New Temple On Mount Moriah

Stories From The Hebrew Bible
THE NEW TEMPLE ON MOUNT MORIAH

After the Jews came back to their own land, they first built an altar on Mount Moriah, as we learned in our last story. Then they built some houses, because the winter was coming on. And early in the next year they began to rebuild the Temple of the Lord. Joshua, the priest, and Zerubbabel, the prince, led the work along with the priests and Levites. They gave money to masons and carpenters, and they paid men of Tyre and Zidon, on the shore of the Great Sea, to float cedar trees down from Mount Lebanon to Joppa; and from Joppa they carried them up the mountains to Jerusalem for the building of the Temple.

When they laid the first stones in the new building, the priests in their robes stood ready with trumpets and the Levites with cymbals, to praise the Lord for His goodness in bringing them once again to their own land. The singers sang:

Praise the Lord, for He is good:
His mercy endures forever toward Israel His people.

And all the people shouted with a great shout as the first stones were laid. But some of the priests, Levites and Jews were old men who had seen the first Temple, while it was still standing more than fifty years before. These old men wept as they thought of the Temple that had been burned and their friends who had been slain in the destruction of the city. The sound of weeping and shouting was heard together, and those who heard at a distance could not tell the weeping from the shouting.

But these builders soon found enemies and were hindered in their work. The Samaritan people lived in the middle of the land, near the cities of Shechem and Samaria. Some of these people were from the old Ten Tribes, while others were from the people who were brought into the land by the Assyrians many years before. These people worshiped the Lord, but they also worshiped other gods, too. These people came to the Prince Zerubbabel and said, “Let us join with you in building this house, for we seek the Lord as you do and we offer sacrifices to Him.”

But Zerubbabel and the rulers said to them, “You are not with us and you do not worship as we worship. You have nothing to do with us in building the Lord's house. We will build by ourselves to our God, the God of Israel, as Cyrus, the king of Persia, has told us to build.”

This made the people of Samaria very angry. They tried to stop the Jews from building. They frightened them and wrote letters to the king, urging him to stop the work. Though Cyrus, the king, was a friend to the Jews, he was busy conducting a war in a land far away to the east. Therefore, he could not help the Jews. Soon after this he died. Cyrus’ son, who then took over the kingdom, did not care for the Jews, but he, too, died in a few years. Following Cyrus’ Son’s death, a nobleman of another family seized the throne and held it nearly a year before he was killed. Though the Bible refers to him by the name Artaxerxes, he is also known by the name Smerdis. While this king was reigning, the Samaritan rulers wrote him a letter, saying:

Let it be known to the king that the Jews have come back to Jerusalem. They are building again the city which was always bad, and would not obey the kings when it was standing before. If that city be built and its walls finished, then the Jews will not serve the king nor pay taxes. We are true to the king and do not wish to see harm come to his rule. Of old time this city was rebellious, and for that cause it was laid waste. If it is built again, soon the king will have no power anywhere on this side of the river Euphrates.

Then King Artaxerxes, or Smerdis, wrote an answer to the chief men of Samaria, thus:

The letter which you sent has been read to me. I have caused a search to be made of the records; and I find that the city of Jerusalem has been in old time a strong city, with great kings ruling in it and ruling also the lands around it. I find, too, that this city did rise up and make war against the kings of empires in the past. Command the men who are building the city of Jerusalem to stop the work; and let it not go on until an order is given from the king.

The Samaritans and other enemies of the Jews were glad to have this letter come from the great king of Persia. They went to Jerusalem and made the work of building the Temple and the city stop. So the foundations of the Temple lay unfinished through several years.

But after a time two prophets arose in the land of Judea. They were Haggai and Zechariah; and they spoke the word of the Lord to the people, telling them to go forward with the building. Haggai said,

Is it a time for you to dwell in richly finished houses of your own while the Lord’s house lies waste? Go up to the mountain and bring wood, and build; and I will be pleased with you and will bless you, says the Lord. The glory of this house shall be greater than the glory of the other house and in this place I will give peace, says the Lord of hosts.

And Zechariah, the other prophet, said, “It shall not be by might nor by power, but by My spirit, says the Lord. The hands of Zerubbabel have laid the foundation of this house, and his hands shall finish it. He shall lay the headstone with shoutings of grace, grace unto it!”

Then Zerubbabel and Joshua and the rest of the Jews once again began the work. Soon after this a new king began to reign in Persia. He was a wise man and a great ruler, whose name was Darius.

King Darius looked in the records of Persia and found it written that Cyrus, the king, had commanded the Temple to be built. He wrote a letter to the rulers in the lands around Judea that no longer were they to hinder the work, but they were to help by providing whatever was needed. Then the Jews continued building with great joy. Twenty-one years after it had begun, the Temple was at last finished. It was finished while Zerubbabel, the prince, and Joshua, the priest, were still ruling over the people.

This 2nd Temple was like the 1st one built by Solomon nearly five hundred years earlier. However, though this 2nd Temple was larger it was not as beautiful or as costly as Solomon’s. In front of the Temple was an open court with a wall around it. In this court the people could worship. Next to the people’s court, on higher ground, was the priests’ court. In this court stood the altar and the laver for washing. Within this court rose the house of God, with the Holy Place and the Holy of Holies, separated by a great veil. In the Holy Place, as before, stood the table for bread, the golden lampstand, and the golden altar for incense. But in the Holy of Holies there was no Ark of the Covenant, because this had been lost and was never brought back to Jerusalem. In place of the ark stood a marble block, upon which the high priest sprinkled the blood, when he went into the Holy of Holies on the great Day of Atonement, once each year.