Ezra 6:9

The exiles came home from Babylon under the decree of Cyrus (Ezra 1:1–4) and began to rebuild the temple that Nebuchadnezzar had destroyed. The peoples around them opposed the work (Ezra 4:4–5), and the building of the house of God ceased until the second year of Darius (Ezra 4:24). Then God sent the prophets Haggai and Zechariah. Haggai called the people to build (Haggai 1:1–11), and Zechariah promised that Zerubbabel’s hands would finish the house, “Not by might, nor by power, but by my spirit, saith the LORD of hosts” (Zechariah 4:6–10).

When the building began again, Tatnai the governor came and asked who had given the Jews authority to build, and he wrote to the king about it (Ezra 5:1–5). Darius had the royal archives searched, and the decree of Cyrus was found at Ecbatana. It authorized the rebuilding and provided for its cost (Ezra 6:1–5). Our passage is the king’s own answer to Tatnai.

Darius I reigned over the Persian Empire from 522 to 486 BC and was known as an able and orderly ruler. Persian kings often let subject peoples return to their lands and rebuild their holy places as long as they stayed loyal, a policy for which the Cyrus Cylinder is the famous example. Royal decrees were recorded in the state archives and were binding, which is why a search of the records could settle the matter. The letter stands in the part of Ezra written in Aramaic (Ezra 4:8–6:18), the common language of the empire’s western provinces.

Ezra 4 also records a letter from king Artaxerxes commanding that building cease (Ezra 4:21). The letter of Darius runs the other way, since it protects the work and pays for it.

Darius writes to the men who had raised the question, and his first order to them is “be ye far from thence.” The Aramaic word rachîyq means far or remote, of place or in a figurative sense, and with the command “be ye” it tells them to keep their distance from Jerusalem and from the work. They are to stop interfering, and they are to stay clear of anything that would intimidate the builders.

There is irony here. The men who came to Jerusalem asking by whose authority the Jews were building are now told by the highest authority on earth to stand back. The LORD did the same in Nehemiah’s day, when mockers scorned the builders of the wall and Nehemiah answered that the God of heaven would prosper them (Nehemiah 2:19–20), and when he could later say that “God had brought their counsel to nought” (Nehemiah 4:15). It is the care the psalm promises: “The LORD shall preserve thee from all evil” (Psalm 121:7–8).

Darius now goes further than Tatnai could have expected. “Moreover I make a decree,” he says, and the word for decree, ṭᵉʻêm, comes from a root meaning flavour and is used figuratively for judgment or account, and here for a formal royal command. The officials are told what they themselves must do for the elders of the Jews.

The “expenses”, niphqâʼ, an outgoing or cost, are to be paid from “the king’s goods, even of the tribute beyond the river.” The tribute was the tax collected from Tatnai’s own province, a large part of the crown’s income. Money gathered by a pagan empire for its own treasury is turned, by the king’s own word, to the building of the house of the God of Israel. It is to be given “forthwith”, at once, so that officials have no room to delay.

The purpose is “that they be not hindered.” The verb bᵉṭêl means to stop, to cease or to be idle. The work had ceased once before, and Darius means to see that it never stops again for want of money or because of opposition.

Why was Darius so generous? He was honouring the decree of Cyrus, as a king who valued law and order would. Supporting the worship of a subject people also helped to keep a key province loyal and quiet, and he may have had some respect for the God of the Jews. Behind all these reasons stands the LORD, who was providing for his house from a source the returned exiles, still poor and struggling to re-establish themselves, could never have arranged. They would rightly have seen it as his favour.

Verse 9 turns from the building to the worship that will go on inside it. “That which they have need of” uses chăshach, to be necessary, so the list that follows is what the services require. Moses had told Israel to bring their offerings to the place the LORD would choose (Deuteronomy 12:5–7), and the law sets out those offerings in detail (Leviticus 1–7).

The young bullocks, rams and lambs are for the burnt offerings. The Aramaic ʻălâh answers to the Hebrew ‘olah, the offering in which the whole animal was burned on the altar. It spoke of complete dedication to God and of atonement, and it was at the heart of Israel’s worship, including the sacrifices offered every morning and evening.

