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Commentaries and Other Bible Study Helps - Prayer Tents - Prayer Tents
4:1-24 Enemies Stall the Project by Conspiring against It. The rebuilding project encounters opposition from other groups in the region, and the work ceases.
4:1-2 the adversaries of Judah and Benjamin. The returned exiles found themselves in a Persian province, called Beyond the River (v. 11; i.e., beyond the Euphrates from the perspective of the Persian power centers). Its administrative center was in Samaria, the capital of the former northern kingdom of Israel. Its population was composed largely of the descendants of peoples settled there by Esarhaddon king of Assyria (reigned ) in (see 2 Kings 17:24-33; Isa. 7:8), long after Assyria conquered the northern kingdom in and began to resettle the land with exiles from other lands. Apparently Samaria was a hotbed of unrest for decades. Let us build with you, for we worship your God as you do. Indeed, these peoples' ancestors had been taught the religion of Yahweh by a priest sent for that purpose (2 Kings 17:24-28), though the same account tells that they worshiped other gods as well (2 Kings 17:29-41), and they are identified as "adversaries" (Ezra 4:1).
4:3 Zerubbabel, Jeshua, and the rest of the heads of fathers' houses present a united answer declining the offer of help (vv. 1-2): we alone will build to the Lord. Their stated ground for declining the help is that the decree of Cyrus applied only to the returning exiles. No doubt they understood that the actual intent behind the request was to frustrate the project.
4:4-5 The real attitude of these residents, now called the people of the land, emerges. They showed their determined opposition all the days of Cyrus (from the time the opposition began in ; Cyrus died in ) even until the reign of Darius (reigned ). Therefore, the opposition continued over a period of about , up to the completion of the temple in The discouragement apparently involved turning local officials against the project. Even though the project actually had the full authority of King Cyrus behind it, local enemies would exploit the distance of Jerusalem from the imperial center to their own advantage.
4:6-23 This section interrupts the historical narrative (1:1-4:5) and mentions two later examples of hostility from the people of the land, showing that persistent and recurring hostility to the returning Jews occurred for a after Cyrus's decree. The narrative resumes at v. 24. The technique employed was familiar practice in ancient history writing. Its purpose here is to show that the problems faced by the new community were not isolated but were deeply rooted in its situation.
4:6 This verse jumps forward to later events during the reign of Ahasuerus (reigned ), otherwise known as Xerxes, who appears in the book of Esther (cf. Est. 1:1).
4:7-23 While the author is on the topic of the opposition by the people of the land, he jumps forward yet further to another hostile episode, when a formal letter of complaint was sent by leaders in the province to King Artaxerxes I (reigned ).
4:7-8 The letter form follows known practice in the Persian period: formal address, greetings, information, and request. The precise occasion of this action against the community is not known, but it presupposed that the people had made an attempt to rebuild the city walls sometime before the mission of Nehemiah, who arrived in (still in the reign of Artaxerxes) and completed the rebuilding of the walls despite strenuous attempts to stop the work at that time too (Nehemiah 4; 6). The present letter was written in Aramaic, which had been the official imperial language under the Babylonians and was still used in diplomacy. The letter might have been translated into Persian (for the benefit of the king), or into Hebrew (therefore implying that the author knew of a Hebrew copy). But when the letter is introduced in the book of Ezra (Ezra 4:7b), the language changes from Hebrew to Aramaic, and continues in Aramaic until 6:18, returning to Hebrew from 6:19 to the end. Citing the letters in Aramaic gives authenticity to Ezra's account (cf. also 7:12-26); it is not entirely clear, however, why Ezra's own narrative in this section also uses Aramaic (e.g., 4:23-5:5; 6:13-18). Perhaps it was natural, given that the letters were in Aramaic. In any case, the reader comes away confident that the author was fluent enough in Aramaic to understand the royal letters.
4:9 The officials give their credentials as leaders and also stress that their rights in the land have imperial warrant because of the older Assyrian resettlements.
4:10 The Assyrian king Osnappar is probably Ashurbanipal (); he continued the resettlement of Israel, which his predecessors began (see vv. 1-2).
4:11 Beyond the River. The name of the Persian province, which apparently included Jerusalem, until the decree of Cyrus returned the land to the Jews.
4:12 that rebellious and wicked city. Jerusalem had in fact often been more acquiescent to the empire than the biblical writers thought proper (note the highly critical view of the kings Ahaz and Manasseh in 2 Kings 16-21), though there had been some switching of loyalties during the last days of the kingdom (2 Kings 18:7; 24:1, 20). The letter plays on the empire's ready suspicions of rebellion. They are finishing the walls and repairing the foundations. By the time of this letter, considerable repair work had already been done on the wall around Jerusalem.
4:13-16 The threat of an independence movement in Jerusalem is exaggerated. The imperial records would include those of Assyria and Babylon, empires to which the Persians regarded themselves legitimate successors.
4:20 mighty kings. A possible reference to the relatively powerful united monarchy under David and Solomon. The king's response (vv. 17-22) gave license to the enemies of the exiles to stop the work by force, an action that might underlie the news later heard by Nehemiah that the walls of Jerusalem lay in ruins (Neh. 1:3).
4:24 The word then picks up the story from v. 5, before the long interlude of vv. 6-23, bringing the narrative back to the period principally in view (soon after the first return). The story now records the outcome of the mission to prevent the building of the temple. It is implied that the work had ceased soon after it began, i.e., within about after (see 3:8). It resumed in the second year of the reign of Darius king of Persia, which is The period of inactivity therefore lasted around .
