followHIM - Ezra; Nehemiah Part 1 • Dr. Christina Olson • July 27 - August 2 • Come, Follow Me

Episode Date: July 22, 2026

Why would people rebuilding God’s temple start by building a wall against their own neighbors? Dr. Christina Olson explores Ezra and Nehemiah, the imperfect leaders, contested history, and hard boundary lines that bridge the Old and New Testaments.YOUTUBE: https://youtu.be/537P7zjqtQYALL EPISODES/SHOW NOTESfollowHIM website: https://www.followHIMpodcast.comFREE PDF DOWNLOADS OF followHIM QUOTE BOOKSNew Testament: https://tinyurl.com/PodcastNTBookOld Testament: https://tinyurl.com/PodcastOTBookBook of Mormon: https://tinyurl.com/PodcastBMBook WEEKLY NEWSLETTERhttps://tinyurl.com/followHIMnewsletter SOCIAL MEDIAInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/followHIMpodcastFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/followhimpodcastTIMECODE0:00 - Part 1 - Dr. Christina Olson1:48 First impressions of Ezra and Nehemiah4:15 Dr. Olson’s bio7:38 Come, Follow Me Manual8:25 What these names mean9:45 Recap the exile and archeological evidence14:59 First and Second Temple Periods17:54 Why rebuild?19:00 Ezra-Nehemiah as bridge to the New Testament23:45 Cyrus’s edict and the return home26:04 Why Ezra-Nehemiah is such a difficult read30:59 The pattern of an ancient temple-building account35:43 “Strangers in a strange land” – Identity and memory39:29 Genealogies and staking a claim40:00 Zerubabel and Jeshua return44:51 Weeping and joy at the temple foundation46:13 The adversaries arrive47:55 Exclusion and God using imperfection52:41 How present-day conflicts get written57:18 Letters of accusation to the Persian king1:01:12 Tatnai’s inquiry and Darius’s decree1:05:15 Temple dedication and Passover1:07:52 End of Part 1 - Dr. Christina OlsonThanks to the followHIM team:Steve & Shannon Sorensen: Cofounder, Executive Producer, SponsorDavid & Verla Sorensen: SponsorsDr. Hank Smith: Co-hostJohn Bytheway: Co-hostDavid Perry: ProducerKyle Nelson: Marketing, SponsorLisa Spice: Client Relations, Editor, Show NotesWill Stoughton: Video EditorKrystal Roberts: Translation Team, English & French Transcripts, WebsiteAriel Cuadra: Spanish TranscriptsAmelia Kabwika: Portuguese TranscriptsHeather Barlow: Communications DirectorSydney Smith: Social Media, Graphic Design "Let Zion in Her Beauty Rise" by Marshall McDonaldhttps://www.marshallmcdonaldmusic.com

Coming up in this episode on Follow Him. We look at these scriptures, we look at these figures and we want them to be perfect. But the whole purpose of this gospel is no one can be perfect. Because if we're perfect, then how can God show us his great work through us? Because God is the only one that is perfect. He is the one that we're striving to be. Hello, my friends. Welcome to another episode of Follow Him. My name is Hank Smith. I'm your host.

I'm here with John, by the way, who is a... ready scribe in the law of Moses. John, I read that in Ezra chapter 7, verse 6, and I thought, that's John. John is a ready scribe in the law of Moses. I've seen you write this year more than ever before. You've been taking notes. My Old Testament is getting filled up with a lot of notes from a lot of scholars. I'm ready, willing, and two out of three ain't bad. Yeah. Did you know, John, I think that a ready scribe is actually an expert in the law of Moses. The more you write, the more expertise you get. I think you could be an expert at this point.

Oh, I don't know, but I'll take the compliment as a goal to work on. The Old Testament can be difficult to understand, and we have the right person to explain it to us. John, we are joined today by our first time guest, Dr. Christina Olson. Thank you for being here. Thank you for coming on and follow him. Thank you for having me. honored to be here. This is going to be so much fun. John, when you think of Ezra and Nahamaya, now if you had asked me this in high school, I would have said, bless you. What, Nehemiah,

I don't know what that is. Through the years, we've come to understand a little bit more about these books. What comes to mind when you think of them? How central the temple was. It always seemed to be about building or rebuilding. And I think had I suddenly had a chance to go back to Israel, I was like, Let's go to the beach. Let's go to Caesarea. Miratima, right? What is their thing? We've got to build the temple.

Yeah, I love it. Christina, as you've been preparing, what do you want to do today? What are you looking forward to? First of all, coming off that comment is just introducing what is the Ezra Nehemiah. This is a text where many people probably don't read very often. When I mentioned to my husband that I'm doing this one, he's like, I don't quite know what's in there, what's actually in Izurneumaya.

So he was my guinea pig. It's not a really common easy book to read. Literarily, it's really confusing. Historically, it's really confusing. It's in historical books, but it's not history the way we want to tell history. One of my biggest goals for today is really just to lay down the context. Context is very important as an anthropologist, archaeologist, and scholar. To me, context gives you probably half the battle in reading scripture.

Where are they writing? What time are they writing? What's going on that influences how they're writing and what they're focusing on? really talking about the context. And then there's a couple really strong themes in Azar Nehemiah, which again, if you look at big picture, are really helpful to understand. Azar Nehemiah is a bridge between the Old Testament and the New Testament.

A time period we kind of forget, you read the Old Testament, and you jump to the New Testament, and you're like, what's in between? There's actually a lot that happened between these time periods. It's pretty pivotal, actually, especially for setting up the New Testament. I've taught New Testament a couple of times at BYU, and this is where I start.

If you want to understand the New Testament, you need to understand everything that happened before that set the stage. For me, Ezra Nehemiah is an awesome text to show us, where did we get from one point to the next, from the kings to the time of Jesus Christ? And where is that bridge between them? And Ezra Nehemiah gives us that. You know, I think you are right on there.

When I teach Isaiah, I don't teach Ezra and Nahamaya very much, but you're right. Context is half the battle. If they just know who he's talking about, when he's talking, all of a sudden, oh, oh, I get it now. I'm excited to learn the context of these books. John, now, Christina, this is her first time joining us. She's out in Waco, Texas. We haven't met her except for today.

