If this is your first viewing, please see my Introduction before reading this.
Please excuse the delay in publishing the notes for the end of Daniel and all of Ezra, with only brief comments, as I was on holiday for a week and only making short notes to be typed up later.
4 September. Ezra chapters 3-5
The first thing the Jews did on returning to Jerusalem was to build an altar (in the open air, presumably) on which to make sacrifice. While the idea of sacrificing animals has virtually disappeared from world religions today, the ideas remain that it is important to give thanks to God for the good things that happen to us, and that having a place in which to conduct worship according to whatever we may consider to be appropriate rites is important to a religious community. The location of our worship, and our attitude in conducting it, are always more important than the building (if any).
In chapter 4, the opponents of the rebuilding of the Temple offered to help but it was refused. Not all ‘help’ is welcome, and it is difficult to know from this one-sided account whether the offer of help was a genuine attempt to build bridges, or an attempt to infiltrate a organisation. Probably the latter, as their letter to Artaxerxes is disingenuous, using the fear of difference and past examples as a way of stirring up present hatred. Only with a new king (Darius) did the Jews resume the attempt to rebuild the Temple, with an appeal to Cyrus’s previous permission. Presumably they had feared that Artaxerxes would not take note of what Cyrus had said and done, or even regarded it as a reason to persecute them all over again.