1 Esdras 6: What the Passage Says

The Chapter in a Sentence

In the second year of Darius's reign, the prophets Aggeus and Zacharias speak to the Jews, and Zorobabel and Jesus begin rebuilding the house of the Lord in Jerusalem. Sisinnes the governor of Syria and Phenice and his companions question who authorized the work, and write to Darius reporting the elders' answer, which traces the building back to a decree of Cyrus. A search of the records at Ecbatane turns up the scroll of Cyrus's order, and Darius confirms it, directing the officials not to interfere, funding the work and the sacrifices from royal tribute, and setting a penalty for anyone who breaks or ignores the order.

Claim by Claim

1. 6:1
   • In the second year of the reign of Darius, Aggeus prophesied
   • Zacharias, the son of Addo, prophesied
   • Aggeus and Zacharias were prophets
   • They prophesied to the Jews in Jewry and Jerusalem
   • They prophesied in the name of the Lord God of Israel
   • The Lord God of Israel was upon them
2. 6:2
   • Zorobabel the son of Salatiel stood up
   • Jesus the son of Josedec stood up
   • They began to build the house of the Lord at Jerusalem
   • The prophets of the Lord were with them
   • The prophets of the Lord helped them
3. 6:3
   • At the same time Sisinnes came to them
   • Sisinnes was governor of Syria and Phenice
   • Sathrabuzanes and his companions came with him
   • They spoke to them
4. 6:4
   • They asked by whose appointment the Jews were building this house and this roof
   • They asked by whose appointment the Jews were performing all the other things
   • They asked who the workmen were that performed these things
5. 6:5
   • The elders of the Jews obtained favour
   • The Lord had visited the captivity
6. 6:6
   • The Jews were not hindered from building
   • The building continued until word concerning them was sent to Darius
   • The building continued until an answer was received
7. 6:7
   • Sisinnes, governor of Syria and Phenice, wrote a letter
   • Sathrabuzanes wrote the letter with him
   • Their companions, rulers in Syria and Phenice, wrote it with them
   • They sent the letter to Darius
   • What follows is the copy of that letter
   • The letter greets king Darius
8. 6:8
   • The writers ask that all things be made known to their lord the king
   • The writers came into the country of Judea
   • The writers entered into the city of Jerusalem
   • In the city of Jerusalem they found the ancients of the Jews who were of the captivity
9. 6:9
   • The ancients of the Jews were building a house to the Lord
   • The house was great and new
   • The house was of hewn and costly stones
   • Timber was already laid upon the walls
10. 6:10
    • Those works were being done with great speed
    • The work went on prosperously in their hands
    • The work was made with all glory and diligence
11. 6:11
    • The writers asked these elders a question
    • They asked by whose commandment the elders were building this house
    • They asked by whose commandment the elders were laying the foundations of these works
12. 6:12
    • The writers questioned them in order to give knowledge to the king by writing
    • The writers demanded of them who the chief doers were
    • The writers required of them the names in writing of their principal men
13. 6:13
    • The elders gave this answer
    • The elders said they are the servants of the Lord
    • The elders said the Lord made heaven and earth
14. 6:14
    • The elders said this house was built many years ago
    • The elders said it was built by a king of Israel
    • The elders said that king was great and strong
    • The elders said the house was finished
15. 6:15
    • The elders said their fathers provoked God to wrath
    • The elders said their fathers sinned against the Lord of Israel
    • The elders said the Lord of Israel is in heaven
    • The elders said God gave them over into the power of Nabuchodonosor
    • Nabuchodonosor was king of Babylon
    • Nabuchodonosor was of the Chaldees
16. 6:16
    • They pulled down the house
    • They burned the house
    • They carried the people away captive to Babylon
17. 6:17
    • In the first year that king Cyrus reigned over the country of Babylon, Cyrus the king wrote to build up this house
18. 6:18
    • Nabuchodonosor had carried holy vessels of gold and silver out of the house at Jerusalem
    • Nabuchodonosor had set those vessels in his own temple
    • Cyrus the king brought those vessels out again from the temple at Babylon
    • The vessels were delivered to Zorobabel
    • The vessels were delivered to Sanabassarus the ruler
19. 6:19
    • The command was that he should carry away the same vessels
    • The command was that he should put them in the temple at Jerusalem
    • The command was that the temple of the Lord should be built in its place
20. 6:20
    • Sanabassarus came there
    • Sanabassarus laid the foundations of the house of the Lord at Jerusalem
    • From that time to this the house has still been building
    • The house is not yet fully ended
21. 6:21
    • The writers ask that, if it seem good to the king, search be made among the records of king Cyrus
22. 6:22
    • The writers ask that if it be found that the building of the house of the Lord at Jerusalem was done with the consent of king Cyrus, and if the king is so minded, the king signify it to them
23. 6:23
    • King Darius commanded that search be made among the records at Babylon
    • A roll was found at Ecbatane the palace
    • Ecbatane is in the country of Media
    • These things were recorded in the roll
24. 6:24
    • In the first year of the reign of Cyrus, king Cyrus commanded that the house of the Lord at Jerusalem should be built again
    • At that house they sacrifice with continual fire
25. 6:25
    • The height of the house shall be sixty cubits
    • The breadth of the house shall be sixty cubits
    • There shall be three rows of hewn stones
    • There shall be one row of new wood of that country
    • The expenses of it are to be given out of the house of king Cyrus
26. 6:26
    • Nabuchodonosor took the holy vessels of the house of the Lord, of gold and silver, out of the house at Jerusalem
    • Nabuchodonosor brought them to Babylon
    • The vessels should be restored to the house at Jerusalem
    • The vessels should be set in the place where they were before
27. 6:27
    • He also commanded concerning Sisinnes the governor of Syria and Phenice
    • The command also concerned Sathrabuzanes and their companions
    • The command also concerned those appointed rulers in Syria and Phenice
    • They should be careful not to meddle with the place
    • They should allow Zorobabel to build the house of the Lord in that place
    • Zorobabel is the servant of the Lord
    • Zorobabel is governor of Judea
    • They should allow the elders of the Jews to build the house of the Lord in that place
28. 6:28
    • The king commanded that the house be built up whole again
    • The king commanded that they look diligently to help those of the captivity of the Jews
    • That help is to continue until the house of the Lord is finished
29. 6:29
    • A portion out of the tribute of Celosyria and Phenice is to be carefully given to these men
    • The portion is for the sacrifices of the Lord
    • The portion is to be given to Zorobabel the governor
    • The portion is for bullocks, rams, and lambs
30. 6:30
    • Corn, salt, wine, and oil are also to be given
    • These are to be given continually every year without further question
    • The amount is according as the priests in Jerusalem shall signify to be daily spent
31. 6:31
    • The purpose is that offerings may be made to the most high God
    • The offerings are for the king and for his children
    • The purpose is that they may pray for their lives
32. 6:32
    • He commanded concerning whoever should transgress anything spoken or written before
    • He commanded concerning whoever should make light of anything spoken or written before
    • A tree is to be taken out of that man's own house
    • The man is to be hanged on it
    • All his goods are to be seized for the king
33. 6:33
    • The Lord's name is called upon there
    • Darius invokes the Lord to utterly destroy every king and nation that stretches out a hand to hinder that house of the Lord in Jerusalem
    • Darius invokes the Lord to utterly destroy every king and nation that stretches out a hand to damage that house of the Lord in Jerusalem
34. 6:34
    • Darius the king says he has ordained that these things be done
    • Darius the king says they be done with diligence