Who is this woman? Hank, when I read Christina's bio, I was like, oh, oh, wow, oh, wow. So have your oh, wow's ready here. Christina has a bachelor's from BYU in ancient near eastern stuff. studies, a master's from Eastern Carolina University in anthropology and Middle Eastern archaeology, recently received her Ph.D. in Religion, Old Testament, from Baylor University, where she is. She served a mission in Russia and Kazakhstan and was part of the piloting efforts to start having missionaries learn Kazakh alongside Russian. She's an archaeologist and a

biblical scholar. She has worked on archaeological projects in Colorado, Italy, and Israel. One of you said those three places altogether, including seven years at the site of Telasafi Gath Israel. She was recently awarded a four-month research fellowship of the Albright Institute of Archaeology in Jerusalem. Wow. To finish her first book, based upon her dissertation, she currently lives in Waco with her husband Peter and their two very active boys. What a background. This is great. We're excited to hear from you. We're welcome to follow him. John, sometimes when I hear these bios, I think, what have I done with my life? John, I'm old enough to be Christina's seminary teacher. She's taking the fast track through her education. This is amazing. Christina, tell me what it's like to be a young mother writing a

dissertation. Yeah, I started my doctor program with a six-week-old, actually, and was very very, very lucky that the day before I started, he slept through the night. And from there on, he slept, which really saved me those first couple of years. No, it's been crazy, but it's been fun, too, to have them along. When we went to Italy, I took my husband and a son, and I was pregnant with my second. So they just came on the journey, a fun opportunity to do that with a family. That's fantastic. John and I both have boys in our house. So we know a seven-year-old and a three-year-old, I think you said you have. We know about that life.

That's something at least I can add to my bio as well. I've had boys in my home, and that's why we don't buy brand-new stuff. Active was my very nice term for... Yeah, active. That's fantastic. Just check out the baseboards. That's all you need to know. Look at the base boards, and you'll know how active our children have been.

Recently, both of you, we moved, not too far away, just about 20 minutes. But in moving, we had to take down a little bit of... bunch of posters in bully's rooms and found holes in the wall that I did not know existed. I asked my sons about that and they would, oh yeah, yeah, that's when we were wrestling and we just put a poster up over it. Okay, thanks, guys. Let's read from the Come Follow Me Manual and then Christina, John and I are ready to learn. I really want to understand these books. The title of the lesson this week is, I am doing a great work. The Jewish people had been captives in Babylon for about 70 years. They had lost Jerusalem and the

temple, and many had forgotten their commitment to God's law. But God had not forgotten them. In fact, he had declared through his prophet, I will visit you and perform my good word toward you in causing you to return. True to this prophecy, the Lord made a way for his people to return, both to Jerusalem and more importantly to their covenants. And he raised up servants who accomplished a great work. A governor named Zerubabelle oversaw the rebuilding of the Lord's house. Ezra, a priest and scribe, helped the people turn their hearts back to God's law, and Nehemiah led the rebuilding of the protective walls around Jerusalem. They met opposition, but they also got help from unexpected sources.

Their experiences can inform and inspire ours because we too are doing a great work. And like theirs, our work has much to do with the House of the Lord, the law of the Lord, and the spiritual protection we find in Him. What a great way to start. That even gives us a little bit of the context you were talking about, Christina. How do you want to start? What should we do next? To start is just talking about the names of Ezra Nehemiah.

Ezra comes from the root word, Ezr. You might have heard that word a few times, especially if you go back to your Genesis account. We have the word Ezer Kineggdo of Eve. Ezr means help. Scholars think Ezra might be kind of a shortened, a nickname form, Ezra Yahoo, which is literally God is my or Yahweh is my help. So off the bat, we have the name of Ezra, who is God is helping us.

This is one of the themes of Ezra Nehemiah. God is helping us. Then you get to Nehemiah that comes from the root word Nechem, which means comfort. The ya, the end is theophoric, the God name. So God is our comfort. Off the bat, we get the story about God being our help and our comfort, which is what you see throughout the whole book. The story of God helping his people. bringing comfort back to his people who had lost so much

and had that despair and destruction in their history. Help and comfort. I think John means restroom. So that's excellent. Yeah, my parents should have run the etymology down on that one first. Sorry, you're going to have to get used to our jokes, Christina, along the way. No, it's good. I'll take it.

Now, Christina, I want to test. my knowledge here. Here's what I remember so far from what we've read. We had the kingdom of Israel, then they decided they wanted kings. We went Saul, David, Solomon, then the kingdom broke in half, northern kingdom of Israel, southern kingdom of Judah, the northern kingdom is destroyed or taken by Assyria. A hundred and something years later, the southern kingdom is taken by Babylon. A lot of these Jews, especially the royalty, the upper class are taken to Babylon, then King Cyrus, who's not an Israelite,

maybe he saw himself as a liberator. I'm freeing you from Babylon. Go back to Jerusalem. Go rebuild your city. How did I do? Yeah, that's in a nutshell. But yeah, I want to get a little more specific to kind of set this scene for what we're going to talk about

and Ezra Nehemiah and what the land looks like as well, to get it more into what they're thinking or feeling. So yes, at the end of the kings, Babylonians came in. They tried to rebel a few times. Babylonians ended up destroying the city. When we read the text, the biblical text, is written by Judeans. It's written by those who have that history of kingdom of Judah. It's written from their perspective, their biases and influences and memory.

They'll talk about certain things in a way that maybe is a little more favorable to them or they remember in a certain way. So they talk about there's this grand exodus, this deportation. There's actually three different deportation of groups of people during the time of the Babylonians. Then we have the destruction of the temple in 586, the destruction of the city. It's this huge, big destruction. But actually in the archaeological record, they've learned a lot more about Jerusalem in its recent years about the archaeology of Jerusalem during this time during the Babylonian and especially Persian periods to kind of see what was going on during this time where there's an exile, people are gone,

there's this idea of an empty land that the Bible will refer to. It wasn't quite so empty. You talked about only those elites were taken away. You see in the city in the destruction layers of the time of the Babylonian destruction, not actually everything was destroyed. There was very distinct spotted destruction, the temple, some of the bigger houses. So you see a very strategic destruction. And then you see, later, on, there wasn't really a complete abandonment of the city. You see people starting to build, even pretty recently after that destruction, people build onto these destroyed ruins. From the Persian period on, they're living in the ruins of the city of Jerusalem. That's fascinating, because isn't that

right where Lehigh leaves Jerusalem and he says, look, Jerusalem's going to be destroyed? You're saying the archaeological record shows it was destroyed, but it was strategically destroyed. But it was strategically destroyed. Babylon. Interesting. I like that. Especially when you think about, I mean, this is very part and parcel of conquering narratives throughout the ancient areas. When powers come in to destroy, they're going to destroy the main centers of power. They're going to destroy the temple, the palace, the administrative buildings.

And I'll talk about this later with Nehemiah. They're going to often pull out bones of the tombs. So you're taking away people's inheritance or claims to the land. other stories they salt the earth, and so you're destroying the economy, and then you get, you're deporting people, you're destroying their society. So it's a very strategic destruction of a community of a nation in this kingdom. And that's what the kingdom of Judah had. It was a very strategic wholesale destruction. It is a wholesale destruction, even though on the personal level, there are still some people living around there. Probably a lot of people related to the temple,

as we get later into the text. A lot of these are personnel of the temple that are around this destroyed temple. Because it's still sacred site, even though it's been destroyed. We still have the ruins of the temple. Possibly we have some evidence of pilgrimage to the temple even before it was rebuilt. So it remains an important site and people are still around the temple there and probably in the outlying areas. How heartbreaking to live.

