Ezra 4

Therefore know that the Lord your God, He is God, the faithful God” (Deut. 7: nkjv). Moses said that to the new generation of Israelites before they entered Canaan, a truth they would need as they faced the enemy and claimed their inheritance. New generations and old generations both need to be reminded that God is faithful.

“He who calls you is faithful, who also will do it” (1 Thess. 5: nkjv). Paul wrote that to some young Christians in Thessalonica, people who were being persecuted for their faith. They needed to be reminded that God’s commandments are God’s enablements.

“God being who He is,” said A. W. Tozer, “cannot cease to be what He is, and being what He is, He cannot act out of character with Himself. He is at once faithful and immutable, so all His words and acts must be and must remain faithful.”

J. Hudson Taylor, pioneer missionary to inland China, described the successful Christian life as “not a striving to have faith … but a looking off to the Faithful One …” He knew the words of Paul: “If we are faithless, He remains faithful. He cannot deny Himself” (2 Tim. 2: nkjv).

The Jewish remnant that returned to Jerusalem to rebuild the temple was depending on God’s faithfulness to see them through. If God wasn’t faithful to His covenant and His promises, then there was no hope. But the God who called them would be faithful to help them finish His work (Phil. 1:6), as long as they trusted Him and obeyed His Word.

In these three chapters, we see how God was faithful to His people in every stage of their work for Him.

From the beginning, the remnant faced opposition from the mixed population of the land who really didn’t want the Jews inhabiting Jerusalem and rebuilding the temple. Opportunity and opposition usually go together; and the greater the opportunity, the greater the opposition. “For a great and effective door has opened to me,” wrote Paul, “and there are many adversaries” (1 Cor. 16:9).

Cooperation leading to compromise (Ezra 4:1–3). The first attack of the enemy was very subtle: the people of Samaria, the former northern kingdom, offered to work with the Jews to help them build the temple. These people claimed to worship the same God the Jews worshipped, so it seemed logical that they should be allowed to share in the work. On the surface, the Samaritans seemed to be acting like good neighbors, but their offer was insidious and dangerous.

The Samaritan people, being a mixture of many races, weren’t true Jews at all. When the Assyrians conquered the northern kingdom, they deliberately mingled the nations they had defeated; and this led to racial and religious confusion (2 Kings 17:24–41). The Samaritans didn’t worship the true and living God, for they “feared the Lord, yet served their own gods” (2 Kings 17:33; see John 4:22). The Jewish leaders had already rejected the professed Jews who had been in exile in Babylon (Ezra 2:59–63), so they weren’t about to accept the people of the land who obviously didn’t belong to the covenant nation and couldn’t prove their Jewish lineage.

Why was the Samaritan offer so dangerous? Because if these outsiders had begun to mingle with the Jewish remnant while helping to build the temple, it wouldn’t have taken long for the two groups to start socializing and intermarrying, and that was contrary to the law of Moses (Ex. 34:10–17; Deut. 7:1–11; 12:1–3). Israel was a nation set apart from the other nations (Num. 23:9), because God had given them a special task to perform in the world (Gen. 12:1–3). If in any way the people of Israel were corrupted, the success of their God-given ministry would be jeopardized.

God’s people today must maintain a separated position and not get involved with anything that will compromise their testimony and hinder God’s work (2 Cor. 6:14–7:1; Tim. 2:3–5).

However, separation must never become isolation (1 Cor. 5:9–10) because God has a work for believers to do in this world (Matt. 5:13–16; John 17:14–18). Jesus was “holy, harmless, undefiled, separate from sinners” (Heb. 7:26), and yet He was the friend of sinners and sought to win them (Luke 15:1–2; Matt. 9:10–11; 11:19). God’s people separate from the world so they can be a witness to the world.

Accusation leading to fear (Ezra 4:4–5, 24). Satan had come as the serpent to deceive (2 Cor. 11:3) and had failed, and now he came as the lion to devour (1 Peter 5:8), and he succeeded. The enemy told lies about the Jews and encouraged the people of the land to do everything possible to discourage the workers and hinder the work. They even hired counselors to influence the local officials to stop the project, and they succeeded.

“Then ceased the work of the house of God which is at Jerusalem” (Ezra 4:24). This was during the reign of Cyrus (559–530) who had given the Jews the right to return to their land and rebuild their temple. From 536 to 530, the work had progressed, but in 530, it stopped and didn’t resume until the year 520, when Darius was king. This defeat wasn’t because the king had issued a decree against them, but because the Jewish remnant feared the people of the land. The Jews had begun to get more interested in their own houses than in the house of God (Hag. 1:1–11).

Other opposition to God’s work (Ezra 4:6–23). At this point in the narrative (vv. 6–23), Ezra cited other instances of the work being attacked, including the events that occurred during the times of Darius, who reigned from 522 to 486 (vv. 5, 24); Xerxes (v. 6), who was the Ahasuerus in the book of Esther and reigned from 486 to 465; and Artaxerxes I (vv. 7–23), ruler from 465 to 424. Ancient writers often summarized historical events in this manner before moving on to finish their account. Ezra’s main interest, of course, was in the opposition that came while the temple was being rebuilt during the reigns of Cyrus and Darius. The long parenthesis in vv. 6–23 deals with the rebuilding of the city (v. 12) and not the rebuilding of the temple. It’s additional evidence of the fact that whenever God’s people try to serve the Lord, somebody will oppose them.

In the seventh year of Artaxerxes I (458–457), Ezra the scribe took a group of liberated Jewish exiles to Jerusalem to start rebuilding the city (7:1). Eastern rulers depended on their local officials to act as spies and report anything suspicious. Rehum, the officer in charge, conferred with the other officials and decided that the rebuilding of the city was a threat to the peace of the empire. So he dictated a letter to Shimshai the scribe and had it sent to the king.

Rehum gave four reasons why the king must order the Jews to stop rebuilding Jerusalem. First, history showed that Jerusalem was indeed a “rebellious and wicked city”; unfortunately, this was a fact that even the Jews couldn’t deny. If Jerusalem were restored, Rehum argued, it would rebel against the king and declare its independence (4:12). As long as Jerusalem was in ruins, it was defenseless against the king’s forces.

Second, an independent Judah would mean loss of revenue and tribute to the empire (v. 13), but, third, a successful rebellion would also bring dishonor to the king. What king wants to have one of his provinces successfully rebel against him? This might encourage other provinces to follow their example. Finally, if the Jews succeeded in rebuilding and rebelling, they would no doubt conquer the entire territory across the Euphrates (v. 16), and this would really hurt the king and his empire.

The king’s officers searched the archives and found proof that the Jews had indeed been ruled by mighty kings (David, Solomon, Josiah, Hezekiah) and also by rebellious kings, so Rehum’s accusations were correct. During the declining years of Judah, their kings had made and broken treaties with Egypt, Assyria, and Babylon and had refused to pay tribute to Assyria and to Babylon. Their own record indicted them.

The king ordered the Jews to stop rebuilding the city. In fact, it’s likely that the Persians wrecked the work the Jews had already completed, and the report that Nehemiah received from his brother described what the Persians had done, not what the Babylonians had done (Neh. 1:1–3). It wasn’t until the arrival of Nehemiah in 445 that the work was resumed and the walls were finished and the gates restored.