After the return to Jerusalem, the first care of Zerubbabel and the high priest Jeshua was to raise the altar for the sacrifices, and to gather together the offerings of the chiefs of the fathers for the reconstruction of the temple.
“They gave money also unto the masons, and to the carpenters; and meat and drink, and oil, unto them of Sidon and to them of Tyre, to bring cedar trees from Lebanon to the sea of Joppa, according to the grant that they had of Cyrus, king of Persia. Now in the second year of their coming into the house of God at Jerusalem, in the second month, began Zerubbabel, son of Shealtiel, and Jeshua, the son of Jozadak, and the remnant of their brethren the priests and the Levites, and all they that were come out of the captivity unto Jerusalem; and appointed the Levites from twenty years old and upward, to set forward the work of the house of the Lord.… And when the builders laid the foundation of the temple of the Lord, they set priests in their apparel with trumpets, and the Levites the sons of Asaph with cymbals, to praise the Lord, after the ordinance of David, king of Israel” (Ezra iii. 8, 10).
In this, the Book of Ezra describes an event which Josephus places in the time of Darius, and which shows that in the narrow zeal of the sacerdotal aristocracy, the pride of race had as large a share as religious intolerance. We remember that after the destruction of the kingdom of Israel, populations from Media and Chaldea, principally Kutheans, had been established by Esarhaddon in the land of Samaria, so as to replace the Israelites transported over the Euphrates. According to the Book of Kings, these strange colonists adopted the God of their new country. They feared the Lord and served their own gods after the manner of the nations out of which they had been brought to Samaria.
The descendants of these colonists having mingled themselves more and more with the remains of the former Israelite population, the custom of strange worship diminished. The reform of Josiah spread itself over the land, and in the Book of Jeremiah we read that after the destruction of Jerusalem, the people of Shiloh, Shechem, and Samaria came and wept over the ruins of the temple. Thus, in spite of their strange origin, the Samaritans had the same religion as the Jews, and although the Book of Ezra calls them the enemies of Judah and Benjamin, the step they took with regard to the emigrants of Babylon showed the most brotherly dispositions.
“Now when the adversaries of Judah and Benjamin heard that the Children of the Captivity builded the temple unto the Lord God of Israel; then they came to Zerubbabel, and to the chief of the fathers and said unto them: Let us build with you: for we seek your God, as ye do; and we do sacrifice unto him since the days of Esarhaddon king of Asshur, which brought us up hither. But Zerubbabel and Jeshua and the rest of the chief of the fathers of Israel said unto them: Ye have nothing to do with us to build an house unto our God; but we ourselves together will build unto the Lord God of Israel, as king Cyrus the king of Persia hath commanded us. Then the people of the land weakened the hands of the people of Judah, and troubled them in building. And hired counsellors against them, to frustrate their purpose all the days of Cyrus king of Persia, even until the reign of Darius king of Persia.”
[515-450 B.C.]
But the temple was built in spite of the intrigues of the Samaritans, and the dedication took place in the sixth year of the reign of Darius (515 B.C.). According to the Book of Ezra, Darius found the decree of Cyrus among the records at Ecbatana and ordered it to be carried out. We know nothing of the fate of the Jewish colony during the last thirty years of the reign of Darius and during the twenty years of the reign of Xerxes. The Book of Ezra contains no fact relating to this period for more than half a century.
In the seventh year of the reign of Artaxerxes Longimanus (458 B.C.), more than half a century after the establishment of the temple, a new colony of Jews left Babylon for Jerusalem under the leadership of Ezra, grandson of the priest Seraiah who had been put to death by Nebuchadrezzar at the fall of Jerusalem. Ezra had taken the title of “sophar,” that is to say, scribe or doctor of the law: “he had prepared his heart to seek the law of the Lord, and to do it, and to teach in Israel statutes and judgments.” The firman he had obtained from Artaxerxes has come to us travestied by the Jews, and the terms are even more suspicious than those of the decree of Cyrus. It is possible that the king may have helped the emigrants with money or provisions and even exempted the priests from taxes; but it is not likely that he would have condemned to death, as the Book of Ezra says, those who would not submit to the religious law which the leader of the expedition was going to enforce. This law, wrought during the captivity under the influence of the prophet Ezekiel, answered to the authoritative inspirations of the sacerdotal party of whom Ezra was the chief. All privileges were reserved for the priests, of whom the Levites were only the servants. This explains why among the fifteen chiefs of families, who answered to Ezra’s appeal, there was not one Levite. Nevertheless, there was a great number of them in Babylonia. Ezra, with a great deal of trouble, succeeded in recruiting a few of them.
The first colony led by Zerubbabel, arrived in Judea under very trying circumstances. The land had not remained unoccupied during the captivity at Babylon. Besides the poor people whom Nebuchadrezzar left there, because they were not worth taking away, Idumæans, Moabites, and other strangers had come and settled themselves. A place had to be found among them, for the new-comers were not powerful enough to expel them. The emigrants had to consider themselves lucky in forming alliances with the families who were in possession of the territory, without ascertaining whether these families were of pure Israelite blood. But when Ezra arrived at the head of a new colony, the difficulties of the first installation no longer existed. The marriages contracted by his predecessors with strange women seemed to him abominable and ungodly. He prayed, fasted, rent his garments, assembled the people, and begged that these wretched beings should be sent away with their children. It was, as the authors of The Family Bible remark, like a new form of sacrifice of children to Moloch. But without seeking examples in the Canaanite religions, Ezra could remind them of Abraham sending his servant Hagar into the desert accompanied by her child.
[450-445 B.C.]