Here comes Babylon. They come in. They destroy the temple. And now you're left looking at what once was. Yeah. A lot of the texts that we get in the Old Testament, a lot of the final form of even the Old Testament itself, we're realizing more and more that these texts were written during this time period in Jerusalem and then a few of the exiles that are outside the land like Ezekiel. They're writing this period. But they're really writing, even about the history, when all around them is the ruin. There's the tombs of the kings, the tombs of their families, and there's destruction as they're writing these texts. So it's a very strong part of their memory. even as we get into Nezaryamaya, they're building a community, but it's still a community

within ruins. They do eventually build another temple, the temple of Zerububel, in 515. Temple is destroyed 586. By 515, they finally rebuild a temple, definitely rebuild a temple, definitely not to the extent that it had been before. Smaller temple personnel. This whole story, Ezra Nehemiah, is a lot of this combination of sorrow for the past, as well as hope for the future. These mixed emotions throughout the whole text that you see Nezaryemiah and then with other prophetic books as you'll talk about, I'm sure, later and read more with the other prophets. But it's this mix. Worship is a mix of sorrow and joy and all these feelings are okay. They're available.

I occasionally hear from my scholarly friends things like First Temple Period and Second Temple Period. The First Temple Period goes from Solomon to Babylon, I guess. and Second Temple period basically starts around these books, right, around that time, and goes all the way to Jesus. Yeah, so as historians, we love to categorize, right? We have to set things up straight. Yeah, so you have different periods of time and who's in control. So you have the Babylonian period, the Persian period,

which is when the king conquered the known ancient near Eastern world in 539. The Persian period goes all the way until about 332 with Alexander the Great, where you have the Hellenistic period. And then you have another period cause of the Hasmanian period. This is around 140-ish to 37. And this is when we kind of get this little resurgence of Judean independence with the Maccabees. This is where that story of Hanukkah comes from. Then you get to the Roman period for the time of Jesus.

During this, if you look now towards the temple in that timeline, you have the destruction in 586 of that first temple, Solomon. and then 515, it finally is finished, it's completed. We'll see in Ezra Nehemiah, they do start the temple in 538 when they first return, but it's not finished until 515th. This is marked the start of the second temple period, like the early second temple period. By the time we get to Jesus Christ, Herod has taken the temple of Zerruvible, made it grander, expanded the foundations.

We usually call that the late Second Temple period. And that's how they divide the time between them. John, we are becoming ready scribes here. Yes. Ready or not, here we scribe. I mean, that's another aspect of the ancient world. This idea of memory and this perpetuating of sacred sites, once a place is holy, it continues to be holy.

And it goes back to get in that memory of the holiness and respecting that, what is this holy place and what does it mean for us? And that goes into the temple building account we're going to get with Ezra, the importance of why. Why do we need to even build a temple here? We've been worshiping outside the land for this long. We've already starting to figure out we can worship without a temple. Many of them have this need to come back to the temple to worship at this site, to rebuild it, to bring God's presence back to his original, the sacred site that they know and they remember.

This is kind of a silly similarity. But it worked for me. Right when the church was tearing down the Provo Temple to rebuild it now, it's well on its way to being rebuilt. But I went over just as they were tearing it down, watching those machines grab big chunks of the building and pull it off. Even that kind of hurt my heart. I was like, oh, there's the locker room right there. I see it. And I thought, oh, man, this would be a difficult thing to watch a temple destroyed by a different country by your enemies.

Also, I like this lesson, Christina, because as Latter-day Saint, we often know the history up until Lehi. Oh, we'll say, oh, I know the history all the way to Lehigh. And then we go away with Lehi and his family. Then we come back for the four Gospels. We're like, when we left, Babylon was about to destroy this. And now one thing led to another and Rome's in charge. And we just move on. It's nice to say, all right, let's let Lehi and his family leave.

and we'll stay here and watch what happens here. It's new ground for a lot of us. Yeah, going back to what I talked about being this, this bridge between the two Testaments, it really goes back to the idea of the temple being the house or the presence of God. This is a very common ancient Near Eastern principle, this idea that if you have a temple, your deity is housed there.

If it's destroyed, it means that one deity let it be destroyed. Because your God is powerful, it's not going to happen unless he lets it happen. And then once it's destroyed, his presence is gone. Essentially, the idea that when they go to exile, again, it's this idea that where is our God? How do we worship him? How do we find him? And these are the questions that set up what kind of Judaism looks like at the time of Jesus Christ. They're still asking these questions.

They're still asking, where is God? How are we worshiping him? we get the different sects, the Sadducees, the Pharisees, the Pharisees, the zealots, all these different Jewish groups, they arise from these questions of how do we relate to our God now that there's not a temple. We don't have our king, who is the mediator between God and us. Well, eventually we get a high priest, but for a while they lost their high priests, who again were those connections to God. Before this time period in Ezra Nehemiah, religion and that worship of God was very much

centered on your king and your priests. It trickled down to the people, but it really rested on the king and that mind authority. What we're going to see in Ezra Nehemiah is what's called this democratization of religion of worship. It really starts to become a personal aspect for the people. It's now their job. The king is no longer there. It's not his responsibility to be righteous. He doesn't affect us. we actually have to be the ones that are righteous. What we do affects the consequences. You're right. How do you understand the New Testament without knowing?

All these different groups that Jesus is going to interact with, how do you understand them unless you understand this story? We go back to the promises that we've been talking about with the Abrahamic promises. He talked about, we're going to have land, we're going to have posterity, we're going to have the priesthood, and they've lost all those. People died. We lost our claim, our inheritance. That's that posterity part. We lost our claim to the land. What do we do now? We lost all these promises.

Is God a false God because we don't have these promises anymore? Are we going to start just believing what these other people are believing as we're living over here in Babylon? They've been dealing with these issues of all these questions. And then when we get to the New Testament, these are the very specific issues that Jesus Christ addressed. They're saying, who are we? You are our children of God. Where's our kingdom? Where's our nation, our people? you're part of the kingdom of God. Where is our land? How do we worship? And he shows them. So he's really answering these questions that came up during this time of being lost.

I'm trying to imagine what this would be like because obviously some of these people are born in Babylon. They've never even been to Jerusalem. They're like, go home. And they're like, this is my home. We have gone through this history of kings not working out very well. I was thinking of this this morning, but we always refer to the kingdom of God. And that's what you were just saying, Christina. God is supposed to be our king.

The mortal kings have not worked out very well. And making alliances with other nations has not worked out very well. Let God be your king. Let God be your ally seems to be the theme of the Old Testament. I wonder what would be like to be in Babylon and then to hear that Cyrus is coming and then to hear, okay, go home. I wonder if that's a shock. Really? We can go home.

Yep. Go home. You're moving from Babylonian control to Persian control. When the Babylonians were in charge, they had a hands-off administration. They went destroyed, deported everybody. They would place the governor there. We don't really have any other indication

of them doing much within these different lands and these places. They're just kind of a left to destruction. You're there. Good luck. When the Persians, come with Cyrus in 539. In that first year of his reign, his big edict is, okay, now everybody who is displaced, go home. All the vessels that were taken from your temples take back with you. It's an awesome thing, but it's also really politically, really smart, because he sends people back.

