In this lesson we will continue the previous lesson to see the prophets and other related people during the return.
The kingship which God established among the people of Israel due to the deterioration of the priesthood was completely destroyed at the time of their captivity. After their return from the land of captivity to their homeland through God’s visitation, the kingship was still not recovered, for they remained under the rule of the Gentiles.
The people of Israel who returned after the proclamation was made in the first year of Cyrus king of Persia were led by Zerubbabel, Joshua, and others (Ezra 1:1-5; 2:1-2). Their number was forty-two thousand three hundred and sixty. Besides these, there were seven thousand three hundred and thirty-seven servants and maids, and two hundred singing men and women (Ezra 2:64-65). Zerubbabel, a descendent of the royal house of David and the son of Salathiel (Matt. 1:12), ruled over the people of Israel as the governor of Judah appointed by the Gentile nation of Persia. Joshua (that is, Jeshua), the son of Josedech, served as the high priest taking care of the matters pertaining to the worship of God (Hag. 1:1). Both of their ministries were for the rebuilding of the holy temple.
In the seventh month of the same year the children of Israel returned to the land of Judah and gathered themselves together as one man to Jerusalem. They built and set the altar of God upon its original foundation, they offered sacrifices to God, and they kept the feast of tabernacles (Ezra 3:1-4). In the second month of the following year, they set forward the work of building the house of God (Ezra 3:8). When the builders laid the foundation of the temple, the priests stood in their apparel with trumpets, and the Levites, the sons of Asaph, with cymbals, to praise Jehovah according to the ordinance of David. All the people shouted with a great shout when they praised God. However, many of the priests and Levites and heads of the fathers’ houses, the old men who had seen the first house, wept with a loud voice when the foundation of this house was laid before their eyes, while many shouted aloud for joy (Ezra 3:10-13).
At that time the enemies of Judah and Benjamin asked that they be allowed to participate in the building work, but they were refused by Zerubbabel and Joshua with stern words. Thus, moved to anger in their shame, they did their best to carry out the damaging work, and they also wrote to the king accusing the returned Israelites of rebellion. Hence, King Artaxerxes (Smerdis) commanded that the building of the temple be stopped. So the work ceased until the second year of the reign of Darius, king of Persia (Ezra 4). The prophets Haggai and Zechariah prophesied in the name of God and spoke words of encouragement to the people in Judah and Jerusalem. Then Zerubbabel and Joshua rose up and began to build the house of God (Ezra 5:1-2). When the house was finished on the third day of the month Adar (the twelfth month), which was in the sixth year of the reign of Darius the king, they kept the dedication of the house of God with joy and kept the Passover on the fourteenth day of the first month (Ezra 6:14-21).
During the years when the rebuilding of the holy temple was interrupted, the children of Israel began to build beautiful houses for themselves and gradually forgot the building of the holy temple. Furthermore, the enemy’s opposition and hindrance steadily increased, and desolation and drought continued to plague the land. Therefore, the people of Israel concluded that the time to build the house of Jehovah had not yet come (Hag. 1:2, 4, 6, 10). It was under such a circumstance that the prophets Haggai and Zechariah rose up to deliver the word of God and encourage the returned Israelites to finish the rebuilding work of God’s holy temple.
The word of God came to Haggai the prophet, saying, “Is it time for you, O ye, to dwell in your ceiled houses, and this house lie waste?...Ye have sown much, and bring in little; ye eat, but ye have not enough; ye drink, but ye are not filled with drink; ye clothe you, but there is none warm; and he that earneth wages, earneth wages to put it into a bag with holes. Thus saith the Lord of hosts; Consider your ways. Go up to the mountain, and bring wood, and build the house; and I will take pleasure in it, and I will be glorified, saith the Lord” (Hag. 1:4, 6-8). God reprimanded the people through Haggai, telling them to consider their ways because of the disasters and miseries that had come upon them, and to not let the house lie waste, but to go up to the mountain, bring wood, and build God’s house. So, Zerubbabel the son of Salathiel, and Joshua the son of Josedech, the high priest, with all the remnant of the people, obeyed the voice of Jehovah their God (Hag. 1:12).
Then God spoke through Haggai the prophet to encourage the people to be strong and work for the completion of the rebuilding of God’s house. “Yet now be strong, O Zerubbabel, saith the Lord; and be strong, O Joshua, son of Josedech, the high priest; and be strong, all ye people of the land, saith the Lord, and work: for I am with you, saith the Lord of hosts” (Hag. 2:4).