4:1 Now when the adversaries of Judah and Benjamin heard that the returned exiles were building a temple to the Lord, the God of Israel, 2 they approached Zerubbabel and the heads of fathers’ houses and said to them, “Let us build with you, for we worship your God as you do, and we have been sacrificing to him ever since the days of Esarhaddon king of Assyria who brought us here.” 3 But Zerubbabel, Jeshua, and the rest of the heads of fathers’ houses in Israel said to them, “You have nothing to do with us in building a house to our God; but we alone will build to the Lord, the God of Israel, as King Cyrus the king of Persia has commanded us.” 4 Then the people of the land discouraged the people of Judah and made them afraid to build 5 and bribed counselors against them to frustrate their purpose, all the days of Cyrus king of Persia, even until the reign of Darius king of Persia. 6 And in the reign of Ahasuerus, in the beginning of his reign, they wrote an accusation against the inhabitants of Judah and Jerusalem.
Seventy years have passed in exile and now the “people of Israel” who have lived through the punishment of exile and years of slowly being assimilated into a foreign culture are finally “home.” By the good grace of a king, Cyrus, they can rebuild the temple and once again be able to offer the sacrifices of their heart to God in His dedicated house. Now they’re faced with a new problem; who are the foreigners here? The “people of the land,” the who have occupied this place for 70 years are accusing them of being the foreigners and disputing the edict of the king that made their homecoming possible. The years of exile have resulted in the loss of their identity as “the people of Israel” in the eyes of their adversaries. Now they are only “the people of Judah.” That’s a subtle and discouraging slur.
Some who still remember witnessing the destruction of that first Holy temple have returned with hope that rebuilding this temple will restore God’s glory to all Israel while others born during the time of exile have only heard the stories of that historical glory and have come longing to finally experience God’s glory for themselves in a proper place of worship. They’re “home” now but discouraged, outnumbered and surrounded by occupiers on all sides.
It’s true, they’ve returned to rebuild the temple, but the big restoration God has planned for them is more than a new building on this holy site. It’s purpose is greater than walls that identify their territorial rights as the “people of Israel.” God has restored these exiles to establish this new temple as a visible sign to the people of the land that the glory of God is made visible through their efforts to reveal their true identity as the “people of the Lord, the God of Israel.”
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