The Daily Audio Bible

They build the altar

3 When all the people were now living in their towns, they went to meet together in Jerusalem. It was the seventh month of the year. ² Jozadak's son, Jeshua, and some of the other priests in his family began to build the altar of Israel's God. Shealtiel's son, Zerubbabel, and some of his family also began to build it. They wanted to make burnt offerings on it. God's servant, Moses, had written about this in the law. ³ The people who already lived near there made them afraid. But they built the altar on its foundation. Then they made burnt offerings to the Lord on the altar. They offered sacrifices on it every day, in the morning and in the evening. ⁴ Then they had the Feast of Huts, as the law said they should do.^[a] On each day of the feast they made the right number of burnt offerings. ⁵ After that, they made burnt offerings every day, and also at the time of each new moon. They made the right sacrifices for the special festivals, when people met together to worship the Lord. They also offered special gifts that people had chosen to give to the Lord. ⁶ They began to offer those burnt offerings on the first day of the seventh month. That was before they had started to build the temple.

They prepare to build the temple

⁷ The leaders gave money to men who could work with stone and wood. They sent food, drink and olive oil to the people in Tyre and Sidon. This was to pay for beams of wood from cedar trees. They would bring the wood from Lebanon on ships that came to Joppa. Cyrus, king of Persia, had commanded them to do this.

⁸ The Israelites began to build the Lord's temple two years after they arrived in Jerusalem. In the second month of the year, Shealtiel's son, Zerubbabel, and Jozadak's son, Jeshua, began the work. All the priests and the Levites who worked with them in Jerusalem joined them. All the people who had returned to Jerusalem from Babylon helped in the work. The leaders chose Levites who were 20 years old, or older, to have authority over the work.

⁹ These are their names:

¹⁰ The men who were building the Lord's temple finished the foundations. Then the priests put on their special clothes. They made a noise with their trumpets. The Levites (sons of Asaph) made a noise with their cymbals.^[b] They all stood to praise the Lord, in the way that Israel's King David had told them many years before. ¹¹ They sang together to praise the Lord. Group by group, they sang these words:

Then all the people shouted loudly to praise the Lord. They praised him because they had finished work on the temple's foundation.

¹² But many of the older priests, Levites and leaders wept aloud. They were sad because they had seen the temple as it had been before. They remembered how beautiful it had been. At the same time, many other people shouted because they were happy. ¹³ The happy shouts and the noise of people who were weeping were both very loud. People far away could hear the noise. The different sounds mixed together, so nobody could say which was which.

Enemies try to stop the work

4 The Israelites who had returned to Jerusalem from exile were building the temple for the Lord, Israel's God. The enemies of the people of Judah and Benjamin heard that the Israelites had begun to build.^{[c] 2} They went to speak to Zerubbabel and to the leaders of the Israelite families. They said, ‘Let us help you to build the temple. We also want to worship your God. We have lived in this country since Esarhaddon, king of Assyria, brought us here. All this time we have made sacrifices to your God.’

³ But Zerubbabel, Jeshua and the other leaders of Israel's people said, ‘No. You cannot help us to build the temple for our God. We must build it by ourselves for the Lord, Israel's God. That is what Cyrus, king of Persia, has commanded us to do.’

⁴ Then the people who lived near them tried to make Judah's people afraid. They tried to stop them building. ⁵ They paid bribes to government officers to work against the Israelite builders. Then they could not do the work. They continued to do this all the time that King Cyrus ruled Persia, until Darius became king.

More trouble for the Jews

⁶ When Xerxes became king of Persia, Judah's enemies wrote a letter to him.^[d] They said that the people who lived in Jerusalem and the rest of Judah were doing a bad thing.

⁷ Later, when Artaxerxes was king of Persia, Bishlam, Mithredath, Tabeel and their friends wrote a letter to him. They wrote it in the Aramaic language. People translated it for the king to understand. ⁸ Rehum, the city's ruler, and Shimshai, his officer, wrote this letter against Jerusalem to King Artaxerxes. This is what it said:

⁹ Rehum, your ruler, and Shimshai, his officer, write this letter to you. The other officers who work with us also send this letter to you. They are the judges and other officers and leaders, together with the people who came here from Erech, Babylon and Susa (the Elamites).^{[e] 10} It also comes from people of other nations who came to live in Samaria's cities. The great King Ashurbanipal sent those people to live in Samaria and in the region that is on the west side of the River Euphrates.^[f]

¹¹ This is the letter that they sent to Artaxerxes:

‘To King Artaxerxes,

from your servants in the land west of the Euphrates river.

