ACTS BIBLE
From Judges to the Temple's Fall week 10 · Ezra 3:10-13; Haggai 2:1-9; Malachi 3:1-4
The foundation is laid and the old men weep. Haggai promises the smaller house a greater glory, and Malachi says the Lord will come suddenly to his temple.
Persia took Babylon in 539 BC, and in his first year as its master Cyrus published a decree letting the Jews go home and rebuild the house of God in Jerusalem (Ezra 1:2-4). The Cyrus Cylinder, dug up in Babylon in 1879, records the same policy toward captive peoples in general: they and their gods were to be sent back to their own places. A hundred and fifty years earlier Isaiah had written his name down: That saith of Cyrus, He is my shepherd, and shall perform all my pleasure (Isaiah 44:28).
Something under fifty thousand went back, led by Zerubbabel, a grandson of King Jehoiachin, and Jeshua the high priest. The greater part of the exiles stayed where they were. Babylon had become home.
In the second year after their return they laid the foundation of the new house. The priests stood in their robes with trumpets, the Levites sang because he is good, for his mercy endureth for ever (Ezra 3:11), and the people shouted. The old men who could remember Solomon's Temple stood among them and wept out loud, so that the people could not discern the noise of the shout of joy from the noise of the weeping (Ezra 3:13).
The young men were right to shout and the old men were right to weep. God was keeping his word, and the thing being built was small. Then the work stopped, and stayed stopped for sixteen years. Neighbors made trouble, letters went to the Persian court, and the people lost heart and went off to panel their own houses while the foundation stood in the weeds.
In 520 BC God sent Haggai with a question: Is it time for you, O ye, to dwell in your cieled houses, and this house lie waste? (Haggai 1:4). The people went back to work. A month in, Haggai spoke to the old men who were still grieving. Who is left among you that saw this house in her first glory? and how do you see it now? is it not in your eyes in comparison of it as nothing?
Then came the promise. God would shake the heavens and the earth and all nations, and the desire of all nations shall come: and I will fill this house with glory; and again, The glory of this latter house shall be greater than of the former (Haggai 2:7, 9). The house was finished in the sixth year of Darius (Ezra 6:15), 516 BC, seventy years after the first one burned.
There was no ark in it, and no cloud came down at its dedication. Herod would later rebuild it on a scale that impressed Rome, and still nothing like 1 Kings 8:11 is ever recorded of it. The greater glory Haggai promised came the day the Lord himself walked through its courts.
Some sixty years after the house was finished, Ezra came up from Babylon, a ready scribe in the law of Moses (Ezra 7:6), to teach it. In 445 BC Nehemiah came to rebuild the walls, and did it in fifty-two days with his workmen wearing swords. When the walls were up the people gathered in the square and asked Ezra to bring out the book. He read from first light until midday, and the Levites gave the sense, and caused them to understand the reading (Nehemiah 8:8). The people wept as they listened. Here, at last, was a generation being taught to know the LORD.
The last prophet of the Old Testament found priests offering blind and lame animals on the altar, people holding back their tithes, and everyone asking where the God of judgment had got to. Malachi's answer was a promise and a warning together: Behold, I will send my messenger, and he shall prepare the way before me: and the Lord, whom ye seek, shall suddenly come to his temple (Malachi 3:1). Before that day came, Elijah would come (Malachi 4:5).
Jesus said John the Baptist was that messenger (Matthew 11:10-14). The Lord did come to his temple, carried in at forty days old, and an old man named Simeon took him in his arms. He kept the whole law without fault, and his body was the house where the glory finally dwelt.