Second Temple

Second Temple, also called Zerubbabel's Temple, was the house of the LORD rebuilt in Jerusalem by the exiles who had returned from captivity, led by Zerubbabel son of Shealtiel and Jeshua son of Jozadak (Ezra 3:8; Ezra 5:2). Its building ran from the decree of Cyrus in his first year to its completion in the sixth year of King Darius, restoring a place in Jerusalem for offering sacrifices to the LORD (Ezra 1:1-3; Ezra 6:3; Ezra 6:15). It stood where the first temple had stood, on the Temple Mount, north of the Ophel in the eastern part of Jerusalem.

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Decree and Foundation

In the first year of Cyrus king of Persia, the LORD stirred Cyrus to proclaim throughout his kingdom that he had been appointed to build a house for the LORD at Jerusalem, and that any of His people might go up and build it (Ezra 1:1-3). Cyrus the Great issued the decree in 538 BC, after conquering Babylon, and Isaiah had recorded the LORD calling him "My shepherd" and "His anointed" and saying of the temple, "Let its foundation be laid" (Isaiah 44:28; Isaiah 45:1). The Cyrus Cylinder, found at Babylon in 1879, records Cyrus's own account of resettling peoples: "I gathered all their inhabitants and returned to them their dwellings." The decree also directed that the house be rebuilt as a place for offering sacrifices, with its foundations firmly laid, sixty cubits high and sixty cubits wide (Ezra 6:3).

Cyrus also gave the 5,400 gold and silver articles that Nebuchadnezzar II had carried away from the house of the LORD to Sheshbazzar the prince of Judah, who brought them back and laid the temple's foundation (Ezra 1:7-11; Ezra 5:14-16). Earlier, in the seventh month, before any foundation was laid, Jeshua and Zerubbabel built the altar, and the people offered burnt offerings on it morning and evening (Ezra 3:1-6).

The Book of Ezra dates the start of the work to the second month of the second year after the exiles arrived, when Zerubbabel, Jeshua and the rest of the returned exiles began building and appointed Levites twenty years old and above to supervise it (Ezra 3:8-9). When the foundation was laid, the priests with trumpets and the Levites of the sons of Asaph with cymbals praised the LORD as David king of Israel had prescribed, singing "For He is good; for His loving devotion to Israel endures forever" (Ezra 3:10-11). Many of the older priests, Levites and family heads who had seen the first temple wept loudly at the sight of the new foundation, while many others shouted for joy, and the noise was heard from afar (Ezra 3:12-13).

When the enemies of Judah and Benjamin, who said they had sacrificed to Israel's God since King Esarhaddon of Assyria brought them there, offered to help build, Zerubbabel and Jeshua refused them (Ezra 4:1-3). The people of the land then set out to discourage the builders and hired counselors to frustrate their plans from the reign of Cyrus down to the reign of Darius (Ezra 4:4-5). The work on the house of God stood still until the second year of Darius king of Persia (Ezra 4:24).

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Haggai, Zechariah and the Resumed Work

The Book of Haggai dates the word of the LORD through Haggai to the first day of the sixth month in the second year of Darius, addressed to Zerubbabel, governor of Judah, and to Joshua son of Jehozadak, the high priest (Haggai 1:1). The people were saying that the time had not yet come to rebuild, and the LORD asked whether it was "a time for you yourselves to live in your paneled houses, while this house lies in ruins" (Haggai 1:2-4). He tied their poor harvests and the drought on field and crop to His house lying in ruins while each of them was busy with his own (Haggai 1:9-11). Zerubbabel, Joshua and the remnant of the people obeyed, and they began the work on the house of the LORD in the second year of King Darius, on the twenty-fourth day of the sixth month (Haggai 1:12-15).

The prophets Haggai and Zechariah son of Iddo prophesied to the Jews in Judah and Jerusalem, and Zerubbabel and Jeshua rose up to rebuild, with the prophets helping them (Ezra 5:1-2). A prophecy of Zechariah promised that the hands of Zerubbabel, which had laid the foundation of the house, would also complete it (Zechariah 4:9). Haggai asked those who had seen the house in its former glory whether it did not now appear "like nothing in comparison" (Haggai 2:3), and Zechariah asked who had "despised the day of small things" (Zechariah 4:10). Haggai also announced that "The latter glory of this house will be greater than the former", and that in this place the LORD would provide peace (Haggai 2:9). Zerubbabel was a descendant of King Jehoiachin, "Jeconiah the captive" (1 Chronicles 3:17-19), and Haggai closes with the LORD's promise to make him "like My signet ring" (Haggai 2:23).

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Completion and Dedication

When Tattenai, governor of the region west of the Euphrates, questioned the work and wrote to Darius I, a search found Cyrus's decree in the fortress of Ecbatana in Media, and Darius ordered the work to go on at royal expense (Ezra 5:3-17; Ezra 6:1-12). The elders of the Jews built and prospered through the prophesying of Haggai and Zechariah, finishing according to the command of the God of Israel and the decrees of Cyrus, Darius and Artaxerxes, kings of Persia (Ezra 6:14). The temple was completed on the third day of the month of Adar in the sixth year of King Darius (Ezra 6:15). That date fell in March 515 BC. The priests, the Levites and the rest of the exiles celebrated the dedication of the house of God with joy (Ezra 6:16).

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Later History

Later, King Artaxerxes sent Ezra the scribe to Jerusalem with gifts for the house of God, and Nehemiah rebuilt the city's wall (Ezra 7:11-27; Nehemiah 2:1-8; Nehemiah 6:15). The prophet Malachi rebuked priests who offered blind, lame and sick animals, and people who robbed God "in tithes and offerings" (Malachi 1:6-8; Malachi 3:8-10).

In the second century BC, Antiochus IV Epiphanes plundered the temple and set up an altar to Zeus in it, what 1 Maccabees calls "a desolating sacrilege upon the altar of burnt offering." Judas Maccabeus later retook the temple, removed the profaned altar and built a new one, and the rededication of the temple, kept for eight days from the twenty-fifth day of Chislev, is remembered by Jews as the Feast of Dedication, Hanukkah.

Josephus records that Herod the Great, in the eighteenth year of his reign, set out to build the temple of God himself and make it larger, taking away the old foundations and laying new ones on which he raised it. Herod's work turned the modest building raised under the Persians, Zerubbabel's temple, into a magnificent edifice.