The events in this chapter take place before Daniel 10-12. Daniel write in the third year of Cyrus’ reign, and this begins in the first year.
Will blog later today, heading out to a meeting….
Notes (reminders for later comment)
Cyrus was this kind of ruler. He allowed people to follow their own religious beliefs. In this case, he goes “above and beyond” to support the rebuilding of the temple. This happened after he was provided a copy of Jeremiah’s prophecy. When he saw his name there, he became very excited.
The first thing they did was rebuild the altar. the surrounding people didn’t want the temple rebuilt, so to begin offering sacrifices without a temple or walls around a city was fairly risky. The temple is built before walls around the city ever go up. (Nehemiah builds the walls later)
the priests helped. In fact, they were in charge.
Zerubbabel (it’s later referred to as his temple)
61,000 gold coins is about 1,100 lbs of gold, worth 21 million in today’s dollars. There are 11 family leaders mentioned in the first chapter. Were there more, or did these 11 leaders donate 2 million each? Wow. The people seem to have prospered while in exile.
The older priests remembered seeing the first temple. They may have wept because it was so much smaller, I’m not sure. Either way, these guys would have to have been fairly old. At a minimum they would have been 70 years old, and that would mean they were in their teens when taken into exile. By the way, why are priests who were in charge of temple worship when Israel was being disobedient back in temple area? Were they good priests who were outvoted back in the day, or were they part of the corrupt priesthood who have now learned their lesson. If they were under 20 years of age, (which seems to be the standard) they probably had never been active in priestly duties before they were exiled.