June 25, 2018: Day 72 – Ezra 5

Did you notice the overlap of prophets in this chapter?  Ezra speaks about the prophets Haggai and Zechariah who came a long before him.  Now Ezra would have been around 458 and Haggai and Zechariah would have been about 70 years before that.  It is important to see Ezra within the time frame of history, while at the same time understand that the 5th chapter also demands a witness from history.

What we have happening in this part of the story is that there are those who do not want the temple built and so are asking those who are building it if they have a permit to build it.  Their response is that we have the permit of almighty God.  I’m not sure that would work for the Borough council, and it really didn’t work for the associates of the ruler of that day either.  They demanded that the ruler look back in the annals to make sure that they had a permit from King Cyrus for the rebuilding of the temple.  Otherwise, they should stop  the building.  There was a lot of church politics back then as well.

But the difference is that this was not internal church politics, but rather external.  There were outside forces wanting the temple to be stopped from being built.  We will see what happens as these pressures intensify.