Ezra 4 · a question people ask
Why did Zerubbabel and the others turn down help?
The chapter gives their answer and the reason they state, and nothing more. They say, "You have nothing to do with us in building a house to our God" (4:3), and they point to the king's command: "as King Cyrus the king of Persia has commanded us" (4:3). Before the offer is made, the chapter has already called those who made it "the adversaries of Judah and Benjamin" (4:1). They said, "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). 2 Kings 17 tells how "The king of Assyria brought people from Babylon, from Cuthah, from Avva, and from Hamath and Sepharvaim, and placed them in the cities of Samaria instead of the children of Israel" (2 Kings 17:24), and says of them, "They feared the LORD, and also served their own gods" (2 Kings 17:33). 2 Kings 17 doesn't name Esar Haddon, and Ezra 4 doesn't point to 2 Kings 17, so the two passages are set side by side for what each says, and they aren't said to be about the same people. Later in the book, the returned exiles eat the Passover with "all who had separated themselves to them from the filthiness of the nations of the land to seek the LORD, the God of Israel" (6:21).
The verses
“The king of Assyria brought people from Babylon, from Cuthah, from Avva, and from Hamath and Sepharvaim, and placed them in the cities of Samaria instead of the children of Israel; and they possessed Samaria and lived in its cities.”
“They feared the LORD, and also served their own gods, after the ways of the nations from among whom they had been carried away.”
“The children of Israel who had returned out of the captivity, and all who had separated themselves to them from the filthiness of the nations of the land to seek the LORD, the God of Israel, ate,”