arts indefatigably plied at court, they labored to frustrate the effects of the edict. Their success in those underhand dealings was great; for Cyrus, being frequently absent and much absorbed in his warlike expeditions, left the government in the hands of his son Cambyses, a wicked prince, and extremely hostile to the Jews and their religion. The same arts were assiduously practised during the reign of his successor, Smerdis, down to the time of Darius Hystaspes. In consequence of the difficulties and obstacles thus interposed, for a period of twenty years, the progress of the work was very slow.

6. in the reign of Ahasuerus, in the beginning of his reign, wrote they … an accusation—Ahasuerus was a regal title, and the king referred to was successor of Darius, the famous Xerxes.

Ezr 4:7-24. Letter to Artaxerxes.

7. in the days of Artaxerxes wrote Bishlam, &c.—The three officers named are supposed to have been deputy governors appointed by the king of Persia over all the provinces subject to his empire west of the Euphrates.

the Syrian tongue—or Aramæan language, called sometimes in our version, Chaldee. This was made use of by the Persians in their decrees and communications relative to the Jews (compare 2Ki 18:26; Isa 36:11). The object of their letter was to press upon the royal notice the inexpediency and danger of rebuilding the walls of Jerusalem. They labored hard to prejudice the king's mind against that measure.

9. the Dinaites—The people named were the colonists sent by the Babylonian monarch to occupy the territory of the ten tribes. "The great and noble Asnappar" was Esar-haddon. Immediately after the murder of Sennacherib, the Babylonians, Medes, Armenians, and other tributary people seized the opportunity of throwing off the Assyrian yoke. But Esar-haddon having, in the thirtieth year of his reign, recovered Babylon and subdued the other rebellious dependents, transported numbers of them into the waste cities of Samaria, most probably as a punishment of their revolt [Hales].

12. the Jews which came up from thee to us—The name "Jews" was generally used after the return from the captivity, because the returning exiles belonged chiefly to the tribes of Judah and Benjamin. Although the edict of Cyrus permitted all who chose to return, a permission of which some of the Israelites availed themselves, the great body who went to settle in Judea were the men of Judah.

13. toll, tribute, and custom—The first was a poll tax; the second was a property tax; the third the excise dues on articles of trade and merchandise. Their letter, and the edict that followed, commanding an immediate cessation of the work at the city walls, form the exclusive subject of narrative at Ezr 4:7-23. And now from this digression [the historian] returns at Ezr 4:24 to resume the thread of his narrative concerning the building of the temple.

14. we have maintenance from the king's palace—literally, "we are salted with the salt of the palace." "Eating a prince's salt" is an Oriental phrase, equivalent to "receiving maintenance from him."

24. Then ceased the work of the house of God—It was this occurrence that first gave rise to the strong religious antipathy between the Jews and the Samaritans, which was afterwards greatly aggravated by the erection of a rival temple on Mount Gerizim.