Opposition to the Construction of the Second Temple

4 When the enemies of Judah and Benjamin heard that the exiles were building a temple for the Lord, the God of Israel, ² they approached Zerubbabel and the heads of the families. They said to them, “Let us build with you, because, like you, we seek your God, and we have been sacrificing to him^[a] since the days of Esarhaddon king of Assyria, who brought us here.”

³ Zerubbabel and Jeshua and the rest of the heads of the families of Israel said to them, “We will not permit you to join us in building a house for our God, because we ourselves will build it for the Lord, the God of Israel, just as King Cyrus of Persia commanded us.”

⁴ Then the people of the land kept discouraging^[b] the people of Judah and kept trying to make them too frightened to build. ⁵ They kept bribing officials^[c] against them to try to frustrate their plans. They did this throughout all the days of Cyrus king of Persia, until the reign of Darius king of Persia.