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Updated: May 13, 2025
These are the children of the province, that went up out of the captivity, of those that had been carried away, whom Nebuchadnezzar the king of Babylon had carried away, and came again to Jerusalem and to Judah, every one unto his city; Who came with Zerubbabel, Jeshua, Nehemiah, Azariah, Raamiah, Nahamani, Mordecai, Bilshan, Mispereth, Bigvai, Nehum, Baanah.
The pathetic tale of the return of this people from their long exile, of the rebuilding of their city and their temple, and of the heroic and self-denying labors of Zerubbabel and Nehemiah, the governors, and Haggai and Zechariah, the prophets, and Ezra the scribe, with all their coadjutors, is full of significance to all those who trace in the history of the people of Israel, more clearly than anywhere else, the increasing purpose of God which runs through all the ages.
'The hands of Zerubbabel have laid the foundation of this house; his hands shall also finish it. ZECHARIAH iv. 9. I am afraid that Zerubbabel is very little more than a grotesque name to most Bible-readers, so I may be allowed a word of explanation as to him and as to the original force of my text.
Now when the adversaries of Judah and Benjamin heard that the children of the captivity builded the temple unto the LORD God of Israel; Then they came to Zerubbabel, and to the chief of the fathers, and said unto them, Let us build with you: for we seek your God, as ye do; and we do sacrifice unto him since the days of Esarhaddon king of Assur, which brought us up hither.
And the LORD stirred up the spirit of Zerubbabel the son of Shealtiel, governor of Judah, and the spirit of Joshua the son of Josedech, the high priest, and the spirit of all the remnant of the people; and they came and did work in the house of the LORD of hosts, their God, In the four and twentieth day of the sixth month, in the second year of Darius the king.
Not the gorgeous Temple which Solomon had raised, that had long ago been given to the flames, nor yet the Temple as adorned by King Herod: the building before us stands in its simple majesty as erected by the Hebrews after their return from Babylon under the leadership of Zerubbabel and Jeshua.
It was during the era of Assyrian and Babylonian invasion that the predictions of a MESSIAH, a great Deliverer and righteous Ruler who was to come, assumed a more definite expression. The spiritual character of Isaiah's teaching has given him the name of "the evangelical prophet." A small part first came back under Zerubbabel, head of the tribe of Judah, who was made Persian governor.
Especially the archangel Metatron dealt kindly with him. Besides revealing to him the time at which the Messiah would appear, he brought about an interview between the Messiah and Zerubbabel. In reality, Zerubbabel was none other than Nehemiah, who was given this second name because he was born in Babylon.
No doubt, in the long-forgotten days in which my text was spoken, there were plenty of over-prudent calculators in the little band of exiles who said, 'What is the use of our trying to build in face of all this opposition and with these poor resources of ours? They would throw cold water enough on the works of Zerubbabel, and on Zechariah who inspired them.
The two brave leaders, Zerubbabel and Joshua, still survived, and kept alive their own zeal; but the mass of the people were more concerned about their comforts than about the restoration of the house of Jehovah. They had built for themselves 'ceiled houses, and were engrossed with their farms. Haggai goes straight at the selfishness and worldliness of the people as the great hindrance.
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