Ezra 6

The TorahRooted Bible (TRB), translated directly from the Hebrew and Greek.

Darius finds the decree of Cyrus

¹ Then King Darius made a decree, and search was made in the house of the records, where the treasures were stored in Babylon. ² And at Ecbatana, in the fortress that is in the province of Media, a scroll was found, and in it was written thus: "A memorandum: ³ In the first year of King Cyrus, King Cyrus made a decree concerning the house of Elah at Jerusalem: Let the house be built, the place where they offer sacrifices, and let its foundations be firmly laid; its height sixty cubits and its width sixty cubits, ⁴ with three courses of great stones and one course of new timber. And let the expenses be paid from the king's house. ⁵ And also let the vessels of gold and silver of the house of Elah, which Nebuchadnezzar took out of the temple which is in Jerusalem and brought to Babylon, be returned and brought back to the temple which is in Jerusalem, each to its place; and you shall put them in the house of Elah."

⁶ "Now therefore, Tattenai, governor beyond the River, Shethar-bozenai, and your companions the envoys who are beyond the River, keep away from there. ⁷ Leave the work of this house of Elah alone; let the governor of the Jews and the elders of the Jews build this house of Elah on its site. ⁸ Moreover I make a decree as to what you shall do for these elders of the Jews for the building of this house of Elah: from the king's goods, from the tribute of the region beyond the River, let the expenses be paid to these men with all diligence, so that they are not stopped. ⁹ And whatever they need, young bulls, rams and lambs for burnt offerings to the Elah of heaven, wheat, salt, wine and oil, as the priests who are in Jerusalem request, let it be given to them day by day without fail, ¹⁰ that they may offer pleasing aromas to the Elah of heaven, and pray for the life of the king and his sons. ¹¹ Also I make a decree that whoever alters this word, let a beam be pulled from his house, and let him be lifted up and impaled on it, and let his house be made a dunghill for this. ¹² And may the Elah who has caused His name to dwell there overthrow every king and people who puts out their hand to alter this, to destroy this house of Elah which is in Jerusalem. I, Darius, have made a decree; let it be done with all diligence."

The house finished and dedicated

¹³ Then Tattenai the governor beyond the River, Shethar-bozenai and their companions did with all diligence according to what King Darius had sent. ¹⁴ And the elders of the Jews built and prospered through the prophesying of Haggai the prophet and Zechariah the son of Iddo. They built and finished it according to the command of the Elah of Israel, and according to the decree of Cyrus and Darius and Artaxerxes king of Persia. ¹⁵ And this house was finished on the third day of the month Adar, which was in the sixth year of the reign of King Darius.

¹⁶ And the children of Israel, the priests and the Levites, and the rest of the children of the exile, celebrated the dedication of this house of Elah with joy. ¹⁷ And they offered at the dedication of this house of Elah a hundred bulls, two hundred rams, four hundred lambs, and as a sin offering for all Israel twelve male goats, according to the number of the tribes of Israel. ¹⁸ And they set the priests in their groups and the Levites in their divisions, for the service of Elah which is in Jerusalem, as it is written in the book of Moses.

The Passover

¹⁹ And the children of the exile kept the Passover on the fourteenth day of the first month. ²⁰ For the priests and the Levites had purified themselves together; all of them were clean. And they slaughtered the Passover for all the children of the exile, for their brothers the priests, and for themselves. ²¹ And the children of Israel who had returned from the exile ate, together with all who had separated themselves to them from the uncleanness of the nations of the land, to seek Yahweh, the Elohim of Israel. ²² And they kept the Feast of Unleavened Bread seven days with gladness; for Yahweh had made them glad, and had turned the heart of the king of Assyria toward them, to strengthen their hands in the work of the house of Elohim, the Elohim of Israel.

Notes

• 6:2 Ecbatana (Aramaic Achmeta, today Hamadan in Iran) was the old capital of Media; ancient writers say the Persian kings spent their summers there. The scroll is a dikhronah, a "memorandum" for the royal archives, written in Aramaic; the proclamation of 1:2-4 was the announcement made to the people. The memorandum adds the size of the house and who would pay for it (verses 3-4). Solomon's house was "sixty cubits long, twenty cubits wide and thirty cubits high" (1 Kings 6:2); the decree gives sixty cubits for both height and width, and no length. Many think these figures set the limit of what the royal treasury would pay for rather than the plan itself; others suspect an error in copying; the text does not say. When the foundation was laid, the old men who had seen the first house wept (3:12), and Haggai asked, "Is it not in your eyes as nothing?" (Haggai 2:3).
• 6:14 Haggai's prophecies are dated to the second year of Darius (Haggai 1:1), and Zechariah's begin in the same year (Zechariah 1:1); Zechariah had said, "The hands of Zerubbabel have laid the foundation of this house; his hands shall also finish it" (Zechariah 4:9). The house is finished "according to the command" (ta'am) of the Elah of Israel, and also by the "decree" (te'em) of the kings: two forms of the same Aramaic word, with the king's decree following the command of heaven. Artaxerxes reigned after Darius; he is probably named because he later gave gifts for the house (7:15-27).
• 6:15 Adar is the twelfth month, at the end of winter. The sixth year of Darius I is usually dated to 515 BC (some reckon 516), about seventy years after the house was burned in 586 BC (see the note on 2 Chronicles 36:21). This is the house that stood in the first century, greatly enlarged and rebuilt by Herod, and that the New Testament calls the temple; the Jewish tradition calls it the Second Temple.
• 6:17 "Dedication" is chanukkah, the same word as in "the dedication of the altar" (Numbers 7:10); centuries later the rededication of the house under the Maccabees gave its name to Hanukkah, the "Feast of Dedication" that Yeshua attended in Jerusalem (John 10:22). Most of those who returned were from Judah, Benjamin and Levi, yet the sin offering was made "for all Israel," twelve male goats "according to the number of the tribes of Israel": the house was for the whole people.
• 6:21 Those who "separated themselves to them from the uncleanness of the nations of the land" were people not of the returned exiles who joined them to seek Yahweh: whether Israelites who had stayed in the land or foreigners who turned to Yahweh, the text does not say. The Torah had made room for them at the Passover: "There shall be one Torah for the native and for the stranger who sojourns among you" (Exodus 12:49). What set them apart was leaving the nations' uncleanness, and the purpose was "to seek Yahweh."
• 6:22 The Persian king is called here "the king of Assyria," perhaps because he now ruled the lands of the old Assyrian empire that had carried Israel away (2 Kings 17:6); the same power that once scattered the people now helped them build. It was Yahweh who "turned the heart" of the king.

Ezra 5 · Ezra 7

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