And now they're starting to go back to their lands. There's more places now that he can get tribute from in taxes. The economy's building up. They have control. And now these people are grateful to this king, Cyrus, who is letting them go back. So it's inspired, but also really smart and strategic. That's how God works through our systems. With that, Christina, are we ready to jump in? Getting into Ezra Nehemiah, I do want to talk a little bit about that literary context. Now that we've got that history behind us, where does Ezra Nehemiah as a text fit in with this history. Ezra Nehemiah itself is a pretty confusing text. There's probably a reason why not as many people read this as much. Because it's hard to read. It's confusing. When it was finally completed, it was completed as Ezer Nehemiah.

There's a pretty good tradition of these were originally put together. But they're made up of a lot of different texts. You have a lot of different sources. You have letters. You have official documents and genealogies and a few stories and narratives over here. They're all just kind of put together with themes behind them as far as following Greek tragedy themes and the way they write history. but then you also have the influence of ancient Near Eastern documents and formats and writing. So it's a brilliant way of how all these texts are put together, but it's not the way probably we as modern community want to see a history made. It's not giving us a very linear story of this happened and then this happened and this happened. Really when we want to read the story and we read different parts,

we kind of want to think of more in terms of, and also this happened at some point. But I'm bringing the story together and bringing different time periods together and a really more of a theological aspect. The person that put this together really wanted to bring out a story and teach a point about the theology of this community and who God is and what he does for us. So when you're reading straight through, you'll get to points where you might stop for a minute and you're like, wait a minute, I thought I was talking about this one guy and now we're talking about another guy. And you have to figure out what is doing. What is the point of how the story is put

together? Okay. So not only we were getting a translation, we're getting a translation in King James English, and we're also getting an ancient way of putting a history together. I can see why people might see that as a little daunting. Yeah. So Ezra Nehemiah, because I think I read this, was originally one book. They called it Ezra Nehemiah, and now it's split. Yeah, it seems to be in its final composition once all these pieces were put together, it was put together as Ezer Nehemiah together. But even that, from there, there's a lot of different traditions and there's still compositional confusion.

Some people put Ezerneemaiah because the first two verses are the same as the last two verses in Chronicles. Some people say it used to be chronicles as are Nehemiah. Others push back against that and say, oh, they're just following the traditions of chronicles in different, even translations, they're put in different places. In our most Christian English translations, like we see in the KJV, we have Ezra Nehemiah at the end of the historical books. It's ending this history of chronicles, getting into the end and that destruction

and a little bit of that post-exile. And then after that we get the writings or the wisdom books, literature. In some of the Hebrew traditions, Hezernemaiah is put before. four chronicles. It's put in this context of book that's called The Writings. So it's just this group of different books that are just these writings that are different histories or sayings or Psalms, proverbs. So it's included in that in the Hebrew traditions. It's all over. It goes all over. It's not like the first five books of the Old Testament that are always together, always the same. Even past translators, past canons, didn't quite know what to do with Ezra Nehemiah.

It's kind of a casserole. So we should really love that. Yeah, we do casseroles. That's right. We should love it. There's some broccoli in there. There's some potato. I'm looking at Second Chronicles 36 at the last verses, and you're right.

First 22 and 23 of Second Chronicles 36 are verses 1, 2, and part of three of Ezra. Christina, I want to ask you, I can picture a listener at home. They've got their scriptures open or maybe they're driving or something and they're thinking, man, this seems complicated. Maybe I'd skip it or is this really going to matter to me? Why would you say, all right, the Lord wants us to see these texts? Can you persuade me that the Lord wants me to see these? I bet you can. That's my goal. So maybe let me know at the end if I've persuaded you. It's a harder one because it's not going to give you a happy feeling all the time. There's complicated aspects to it, which I think is actually one reason why we should read it. This idea that

Being a member of the church, being a follower of God is complicated. There's good parts to it, bad parts to it. God uses really imperfect people. We're going to see mistakes that Ezraimi and both make. This really draws me into Ezraemiah and really thinking about community. There's a lot of us, especially in our global world today, I'm teaching anthropology class right now, and we talk a lot about global connections and new global world, where we move around a lot. We're not sent to in our families. My mom told stories about growing up. She actually had double cousins, so they grew up all together with their friends and they had this awesome, cool village of their family around them. Most of us don't have that. I moved to Waco. I have a few family members on my husband's side,

and for a while I had a sister-in-law here, which was awesome, but she's gone now. It's really our family by ourselves. This concept of who is our community. Who do we belong to? How can we find these connections and a lot of Ezra Nehemiah is talking about how to find these connections. Finding these anchor points. Where can you connect when you are so different? So really it comes to Ezra Nehemiah, big picture. It's a really important and helpful story for understanding this idea of community and identity and what it really means to figure out your place in God's gospel. It's worth the effort. Christina, I was thinking as you were explaining that perhaps we have listeners who are in a rebuilding phase of their life.

Something maybe devastating has happened, a loss of a love on a divorce, something where they feel like, wow, I'm picking up the pieces here. Maybe these books can also speak to that. Yeah, I think they can. This whole point of Yuzer Nehemiah is to show God has not forgotten us. All these things have happened. You think you've lost these promises. you've lost some of your connections and this identity,

but throughout this whole time, God is our, right, the Ezr and Necham, he is our help and our comfort. Maybe not always in the way you think it's going to be, or quite look like the same as you think or hope for, but he's going to be there. He will stay with you and build you up to do that. Kind of the regrowth after the forest fire. I always find that beautiful to see that green coming up through all that charred wood.

Okay, what do you want to do next? Thanks for that, Christina. One through six really is a return story. We don't actually even get to Ezra yet until chapter 7. So it's laying down the grounds to this overall, we are now returning to Jerusalem. God through Cyrus, who is the king of Persia, gives that edict saying all these deportees,

go back home, go back, rebuild your temples. This was across the board. And the text I like to say, right, this is just for us. But it was for everybody, again, a political move, but really beneficial to these people who could go back and very focused on rebuilding a temple. These chapters 1 through 6 really follow a pattern of an ancient Near Eastern literature of a temple building account. So it's building into these traditions, especially if we think about, I know you've talked to some others. I heard you're talking with Carly.

She talked about the oral nature of scripture. In general, people didn't know how to read in these time periods. the very, very small percentage actually read the books. They'd be hearing all these stories. If you have these patterns of stories, you know what to look for and what to listen for and what to focus on. So if you're hearing the story of this return to Jerusalem, you can pick out, oh, this is a temple rebuilding story.

So I'm going to know there's going to be this call to rebuild. It has to be through a divine command. You cannot build a temple without God being in control with God telling you, you have to build a temple. This can't be done just by a king alone. Already they're starting to see, like, okay, the hand of God is in here. This is a divine story we're hearing of this return and this rebuilding account. And then there's several other aspects.

