Rebuilding the Temple #71

The rebuilding of the temple is the story of how the Jews who returned from Babylonian exile restored worship in Jerusalem by constructing a new house of God on the site of Solomon’s temple. It is told mainly in the book of Ezra, with the prophets Haggai and Zechariah supplying the background. The result is commonly called the Second Temple.

Biblical Account

In the first year of Cyrus, king of Persia, the LORD moved Cyrus to issue a decree permitting the Jews to return to Jerusalem and rebuild the house of the LORD, and to take back the temple vessels that Nebuchadnezzar had carried off (Ezra 1:1-4). A group of returnees under leaders including Sheshbazzar, Zerubbabel, and the priest Jeshua first set up the altar and resumed sacrifices. In the second year they laid the foundation of the temple. The people responded with a mixture of praise and weeping, as the priests and Levites sang, while older people who had seen the first temple wept aloud (Ezra 3:8-13).

Opposition from neighbors who had been settled in the land hindered the work through discouragement and legal complaints, and construction halted for years, until the second year of Darius I (Ezra 4:1-5, 24). Then the prophets Haggai and Zechariah spoke, and Zerubbabel and Jeshua resumed the work (Ezra 5:1-2). Haggai rebuked the people for living in paneled houses while the temple lay in ruins, and the people obeyed and began again in the sixth month (Haggai 1:1-15). He also encouraged those who remembered the older temple, promising that the glory of this house would be greater than the former (Haggai 2:3-9).

After a query to the Persian authorities was answered by a search of the royal archives, the temple was completed on the third day of the month Adar in the sixth year of Darius, which corresponds to about 516 BC. The people dedicated it with sacrifices, and the priests were appointed to their divisions (Ezra 6:13-18).

Theological Significance

The story demonstrates the continuity of God’s promise despite exile and apparent failure. The returned community was small and its temple was modest compared to Solomon’s, yet the prophets present it as the place where God would again dwell among His people. Zechariah’s message, that the work would be accomplished not by human might but by the LORD’s Spirit, has remained one of the most quoted lines from this period (Zechariah 4:6-9).

It also shows how God is portrayed as working through foreign rulers such as Cyrus, and through the ordinary determination of a discouraged community. Jewish tradition regards this temple as standing until its destruction by Rome in AD 70, and the Gospels place Jesus’ ministry in its later expanded form under Herod.