Words Worth Explaining

Every language note in this chapter, gathered. These explain what a word meant, never what it means for the reader.

6:1

This book survives in Greek, so its names appear in Greek dress rather than the familiar Hebrew spellings. Aggeus is Haggai and Zacharias is Zechariah, the two prophets whose short books stand near the end of the Old Testament; Addo is Iddo. The Darius meant is Darius I of Persia, so his second year is about 520 BC. "Jewry" is an older English word for Judea, the small territory around Jerusalem, and carries none of the later senses that word picked up.

6:2

Zorobabel is Zerubbabel, a descendant of Judah's former royal line and the Persian-appointed governor of the province; Salatiel is Shealtiel. "Jesus the son of Josedec" is Jeshua son of Jozadak, the high priest: Jesus is simply the Greek spelling of the common Hebrew name Joshua, and this is not Jesus of Nazareth. "The house of the Lord" throughout this chapter means the temple building itself.

6:3

Sisinnes and Sathrabuzanes (Tattenai and Shethar-bozenai in the book of Ezra) were Persian imperial officials. Their province, called "Beyond the River" in Persian records, covered Syria, Phoenicia and Judea. Phenice is Phoenicia, the coastal strip of what is now Lebanon. Their arrival is an official inspection: a large building project with no visible authorization was exactly the sort of thing a governor was expected to look into.

6:5

"The captivity" is used here as a collective name for a group of people, those who had been deported to Babylon and their descendants, rather than for the experience of being captive. "Visited" in older English means looked in on with close attention, and could carry either a favorable or a punishing sense; here it is favorable.

6:6

"Signification" means a formal written report. The detail matters practically: the work was allowed to continue while the query and the reply traveled between Jerusalem and the Persian court, a round trip of many weeks at best.