You see this with the temple of Solomon and with the tabernacle as well, this idea of usually there's like a history of telling us why, what happened to the temple, it was in ruins. Now we need to rebuild, this call to rebuild. then you get this acquisition of materials, the laying of the foundation of the temple, certain points along the way that are important to building the temple. Then you get to ceremonies at the end of the final dedication, the final stages, and setting up the personnel of the temple.

The rebuilding of the temple in Jerusalem follows this pattern. You'll see aspects within there. But also, the cool part about this construction is also the fact that they've got these Greek influences too. You also have a bit of this Greek tragedy in here, this drama going on within this temple building. We're not just building the temple, we're also contending with these adversaries. So you're also starting to root for this community and caring about them and their well-being. I want to move even two verses three and four. We mentioned this a little bit earlier, this idea that these are generations of people who are gone from the land.

Most of them were born outside the land. So they actually were given the choice. Who feels that call to go up to Jerusalem? Which is another aspect of, again, setting this new form of religion up. It's saying, you do have a choice. You don't absolutely have to go back to the temple. Because we're starting again to figure out this worship away for the temple and what it means to worship God. Even just the way it talks about these people in verse 3,

who is there among you of all his people, has God be with them, let him go up to Jerusalem, which is actually the same wording that's used for people going up out of Egypt. Then verse four it says, whosoever remaineth in my place where he sojourneth. They're already talking about these people, even though they've been there for 30, 40 years, this first 539 time, it's still referring to these people as the word that's used as gar, and this refers to being foreigners. It's saying, even though you've been there, you probably were born there, you are still seeing yourself as a Judean. They're still connecting themselves back to Jerusalem. we are foreigners living in a foreign land.

That's you're someone that's been deported. But they are setting themselves apart. They're saying we are foreigners in this foreign land because we are still remembering and connecting our capital, our temple, our place where we came from, which really goes into that strong memory aspect of we are still the people of Yahweh no matter where we are. And that's actually really unique.

The fact that we even have this Old Testament like this is really unique because this is that policy of, conquest is you scatter people and they'll forget who they are. But they're really showing us right here in these first verses, we remember who we are. We remember our past and our heritage. That's really important for them and what they're doing and what they're realizing as this community. So the first part of even being a community, being these worshippers of God, is remembering who we are, remembering that we do have that past tradition and this heritage to build off of. Wow. That principle of who am I and whose am I, that's huge. That's applicable today, that identity thing.

I know that there's a lot of echoes in the scriptures. Isn't Abraham say I'm a stranger in a strange land and now they're, I'm a stranger in a strange land? I like to use that phrase a lot. They echo and repeat things. They're feeling that way, but now they're going to go back. Before I put Cyrus in my Hero Hall of Fame, it's not like he's saying, oh, never mind that. captivity thing go home, it's like you can leave but pay taxes. Is that right? Whether you're here, whether you're staying or whether you're going back, the Babylonian revenue service is still enforced. So you still got to pay taxes, but you can go back and build your temple. So I like what you said. It's a political move. Yeah. Not still very much in the background of a lot of these stories in Ezra Nehemi and other texts is this fact that honestly even back during the Kings,

they were never really that independent. There's always somebody bigger around them. Other empires, this whole land of Judah, Israel, they were pretty minor characters in the grand scheme. As much as they liked to say how great they were, they were pretty minor. And again, they're still pretty minor. They're still within the system, the Persian system.

The Persians, in comparison to the Babylonians, especially, had a very structured administrative system throughout their empire. But it's still not as big as Solomon. Later on, you'll look at the goods that the king is sending them to. The king does help them build up the temple. This is what's a little bit strange. Again, Jerusalem is kind of a far-out, not super important place,

but the fact that the king is giving so much energy, so much goods to be building it up, that's not common for these out-of-the-way places like that. They're sending back these vessels, and he's saying, here's the revenue to help build up that temple. We'll see that even more to later with Nehemiah. you're giving a lot of these good things. Still not quite as good as Solomon, but it's still decent. We have a temple.

We're going to have a temple, and it has the vessels inside that we need to worship God and to do what we need to. I love it. You really start to see a little bit of connections to the Exodus, to this going up out of the land of Persia. They're going to leave this land, go to the land of their inheritance. they're taking with them from their neighbors, the goods and the wealth, to go and take them to go build the temple.

This is what happens when that first Exodus with Moses. Even at the beginning, you start to see these. This is a repeat return, like what Moses did, as was going to now do. So it's again connecting to the past, but looking forward to that future, saying, this is a repeated history. God is doing this. This is our proof that God is continuing to help us in different ways, but also in the same way.

So it's like a mini exodus out of Babylon, out of Persian control. With the Come Follow Me, we do skip chapter two, but I'm going to give a quick plug-in for that. It's a genealogy. They're actually really important. You'll see genealogies placed in the text where there's areas of chaos, of disorganization, or times when identity or claims need to be reasserted. This is that time. We're coming back, and we need to reassert our claim. we are the inheritors of this land.

You'll see that a few more times throughout Azur Nehemiah, these little inserts of genealogy. This is again another ancient Near Eastern tradition. When Cyrus came into power, he put himself in the genealogy of the Babylonian kings. He's saying, I'm actually part of this tradition. Your god is the one that placed me here. Marduk, your Babylonian god, is the one that wanted me to come here and conquer

because Nebuchadnezzar and Nabonidas was the last king, right? Nabonitis rebelled against Marduk, and he was wrong. I'm coming back because of these Babylonian guards. You'll insert them, you'll give a genealogy to give your claim. We see this in the New Testament. We have a couple genealogies for Jesus. Each of them, they're slightly different. Genealogies aren't very specific.

They can be created. They can be made to make this point of what's important and what this claim we have. Know that there's a genealogy, and it's doing important things, to again establish this claim. To establish a claim. And I love that the Eurman's something. is mentioned in verse 63.

They need a priest with a Urim and with Thumbum. Then we get into chapter three, which comes from our genealogy. Before 538, when Cyrus sent people back, this is with the governor, Sheshbazar. Chapter 1, verse 8, he sends Sheshbazar, the prince of Judah, which the word for prince really just means like governor or official. Sheshbazar is the one who comes back. Then we get to chapter 3, 20 years later. Now suddenly we have Jeshua, the son of Jazeek, then Zerububel.

Two new names come on the scene. If we triangulate our sources with the books of Haggai and Zachariah and our understanding of the Persian kings, talks about them being in the year of Darius, who becomes king in 522. So now we have the return of Zerubabel, who is the son of Shieldteel. he, if we go back to the genealogies from before, from the Book of Chronicles, Kings,

he is a descendant of David. We have this final descendant of King David, who is, right, this the sion of what all our hopes and dreams are laid on, the kingdom of David, right? This is the hopes and their, this establishment of the kingdom of David. So they're saying, even though our people were taken away, our kings were taken away, here we have a descendant of David. This is our hope for the future. And with him came Joshua the son of Jazeek, who, with his genealogy, if we also look back, he's connected to the last high priest of Jerusalem. We have a high priest and a king coming back to the land. They come back right off the bat. That actually don't quite start building a temple yet.

