The Temple Finished

In context

When Tattenai, the Persian governor “beyond the River” (west of the Euphrates), asks who allowed the building, the elders answer that Cyrus did, and Darius has the records searched. A scroll found at Achmetha (Ecbatana) in Media holds Cyrus’s decree, and Darius orders the governor to leave the work alone and pay for it from the king’s taxes (Ezra 5:3–6:8).

The house is finished “on the third day of the month Adar, which was in the sixth year of the reign of Darius the king” (6:15), about 515 BC, some seventy years after Solomon’s temple was burned. The returned exiles keep the dedication with joy, and then the Passover and the feast of unleavened bread, “because Yahweh had made them joyful” (6:16–22).

When the people of Bethel ask whether to keep weeping in the fifth month, Zechariah asks whether their fasts were really for the Lord, and repeats the former prophets: “show kindness and compassion every man to his brother” and “Don’t oppress the widow, the fatherless, the foreigner, nor the poor” (Zechariah 7:3–10). Then come promises: old people and children will fill Jerusalem’s streets again, the fasts will become “cheerful feasts,” and many nations will come to seek the Lord there (8:4–5, 19–22).