Esra 4:24

"Then ceased the work of the house of God at Jerusalem. So it ceased unto the second year of Darius king of Persia." With this statement the narrator returns to the notice in Ezr 4:5, that the adversaries of Judah succeeded in delaying the building of the temple till the reign of King Darius, which he takes up, and now adds the more precise information that it ceased till the second year of King Darius. The intervening section, Ezr 4:6, gives a more detailed account of those accusations against the Jews made by their adversaries to kings Ahashverosh and Artachshasta. If we read Ezr 4:23 and Ezr 4:24 as successive, we get an impression that the discontinuation to build mentioned in Ezr 4:24 was the effect and consequence of the prohibition obtained from King Artachshasta, through the complaints brought against the Jews by his officials on this side the river; the בּאדין of Ezr 4:24 seeming to refer to the אדין of Ezr 4:23. Under this impression, older expositors have without hesitation referred the contents of Ezr 4:6 to the interruption to the building of the temple during the period from Cyrus to Darius, and understood the two names Ahashverosh and Artachshasta as belonging to Cambyses and (Pseudo) Smerdis, the monarchs who reigned between Cyrus and Darius. Grave objections to this view have, however, been raised by Kleinert (in the Beitrgen der Dorpater Prof. d. Theol. 8132, vol. i) and J. W. Schultz (Cyrus der Grosse, in Theol. Stud. u. Krit. 1853, p. 624, etc.), who have sought to prove that none but the Persian kings Xerxes and Artaxerxes can be meant by Ahashverosh and Artachshasta, and that the section Ezr 4:6 relates not to the building of the temple, but to the building of the walls of Jerusalem, and forms an interpolation or episode, in which the historian mak…

The good work of rebuilding the temple was no sooner begun than it met with opposition from those that bore ill will to it; the Samaritans were enemies to the Jews and their religion, and they set themselves to obstruct it. I. They offered to be partners in the building of it, that they might have it in their power to retard it; but they were refused (Ezr 4:1-3). II. They discouraged them in it, and dissuaded them from it (Ezr 4:4, Ezr 4:5). III. They basely misrepresented the undertaking, and the undertakers, to the king of Persia, by a memorial they sent him (Ezr 4:6-16). IV. They obtained from him an order to stop the building (Ezr 4:17-22), which they immediately put in execution (Ezr 4:23, Ezr 4:24).

4:24–5:5 Ezra now returns to telling about the building of the Temple in 520–515 BC. 4:24 The events of the following verses occurred approximately sixteen years after the events up through 4:5.