6:7

Letters to a Persian king followed a fixed office formula: senders named first, then the addressee, then a one-word greeting, then the body of the report. The KJV preserves that shape.

6:8

"The ancients of the Jews" does not mean old men. "Ancients" here translates the word usually given as elders, the senior heads of families who acted as the community's recognized leadership.

6:9

"Hewn" stones are blocks squared and dressed by a mason, far more costly than rough fieldstone; the officials mention them because the expense implies a serious backer. Timber "laid upon the walls" describes courses of wooden beams set in between layers of stone, a known regional building technique that let a wall flex instead of shattering.

6:11

A foundation is the bottom part of a building. Workers build it first, and it holds up everything above.

6:12

"The chief doers" means the men in charge of the project. The officials want names in writing because, under Persian administration, responsibility for unauthorized work fell on named individuals who could be summoned and punished.

6:14

The king of Israel meant is Solomon, who built the first temple in Jerusalem roughly four centuries before the events of this chapter.

6:15

Nabuchodonosor is Nebuchadnezzar II of Babylon, who captured Jerusalem and burned the temple in 587 or 586 BC. The Chaldees are the Chaldeans, the people of southern Babylonia from whom the ruling dynasty came; "king of the Chaldees" is just another way of saying king of Babylon.

6:17

Cyrus the Great took Babylon in 539 BC, so his first year as its ruler is 538 BC. Letting deported peoples go home and rebuild their local temples at imperial expense was a known Persian policy, recorded in Cyrus's own inscriptions as well as here.

6:18

The "holy vessels" are the temple's ritual equipment: bowls, basins, dishes, snuffers and censers, made of precious metal. Carrying off a defeated people's sacred objects and housing them in the conqueror's own temple was standard practice and served as public proof of victory, so handing them back was the deliberate reverse of that gesture. Sanabassarus is the Sheshbazzar of the book of Ezra.

6:19

"In his place" is the older English use of "his" where we would say "its": the temple was to be rebuilt on its original site. Ancient rebuilding normally reused the exact footprint and foundations of the old structure rather than choosing fresh ground.

6:20

"Being still a building" is older English for "still being built," the same construction as the phrase "a house a-building." The exact relation between Sanabassarus, who lays the foundations here, and Zorobabel, who is building in verse 2, is left unexplained in the sources, and readers have long disagreed about whether they are two men or one man under two names.

6:21

Persian government kept written archives of royal decrees precisely so that claims like this one could be checked years later. The request is a legal move: prove the permit exists, or the work stops.

6:23

Ecbatane is Ecbatana, in Media, in what is now northwestern Iran. It served as the summer residence of the Persian kings, which is why a decree issued in Cyrus's first year had ended up filed there rather than at Babylon. "A roll" is a scroll, a written document rolled up for storage.

6:24

The fire on the temple's main altar was kept alight permanently rather than lit fresh for each sacrifice, so "continual fire" identifies the place by one of its standing features.

6:25

A cubit was about eighteen inches, roughly the length of a forearm, so sixty cubits is about ninety feet. That makes the permitted building both far taller and far wider than Solomon's temple had been, and the figures may be read as an upper limit the crown was willing to fund rather than an exact specification. The three courses of stone to one of timber is the same alternating construction the officials describe in verse 9. "The house of king Cyrus" means the royal treasury.

6:27

"Meddle with" here has its full older force: to interfere officially, to obstruct. "Suffer" means allow or permit, not endure pain. The order strips the local governors of any authority over the site.

6:29

Celosyria is Coele-Syria, "Hollow Syria," first used of the valley between the Lebanon and Anti-Lebanon mountain ranges and later of a wider inland region. "Tribute" is the tax the province paid the Persian crown, so the temple's running costs were charged against imperial revenue collected locally. "Bullocks" are young bulls, not castrated oxen.

6:30

"Corn" in the King James Version means grain of any kind, normally wheat or barley; maize was unknown in this world. Grain, salt, wine and oil are the standard accompaniments that went with animal sacrifice, so this is a supply order for the daily ritual, priced by what the priests report is actually consumed.

6:31

A drink offering was wine poured out at the altar rather than drunk. Requiring that a subsidized temple pray for the king and the royal family was a normal condition of imperial patronage across the Persian empire, and appears in other documents of the period.

6:32

The penalty is specific and physical: a beam is pulled out of the offender's own house and he is fastened to it, a form of execution by impaling or hanging on a stake that Persian records attest. Losing the beam wrecks the house as well, and the rest of the property is forfeited to the crown. The same sentence appears in the parallel decree in Ezra 6.

6:33

"Endamage" is an ordinary word of 1611 English, now lost, meaning to damage or injure. It is not a stronger or weaker word than "damage"; the prefix simply does no work we still hear.