Ezra 4 Bible study: The work stopped

The chapter names them before they say a word: "the adversaries of Judah and Benjamin" (4:1). What they hear is that "the children of the captivity were building a temple to the LORD, the God of Israel" (4:1). What they say first is an offer: "Let us build with you, for we seek your God as you do; and we have been sacrificing to him since the days of Esar Haddon king of Assyria, who brought us up here" (4:2). The answer comes from "Zerubbabel, Jeshua, and the rest of the heads of fathers’ households of Israel" (4:3): "You have nothing to do with us in building a house to our God; but we ourselves together will build to the LORD, the God of Israel, as King Cyrus the king of Persia has commanded us" (4:3). Cyrus's decree had said, "Whoever there is among you of all his people, may his God be with him, and let him go up to Jerusalem, which is in Judah, and build the house of the LORD, the God of Israel" (1:3). The chapter gives no reason beyond the words of 4:3. It tells what came next: "Then the people of the land weakened the hands of the people of Judah, and troubled them in building" (4:4), and "They hired counselors against them to frustrate their purpose all the days of Cyrus king of Persia, even until the reign of Darius king of Persia" (4:5).

Ezra 4:13→leads toLuke 20:25

The letter to Artaxerxes warns that if Jerusalem is built, "they will not pay tribute, custom, or toll" (4:13), and the king answers that "tribute, custom, and toll was paid" to Jerusalem's mighty kings (4:20). In Luke, spies were sent out "that they might trap him in something he said, so as to deliver him up to the power and authority of the governor" (Luke 20:20), and they asked Jesus, "Is it lawful for us to pay taxes to Caesar, or not?" (Luke 20:22). He said, "Then give to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s" (Luke 20:25). Before Pilate, those who brought him began to accuse him of "forbidding paying taxes to Caesar" (Luke 23:2). Jesus doesn't cite Ezra 4, so setting the two side by side is a reading, resting on a shared subject: a charge brought before a ruler that the king would not be paid what is due to him. Some read the two together for that shared subject, and for Jesus' answer, which gives both Caesar and God what is theirs. Others keep the two apart: Ezra's letter is about a city and its walls (4:12-13), and Ezra doesn't say whether its warning was true, while Luke sets the charge against Jesus beside what he had said (Luke 20:25).

בְּטֵלbetelsay be-TEL

Brown-Driver-Briggs: "cease", and in another form, "make to cease". Strong's: "to stop (cause, make to), cease, hinder". The king orders, "Make a decree now to cause these men to cease" (4:21). When the letter is read, Rehum, Shimshai and their companions "made them to cease by force of arms" (4:23). And the chapter ends, "Then work stopped on God’s house which is at Jerusalem. It stopped until the second year of the reign of Darius king of Persia" (4:24), with the verb twice in one verse. The Old Testament has it six times, all in Ezra: these four, then 5:5, "they didn’t make them cease", and 6:8, "that they not be hindered".