They build an altar. We are once again purifying this site. And in Versaute has this weird phrase. They said the altar upon his bases, the temple's foundations, for the first. fear was upon them because of the people of these countries. When they come back to the land, we've talked about before the land wasn't empty. We had people still living there. We had neighboring people around them. We'll get into some of those other neighbors from places like Idumea to the south and Maan to the east. Amat to the east and Edom. We had other neighboring regions and powers. It's always the power struggle. This administration of Persia, these different governors trying to compete for power, for how much control they have. There's people around us.

We're a lamey claim to this area right away. This is our temple. This is our place. Our God is coming back. And that gives us this identity, this claim. And the one other interesting aspect, again, of bringing these two timelines together. We had Sheshabaazar. They're coming out of Persia, just like the Exodus, bringing the goods to the temple. And then we're up to Zerubibaba and Jeshua making sacrifices, building an altar. They are keeping the festival of the Feast of Tabernacles, or this remembrance of that Exodus. Even verse 2, as it is written in the law of Moses,

the man of God or the prophet. What we're doing is because of this law of Moses, which actually usually didn't connect the law of Moses with the temple. You don't really see that much in books of kings and chronicles, but it's starting to connect this idea of this new temple worship with the importance of this law we're going to establish because again we're changing what it means to be in this community. We're following the law as well as the temple.

Those feasts were part of the law, bringing back those feasts. When they were in Babylon, I guess they just didn't do any of those feasts at that time. Now they're saying we can start that again because we have a temple. part of the Feast of Tabernacles was they went to the temple and poured water on the altar. Yeah, well, and really most of these festivals, these feasts, they were pretty temple-centered. They wouldn't really be a very communal affair. Except for the one reference in Leviticus, we don't really have any examples of the whole people actually celebrating this feast of booths. It was very much a temple aspect.

We're going to see a little bit later it starts to become for the people a holiday. So yeah, you're really starting to kind of connect the dots and bring these traditions together for this new community. In chapter three is where you get towards the end. We're kind of condensing time and we're going to expand it again as we get to other chapters. But in chapter three, it talks about the builders laying the foundation of the temple. It talks about this joyful celebration. They're singing together in verse 11. They're praising, giving thanks.

He is good. The people shout and praise the Lord. then verse 12, but many of the priests and Levites and chief of the fathers who were ancient men, the ones who had seen the first house. There are a few people who had seen the first temple, had seen it there, had seen it destroyed. When the foundation of the house is laid before, their eyes wept with a loud voice, and many shouted aloud for joy. I can't tell if they're laughing or crying.

I mean, that's verse 13. Yeah. That's the cool thing, too, about the scripture and how you're reading, because you can kind of take it two different ways. The word weeping doesn't really have a good or bad connotation. So they could be weeping for sadness for the weeping of the past, which is probably what you'd probably expect or see. His lamentation was a form of worship.

Being sorrowful is a very important part. But also it could be some weeping for joy. We're getting started now that weeping for the future. So it's like when we found out we were having twin boys. We were happy and sat at the same. time and you couldn't tell which the tears were four. Yeah. Because we were happy, but we're also like, oh, wow.

Oh, boy. Our lives are you changing dramatically. Here it comes. Or like when your son or daughter goes on a mission, happy for what you have and sad for what you're losing. Absolutely. Well, we'll move on briefly to the next couple of chapters, but I'll try not to spend as much time on some of them.

We're going to move from that temple ceremony aspect, and then we get part of the drama, the story that gets brought in. In chapter four, now we get our adversaries. Now we get the conflict that comes in. It's not all just a nice story. We build the temple and we're good and we're happy. Or sad. Now we have our adversaries. We have some opposition here coming in where it talks about the adversaries of Judah and Benjamin. They heard that they were building the temple. And at first they're actually not adversaries. and verse 2. It says they came to Zurbabelle to the chief of the fathers, so the heads of the families, and said to him, let us build with you, for we seek your God as ye do, and we sacrifice unto him since the days of Eserhaddon, so the days of Babylon, when other people had also been in the land. These are people that probably were in the land, possibly had been moved into the land from

all these conquests and other deported. They were deported out of their land, came into this land. and then started worshipping the God that was here. Yahweh. We've been worshipping your God too. We want to be part of you. We want to help build your temple. But then verse 3, Zerububel and Jeshua,

Chief of the Father's Esatum, you have nothing to do with us. Basically, you can't build the temple with us. A lot of times, especially when we're reading scripture, we really want to see the best of everybody, which is a great trait to have. You want to see the good in everybody. But I think we also need to sometimes acknowledge

that there's not always complete grade in everybody. We see these leaders as they're chosen by God. They're the perfect image of how we should be following God, and these people have God. So you could explain it in one way saying, oh, yes, they're not actually Judeans. That makes sense that they excluded him. Yes, because we're reading the narrative of these people

who are writing that story. But on the other hand, they're excluding people. They're saying, even though you've been worshipping Yahweh for a couple decades now, so you're very much entrenched in this religion, this worship. No, we're not going to let you. Because we're the elite. We're the ones that came from exile. We're going to see a lot more of that, especially as we get to Nehemiah, these really kind of this staking this claim in these boundaries of community, which again is both good and bad. Maybe this is my main theme of Ezra Nehemiah, good and bad together, kind of shows this image of the fact that God is using

a lot of imperfect people. We look at these scriptures, we look at these figures when we want them to be perfect. But the whole purpose of this gospel is no one can be perfect. Because if we're perfect, then how can God show us his great work through us? Because God is the only one that is perfect. He is the one that we're striving to be. Christina, I really like that. Because as a teacher, I might say, well, these guys never do anything wrong. So it was important that you be from the house of Judah, from, right? Instead, just say, yeah, that's mean. That's probably not the best way to go. You probably could have made some friends with these people, and then they don't fight you the entire time. You move into a neighborhood.

There's people already there, and you're like, I don't want anything to do with you. Probably not the best way to make friends and influence people. Yeah, they're really starting off the bat is like, we're setting our lines. This is our community and no one else, which probably at the heart of it. We're like, okay, we understand this. You're trying to follow God's law, his commands to be his people. but maybe you're making some mistakes along the way. Like what you said, they have a lot of problems because of that.

They're kind of the cause of that problem. Sometimes just sitting in that a little bit. Leaders aren't perfect. We've seen that a lot, especially with there's been a lot of work done in early church history, becoming more clear about what was this church history like, and there are a lot of leaders that were not perfect. And it can still be God's work, and we can still not be perfect. I love that.

If you want perfect leadership, there's only one guy you can look to. Why do we exclude? Why do we do some boundary maintenance like that? Is it fear? Is it, no, you can't be part of this because you'll change it? Even sometimes we act like we're in junior high. We have our little friend group and no one is allowed into our friend group because we're elite. And we do that even as adults, even in our own words.

