Ezra 1, Rebuilding the Temple!

After 70 years of Babylonian exile and captivity, suddenly the temple in Jerusalem will be rebuilt!

This is probably in 538 BC.  

Ezra 1: 1-4, Rebuilding the temple in Jerusalem
In the first year of Cyrus king of Persia, in order to fulfill the word of the LORD spoken by Jeremiah, the LORD moved the heart of Cyrus king of Persia to make a proclamation throughout his realm and to put it in writing:
  

"This is what Cyrus king of Persia says: "`The LORD, the God of heaven, has given me all the kingdoms of the earth and he has appointed me to build a temple for him at Jerusalem in Judah. Anyone of his people among you--may his God be with him, and let him go up to Jerusalem in Judah and build the temple of the LORD, the God of Israel, the God who is in Jerusalem. And the people of any place where survivors may now be living are to provide him with silver and gold, with goods and livestock, and with freewill offerings for the temple of God in Jerusalem.'"

The temple in Jerusalem is to be rebuilt! In Isaiah 44: 28, Isaiah quotes YHWH as saying of Cyrus, "He is my shepherd and will accomplish all that I please; he will say of Jerusalem, 'Let it be rebuilt,' and of the temple, 'Let its foundations be laid.'"

The prophecy of Jeremiah is in Jeremiah 29: 10-14. Yamauchi argues that the resettlement of Judah after seventy years is testimony to a common expectation among the exiles that this return was indeed promised to them.

The first few verses of Ezra are almost identical with the last few verses of 2 Chronicles (2 Chronicles 36: 22-23.) Some view this as evidence that Ezra wrote 1 & 2 Chronicles and in this way made it clear that the Ezra-Nehemiah scroll was the scroll that followed the scroll of Chronicles.

Is Cyrus genuinely supportive of the worship of YHWH? The Babylonians (like the Romans later) tended to allow conquered regions to practice their local religions as a political means to dissipate rebellion to their rule. (Yamauchi lists other example of Cyrus supporting temple repairs of other conquered nations.)

Ezra 1: 5-11, Many contributions to the rebuilding project

Then the family heads of Judah and Benjamin, and the priests and Levites--everyone whose heart God had moved--prepared to go up and build the house of the LORD in Jerusalem. All their neighbors assisted them with articles of silver and gold, with goods and livestock, and with valuable gifts, in addition to all the freewill offerings.

Moreover, King Cyrus brought out the articles belonging to the temple of the LORD, which Nebuchadnezzar had carried away from Jerusalem and had placed in the temple of his god. Cyrus king of Persia had them brought by Mithredath the treasurer, who counted them out to Sheshbazzar the prince of Judah.

This was the inventory: gold dishes 30 silver dishes 1,000 silver pans 29 gold bowls 30 matching silver bowls 410 other articles 1,000 In all, there were 5,400 articles of gold and of silver. Sheshbazzar brought all these along when the exiles came up from Babylon to Jerusalem.

Not only is the temple to be rebuilt, but the ancient treasury will be used to support it! Among the materials returned to Judah are the temple dishes, presumably some of the same treasures that an arrogant King Belshazzar used in Daniel 5.

We know very little about Sheshbazzar. He appears only here and in Ezra 5: 14-16 where he is appointed to lay the foundations of the temple in Jerusalem. Yamauchi believes that Sheshbazzar was quite elderly at this time and probably died in Jerusalem.