The other four items served the offerings that went with them. Wheat was for the grain offerings. Salt belonged to every offering as “the salt of the covenant” (Leviticus 2:13), a sign that God’s covenant endures. Wine was poured out as a drink offering, and oil was used for anointing, for the lamps and with the grain offerings.

All of this is to be supplied “according to the appointment of the priests which are at Jerusalem.” The king’s officers do as the priests say, so the worship of God is ordered by those God appointed to order it. And it is to be given “day by day without fail.” The word shâlûw means a fault, an error or a thing amiss, and the phrase requires a supply with no lapse or neglect in it, because the offerings were daily.

Haggai had shown the people what came of neglecting the house. In Nehemiah’s time they would bind themselves to supply its needs from their own produce (Nehemiah 10:32–39). Here, while they are still weak, God provides through the king. He is the God who fed Israel with manna each day in the wilderness and who teaches us to pray, “Give us this day our daily bread” (Matthew 6:11).

Verse 10 gives the king’s purpose. The priests are to “offer sacrifices of sweet savours unto the God of heaven.” The Aramaic nîychôwach answers to the Hebrew nihoah, the word the books of Moses use for an offering that is pleasing and acceptable to God. When Noah offered after the flood, “the LORD smelled a sweet savour” (Genesis 8:21), and the burnt offering of the law is called “a sweet savour unto the LORD” (Leviticus 1:9). The picture is of the smoke rising to God and of God accepting the worshipper.

The word for God, ʼĕlâhh, is the Aramaic word for God, corresponding to the Hebrew Eloah. The title “the God of heaven” (Elah Shemaya) is frequent in Ezra and Nehemiah. It was a title for a supreme deity that the nations of that day used and a Persian king could readily adopt, and it speaks truly of the LORD, who rules from heaven over every land and is the God of far more than one nation.

The priests are also to “pray for the life of the king, and of his sons.” The verb tsᵉlâʼ means to pray, and also to bow, so it carries the thought of humble petition. The prayer for his sons looks to the succession, since a peaceful passing of the throne meant stability for the whole empire, the Jews included.

Darius backs his decree with a threat. “Whosoever” covers anyone of any rank. To “alter” is shᵉnâʼ, to change, and here it means any attempt to violate or undo the king’s command about the temple.

The punishment has two parts. A timber is to be pulled from the offender’s own house and set up, and he is to be “hanged thereon.” The verb zᵉqaph means to hang or impale, and also to set up, and the punishment was most likely impalement or crucifixion, a brutal public execution used by the Persians and other empires to deter others. The beam comes from the man’s own house, so the place of his security becomes the instrument of his death.

Then his house is to be “made a dunghill.” The word nᵉvâlûw means a sink or refuse heap. The house would be left defiled and uninhabitable, a lasting public mark of disgrace on the man and his family.

The harshness had a purpose. The work had been stopped before, and the king meant to make sure that nobody would dare to stop it again. In the Persian Empire the king’s word was law, and to defy it was to challenge the king himself.

In the last verse of the decree the king looks past his own power. He calls on “the God that hath caused his name to dwell there” to destroy any king or people who lift a hand against the house. Human penalties reach only so far, and a later king might be beyond the reach of Darius, so he hands such a one over to God.

The verb shᵉkan means to reside or stay, and it is related to the Hebrew shakan, from which the idea of the Shekinah, God’s glory dwelling among Israel in tabernacle and temple, is drawn. God is present everywhere, and the temple never contained him. For his name to dwell in Jerusalem means that he chose that place to make himself known, to be worshipped and to keep covenant with his people. His name stands for who he is, his character and authority and faithfulness.

Two dangers are named. To “alter” is the same word as in verse 11, shᵉnâʼ, and here it reaches to any change made to the house or to what it is for. To “destroy” the house is chăbal, to ruin or lay waste. God’s care covers the building and the worship for which it was built. “All kings and people” is strong and sweeping language, and it means that no rank on earth is exempt.

The decree ends with the king’s own name and a last command: “I Darius have made a decree; let it be done with speed.” The officials obeyed, and the house was finished in the sixth year of his reign (Ezra 6:15).