Either of you have any thoughts on that on why we do that, I need to look to your wisdom. both of you. Somebody wrote an essay years ago called Why the Church is as true as the gospel. His point was because we have to learn to deal with imperfect beings who have to learn to deal with us who are also imperfect. And that is part of the refining process of the gospel. I like that so often this year we have talked about, the Old Testament's not telling you be this way. It's just reporting. This is what They did. It's not necessarily saying, so you should be this way. Sometimes it's pointing out that, yeah, that was mean. And you can just go, huh, that was mean.

Yeah, I mean, it's really just showing, we're looking in the past, we're looking at big pictures, but people are people. This is like one of the base points of anthropology, this idea that humans are humans throughout history. They don't change. You always want the basics. You need food, you need shelter, but you need connection. You need community, and that's part of it. Community building means at some point you build a boundary. So it cuts up to us as where do we build that boundary and how do we build it?

If you were just to jump into the New Testament, you might not understand why they even avoided walking through their lands. We often say, well, they had intermarried, but there's more of a history here, too, about the temple. at first starting to offer help and then hindering is what it says in the italics at the beginning of chapter four. So would this also be part of the backstory of the Samaritans as they're portrayed in the New Testament? I'm going to complicate this a little bit too, because I like to do that. Yes, we do start to see this antagonism, this clear story of this us versus them. We have these names of these regional layers around them. San Balat was the governor whose seat was in Samaria.

But if we go back to that compositional history of Ezra Nehemiah and this fact that it was written later, some people think Hellenistic time, so after the time of Alexander, some people even think it might have been completed during the time of the Hasmanian period. So this is the time of the Maccabees when they're establishing the kingdom of Judah and very, very much having issues with the people in Samaria, especially with them who had, they had built their temple in about 450 v.c decades after the Jerusalem temple. So they're competing between these two different temples and these capitals. Actually, during the Hasmanian period, that 140 to 37 BC,

as you see a lot of this conflict rising. The stories were composed more towards that time. They're riding these issues into the story now. And this goes back to that history. When we're jumping between different peoples and communities, you didn't see any of these issues with Shesh Bazaar. And later there's another little aspect where you actually have a governor who likes them. Later, Tat and I comes in chapter five, who's like,

hmm, why are you building this? Okay, God commanded you. There's a decree. Okay, cool. So there's no antagonism there. So you start to see these pictures of a little bit of differences, but also archaeologically as well. First, they don't start out as enemies. They don't start as antagonists. They're all just people of these different regions. There's squabbles between their leaders, as most political systems are. But it's really later that you see some this antagonism starting may be rooted here and started here. It's kind of written into that history. And this goes back to that memory and why they're writing the story. They're putting this establishing, especially if it's during the Hasmanian period, when they're saying, we are a kingdom,

this is our history, we came back to the land. It was just us. We are the people of Judah. We are setting that boundary. It is our people. It is not the Samaritans in their temple. It is Jerusalem and our temple. And that's what brings a little bit of the complication to as a Nehemiah. When we talk about our own tree, traditions, our histories, how much do we change things up a little bit? And intentionally or intentionally. This is one aspect of what I study is this idea of memory. It's really important to understand who we are by understanding what we remember in our traditions,

but they can change or they can look different for different people. For them, it's really important to start to show there are some issues between us, even though originally we didn't quite have that issue before. This, I think, is a crucial skill to understand in reading scripture. I try to teach it to my students when we read first and second Nephi. These aren't written as he's going. These are written. He is an old man and he's looking back.

Very difficult to write all that has happened since then out of the story. This is probably written hundreds of years later and they're saying, okay, here's our history. And the conflict that's happening when they're writing is written into the history. that makes sense. Yeah, we see that in the New Testament. They're talking about stories about Jesus. Several of them weren't alive during the time of Jesus.

They're repeating stories. They're bringing in their current issues, and it's affecting how we're reading the text. That's something we need to keep in mind sometimes when we're reading. You're like, oh, they hated everybody. They didn't really. There's an issue they're dealing with now. Or maybe that's how we relate to the text too.

We see all this conflict and we're like, maybe we need a pause or our context with where we're living. your understanding, what's going on. So into my history, I build in this bad guy, who probably wasn't the bad guy in real, but he's a bad guy now in my life. I'm going to write him in. That's a complication when you start to understand it. It's like, oh, wow, it opens up the why of the text.

Maybe it didn't happen exactly like this, but I'm writing it a certain way because of when I'm writing the history. Wow, that's fun. Also makes it hard to know what actually happened. Yes. Why it's a difficult to read as you're Nehemiah, because you don't have the history that we want to see this timeline. And why they're jumping between these stories and time periods, because they're trying to get this idea across to set this stage of what it looks like for them and how we're building this people of God of who we are. Even in chapter four, we're getting more time skipping.

So it talks about these adversaries coming, them writing letters to the king of Persia to complain about these Jews who are building a temple. They're saying, why are you building a temple? you shouldn't be, and they write to the king saying, hey, this guy's building a temple. That shouldn't happen. They're going to rebel against you because if you start to take power and they're building your own temple, your own city, that means you're undercutting the authority of the king. So it actually talks about three different letters that are written, but we only get one of the letters. So they mentioned writing a letter to Xerxes, who wasn't even a king until 486. This is like going back to the time of Ezra. So now we've skipped forward even more. And then they talk about art exorcis.

Zerxes, who was king starting in 465, so that's the time of Nehemiah. We're in the time of Zerubibul and Joshua, supposedly, and they're during the time of King Darius, who is king in 522. They're throwing all the time around to get across this point that they're antagonists and they are trying to get the power of the Persian Empire to come and stop this work because they're upsetting the balance in the region. It's kind of fun to read the letter. be it known into the king the Jews which came up from the which are come up to Jerusalem

building the rebellious in the bad city I've never heard it called that before Hank that's in verse 12 the bad city and have set up the walls there they've joined the foundations be it known into the king if this city be built it how do they get possession of that letter anyway this is coming from a Persian king and they didn't actually rebel against the Persian king it was against the Babylonians so they're pulling from history They weren't rebellious during these kings and the Persian kings. They rebellious during the Babylonian kings.

I can see why this is complicated, but it's fun. Is this chapter like, this is why the Samaritans or those people up there, this is why they're the bad guys. Look at what they did to try to stop us? Yeah. And that's what bringing in these antagonists and these letters and these stories we're going to keep seeing throughout this idea they're trying to set up this history of, we have been building this temple despite opposition.

going towards, this is the power of God working in us. We are doing this great work. God is making sure it's happened despite all these conflicts and these oppositions that you keep seeing over and over, even though they come from later. So they're setting that drama of the story. I'm proving to you that this is what's happening, even though I'm going to take my proof for a couple, like 100 years later. I can hardly imagine people being opposed to building a temple.