¹² We want to tell the king what the Jews here are doing. They came here to Jerusalem from Babylon. Jerusalem has always been a bad city whose people do not obey their rulers. Now they are building the city again. They are building the city's walls and the foundations for other buildings.

¹³ So you should know that there will be trouble. If they build this city again, with its walls, they will not pay any more taxes to you. You will not receive any more money from them as their king. ¹⁴ We serve you as our king. We do not want you to lose honour. So we have sent this letter to you. ¹⁵ You should look for the books where your ancestors recorded news about Jerusalem. Then you will read many bad things about this city. You will see that its people have always turned against their rulers. Since long ago, they have not obeyed the kings or the region's officers. It is because they are so wicked that Babylon's army destroyed the city. ¹⁶ So we are telling the king that you should not let these people build up this city again, with its walls. If they do that, you will no longer have any authority in this region that is west of the Euphrates river.’

¹⁷ The king of Persia sent this reply:

‘To Rehum, my ruler, Shimshai, his officer, and all their friends in Samaria and in other parts of the region west of the Euphrates river. I thank you for your news.

¹⁸ People have translated the letter that you sent to me. They read it for me to listen to. ¹⁹ Then I commanded them to look in the old books. I have seen what the books say about Jerusalem. It is true that its people have always turned against the kings that ruled them. Since long ago, they have never obeyed their rulers. ²⁰ In the past, powerful kings have ruled over Jerusalem and all the region west of the Euphrates river. They received many kinds of taxes from the people there. ²¹ Now you must command these people to stop their work. They must not build the city again until I decide to let them do it. ²² You must be very careful to make sure that they stop. We do not want the danger to our kingdom to become any greater. Our authority to rule them as kings must continue.’

²³ Rehum, his officer, Shimshai, and their friends heard what the king's letter said. So they immediately took it to the Jews in Jerusalem. They used their power to command the Jews to stop their work.

⁶ But we do speak about wise thoughts to those of you who know Christ very well. But those wise thoughts do not belong to this world. They are not the ideas that the rulers of this world think are important. Those rulers will not be powerful for long. ⁷ No, the wise thoughts that we speak about belong to God. He has hidden them from people until now. But before God made the world, he decided to let us know these secrets. He wanted us to enjoy his glory. ⁸ None of the rulers of this world understood God's wise plan. If they had understood, they would not have killed Jesus on a cross. He is the Lord who rules heaven and earth. ⁹ This is written in the Bible:

¹⁰ But God has sent his Spirit to show these secrets to us. God's Spirit looks carefully into everything. He even knows God's secret thoughts. ¹¹ Only a person's own spirit can know everything that is in his thoughts. And it is the same with God. Only God's Spirit knows everything that is in God's thoughts. ¹² We have received God's own Spirit, not a spirit that belongs to this world. As a result, we can understand all the good things that God has given to us. ¹³ Those are the things that we speak about. We do not use clever words to speak about human ideas. Instead, we speak the message that God's Spirit has taught us. In that way, we explain a spiritual message to people who have God's Spirit.

¹⁴ If someone does not believe in God, they cannot accept the message that comes from God's Spirit. They think that God's message is silly. They cannot even understand those things. Only God's Spirit can explain them to people. ¹⁵ But we have God's Spirit with us. So we can understand the true value of all things. But other people cannot truly understand us, who belong to God. ¹⁶ As it says in the Bible:

God wants his people to grow as believers

3 My Christian friends, I could not teach you as I would teach people who have God's Spirit. I had to teach you as people who belong only to this world. You were like little children who could not understand the message about Christ very well. ² I had to teach you things that were easy to understand, like a mother gives milk to a baby. You were not yet ready to receive proper food. And you are still not ready to receive God's complete message! ³ You still do what your human nature wants to do. You are jealous of each other, and you quarrel with each other. Yes! This shows that you do what your human nature wants to do. You live like people who do not know God. ⁴ Some of you say, ‘Paul is my leader.’ And other people say, ‘Apollos is my leader.’ When you speak like that, you are talking like people who belong to this world.

This is a song that David wrote.

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