Every part of this decree is a king’s act, and every part of it is also God’s doing. “The king’s heart is in the hand of the LORD, as the rivers of water: he turneth it whithersoever he will” (Proverbs 21:1). God had already called Cyrus his anointed and promised to go before him, though Cyrus did not know him (Isaiah 45:1–7), and now he moves Darius to confirm and enlarge what Cyrus began.

No miracle is recorded here. God worked through a letter of complaint, a search of the archives, a king’s sense of legal duty and his wish for a quiet province. His providence is as real in the ordinary workings of government as in signs and wonders.

So the word God had spoken about his house came to pass. His word does not return to him empty (Isaiah 55:11), and he who begins a good work will perform it (Philippians 1:6). The builders worked hard, and still the psalm is true of this temple: “Except the LORD build the house, they labour in vain that build it” (Psalm 127:1).

The house that Darius protected pointed forward to a greater one. Jesus said, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up”, and he was speaking of the temple of his body (John 2:19–21). In him “dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily” (Colossians 2:9), so he is the true place where God’s name dwells. Men did put their hands to destroy that temple at the cross, and God raised him on the third day. In the city to come there is no temple building at all, “for the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb are the temple of it” (Revelation 21:22).

Christ is also the builder. He said, “I will build my church; and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it” (Matthew 16:18). Believers are built together on him as the chief corner stone into a holy temple (Ephesians 2:19–22), as living stones in a spiritual house (1 Peter 2:5), and each believer’s body is a temple of the Holy Ghost (1 Corinthians 6:19). As Darius ordered the opposers to stand far off, so Christ at the cross “spoiled principalities and powers” and triumphed over them openly (Colossians 2:15), and he gives his people power over all the power of the enemy (Luke 10:19). The king wanted his decree carried out with speed, and Christ has sent his church to all nations with the promise that he is with them always (Matthew 28:19–20).

The daily bullocks, rams and lambs had to be offered again and again, “for it is not possible that the blood of bulls and of goats should take away sins” (Hebrews 10:4). They pointed to “the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world” (John 1:29). Christ entered the holy place once by his own blood (Hebrews 9:11–14) and has no need to offer daily, having offered himself once (Hebrews 7:27). His was the truly pleasing sacrifice, “an offering and a sacrifice to God for a sweetsmelling savour” (Ephesians 5:2), and through it we have boldness to draw near to God (Hebrews 10:19–22).

The priests prayed for the life of a king and his sons. We have a King who prays for us. Christ “ever liveth to make intercession” for those who come to God by him (Hebrews 7:25), at the right hand of God (Romans 8:34). The God of heaven whom Darius honoured from a distance is made known in him, who is “the image of the invisible God” (Colossians 1:15), the brightness of his glory and his final word to us (Hebrews 1:1–3), the “KING OF KINGS, AND LORD OF LORDS” (Revelation 19:16).

The penalty of verse 11 has its own echo. The KJV says the offender was to be “hanged” on timber, and the apostles use that English word of Jesus, “whom ye slew and hanged on a tree” (Acts 5:30). The lawbreaker in Darius’s decree bore his own curse and shame. Christ bore ours, being “made a curse for us” (Galatians 3:13) and made “to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in him” (2 Corinthians 5:21).

This passage shows us a God who rules the rulers. The officials who questioned the work, the taxes of the province and the king’s own heart were all in his hand, and he turned each of them to serve his house. When the work of God meets opposition, delay or an empty purse, we are looking at things he has overruled before, often by means that nobody was expecting.

It shows us that God provides what his worship needs. He supplied the temple “day by day without fail”, and the promise to us is that “my God shall supply all your need according to his riches in glory by Christ Jesus” (Philippians 4:19). Sometimes he does it through the gifts of his own people, and the king’s concern that the builders “be not hindered” is a good measure for how we support those who do his work.

The daily offerings have their counterpart in the Christian life. Our sacrifices now are our own bodies, presented as “a living sacrifice” (Romans 12:1), and “the sacrifice of praise to God continually” (Hebrews 13:15). The same steadiness belongs to prayer and to the word that is a lamp to our feet (Psalm 119:105), and to our prayers for those who govern us.

And the two words of warning, “alter” and “destroy”, tell us how much God cares for his house. He guards its purity as well as its walls, which is a sober thought for anyone whose teaching, division or neglect would damage his church, and a strong comfort for all who love it.