Can you imagine that? Yeah, I can't imagine that would ever happen. in this world. Who would do that? So they're put together to show like exhibit A, exhibit B, exhibit C. Look at all this proof that they're the worst. They need more room to write in scripture. These margins just aren't doing it.

It's fun to have an expert here, John, to show us this. Because there's no way I would have known this. Yeah, me neither. So you say there were three letters, but we're only hearing one. Yeah, we don't get the other. the other letters. So they're assuming someone knows those letters. Then I'm looking at the bottom line in verse 24, then ceased the work of the house of God, which is at Jerusalem. So we've gone back in time again.

If I'm a reader of the history when it's published, it's meant to persuade me too that we're the good guys, they're the bad guys, we were rebuilding, they tried to stop us. Yeah. Now the temple stopped. So there's a hauler on our plans. And then we get to chapter 5. We're again back to the time of Zeravul, Jeshua. It mentions Haggai and Zachariah. These are names we're kind of familiar with. We have those books, the prophetic books, which I'm sure you'll talk about in other weeks.

It just mentions them. The fact that the prophets are there, they're there at this foundation of building the temple. We read later in Haggai. They're complaining about the fact that the temple is not built yet. You've been here for this many decades and there's no temple yet. what are you guys doing? But here in chapter 5, you have Ezra Mears saying, okay, now we are building the temple. Our prophets prophesied it. We have this interesting connection to the prophets. Also, this is the very last time that we see Zerububel mentioned. We probably have these prophets here. They're excited.

Zerububel is here. We have our Davidic king coming back. We have our high priest. We have our prophets. Zerubable is here. They begin to build the temple of Jerusalem. And then we never hear about Zerububel from here on now. He kind of silently disappears from the scene. No one knows what happens. There's plenty of theories. You no longer have your Davidic king figure. We have our temple. It gets built in a couple years. In 515, we don't hear Zuberable is not part of any of this. This is one of those times. Again, we've gone back in the past where probably some of these tensions aren't there as much. We're talks about this governor, Tata Nai, who is one of the Persian governors, probably was installed about the time of King Darias,

so he's kind of on a general survey of this province and seeing what's going on. He's not antagonistic at all. He's just asking, you're building your temple, who said you could do that. What's the backstory? Tell me what's going on. And then he sends to Babylon, these guys said that God is the one who commanded us to do it, rather than Cyrus, which is interesting. They're focusing on God being the one to command them to build the temple.

But he goes back to the king and says, These people say they had a decree they could build the temple. Is this true? In chapter 6, you get this response from Darias. So we're still staying in the same time this time. We get that response from Dazai saying we looked in our records and oh yeah. Cyrus said they could go back and build their house. They build the temple of God. Let them keep building it. An interesting contrast between these two relationships with these different governors may be giving that indication that the history is not quite as neat as we think or they want to show us. We get more here. Now we're saying, yes, let them rebuild, and then here's some more stuff to give them to help build their. Here's some more provisions. Here's more goods to go in their temple. So it's giving it a little more idea of like a resurgence of building this temple.

Even though we're focused on Zurbable, we've gotten the indication that the building had ceased. There's pretty good indication that Chesh Pizarre did lay the foundation back in 538, and there's been construction. There has been work on it. It's just not done yet. That's the issue. The temple is not complete yet. We've been here for this long. We need this temple. I love the letters going back and forth. That's just fun. That reminds me of some Book of Mormon stuff.

Yeah. And the cool thing about these letters, too, actually, if you're reading in the Hebrew Bible, it actually switches to Aramaic, which is the official language of letters and the Persian Empire. Basically, like, the general language of the empire was Aramaic. To kind of keep the official nature of these texts, they leave it in Aramaic, as they're writing. these. Then when they go back to the narrative a little bit later, they'll switch back to Hebrew again. Rebuilding is not as linear as you might think. I'm going to rebuild my life after some tragedy. It might not be a perfectly linear process. You have ups and downs in the rebuild. It's kind of like the jazz. All right. I was going to say the Salt Lake Temple, but jazz is too. It took them 40 years. One time they had to cover the founding. and redo it all. So it's the same kind of concept. Sometimes it does take a long time and doesn't

always look exactly like you think it's going to look. Because you want to say, oh, it's going to be amazing. We're back. We're going to rebuild. And it actually is, yeah, it's amazing, but it's also a struggle. We've got to keep our energy up. We've got to persevere because it's not going to be as easy or as perfect as we thought to rebuild. I like that. That's very human. Towards the end, when Darius makes his decree saying, yes, go let them build their temple. No one disturb them. And then in verse 11, part of this declaration is, I've made this decree, whoever's alters this word, or basically opposes it or does something against it, let timber be pulled down from his house and let him be hanged thereon.

Some translations are impaled on this. Let his house be made a dunghill. There's some pretty strong language for, if you don't do this, it's pretty serious consequences. Your house will be a dunghill. Good insult there. It seems like a dig towards their enemies. If you don't like us rebuilding the temple, well, look what he said about.

you. And then we finally get the completion of the temple. It's dedicated. Everybody comes to celebrate. It has this huge long niche of sacrifices. So this is another concept I bring up with my students in New Testament class. When we're talking about the temple and going to the temple to celebrate to sacrifice, we think about our temples today. It's a very pure, very clean, peaceful atmosphere. It is not peaceful. If you talk about how many sacrifices they had, that's a really bloody day. There's a lot of smells, a lot of blood. It's a really sensory experience to worship, to celebrate the temple and to worship. It would be very sensory for your whole body. This is a full, full play. Yeah, imagine the noise, the smells, the animals. There are days when I think of that and think, I'm kind of glad we're not

doing law of Moses anymore because this would be a noisy, messy place to come worship. One time I was in Jerusalem and I had like one of those smoothies they offer, you know, almost everywhere. I took a wrong turn down like a butcher alley and oh my goodness, it was smelly. There was animal parts everywhere. And you're like, wow. I like what you said there, Christina. This is a sensory experience. Yes, that's a good way to put it.

They had open markets in the Philippines when I was on my mission and I was like, Oh, this is changing my relationship to meat. It was something. Sensory experience is a good way to put it. And also that burning meat, too. You live in Texas. There's some barbecue joints. All my neighbors have smokers.

We smell it quite often. This is a good barbecue. All right. Let's keep going. What do we do next? Yeah, so we have these sacrifices. And it refers again to, according to the Book of Moses. Then it talks about the celebration of the Passover.

Once again, we're connecting to the Passover. the Exodus, this return, just like it was for the people from Egypt, as they're setting God back in the temple, back in their presence. Coming up in part two. We move the building part, and now we're looking at the inside of the community. It's kind of saying we're actually not done with figuring out who our community is, and building that community and who we are, because now we've got to deal with his internal problems besides all the other outside problems they're dealing with.

It's a really random, like, just throw it in this, the story. because yeah, we want to see what happens with the wall and all these opposition. But you're like, nope, first we got to work on inside. First we got to deal with this conflict. There's Nehemiah for you. He had to deal with all those issues.