Ezra 4:1 Commentary and Bible Study

In this chapter we have an analysis of the strategy of the adversaries of God's people. We note that immediately the narrative refers to these people as, ‘the adversaries of Judah and Benjamin.’ That brings the notion of enemies right to the very beginning of the account. The record hasn't yet spoken of the overtures made by the Samaritans – for that is who they were – to help build and to associate with the Jews, and their claim to worship the same God. Ezra and his fellow leaders hadn't yet heard their overture to cooperate with them. And yet the record begins in verse 1 by making it quite clear that this is going to be about the adversaries of Judah and Benjamin, and that's intentional. The writer has this in mind to make it clear from the beginning that these are enemies. Even before we read what they did, we are warned about their true character, so that we can interpret with discernment what appears to be a friendly offer of help. There is subtlety and deception going on here, and the elders of the Jews were well aware of this. ‘When the adversaries of Judah and Benjamin’ – of course it’s the tribe of Judah, mainly, the territory of Judah and Benjamin, the little tribe, goes with them. The Samaritans heard that the building work had begun. Who are they? Their origin goes back to long before the captivity in Babylon. In 722 BC Samaria, the capital of the northern tribes, fell as the result of the siege of Sargon. His successor Sennacherib actually began his reign, just as the walls fell, and his policy, as that of his predecessors, was to move the captives out of their native lands and spread them around the Babylon empire. The majority of the people who dwelt in the area of Israel were taken into captivity where they worked, initially at any rate, as slaves and servants. Sennacherib then re-populated Samaria and the Israelite territory with other peoples from the Babylonian Empire. But there was a remnant of Jews left there in what was previously Israel, and the imported people intermarried with them, overwhelmed them, of course, and absorbed them, and so there came about a people known as the Samaritans: a fusion of Jews and other people from around the Babylonian Empire. These Babylonian empire nationals brought with them their gods and their idols. They were idolaters. But they adopted into the worship of their territory a certain amount of Jewish ritual. So there was a kind of syncretic mixture of Jewish and idolatrous religion practiced by the Samaritans. But now they are alarmed because the emperor of the Medo Persian Empire has sent back all Jews in Babylon who wish to settle in their homeland, and he has even largely funded the rebuilding of the temple. Cyrus had issued his edict of which we probably have what is the original version of in chapter 1 the book of Ezra. It is clearly an edict to reconstitute the temple. It seems that Cyrus, if he had not become a worshipper of the God of Israel, was extremely sympathetic. We believe he had been influenced heavily – but this is only speculation – by Daniel, who was prime minister of the Babylonian Empire, and Cyrus now wants to reconstitute the temple in Jerusalem and return people to the land of Judah. 42,000 plus people return, and initially they are very earnest to re-establish the worship given under Moses in Jerusalem, to rebuild the temple, and establish things exactly as they were meant to be in that dispensation. But the Samaritans are furious, suspicious, and angry; they are extremely hostile. They see the rise of Judah once again as a personal threat to their own occupation of much of this land. The land has been given once again to the Jews and they are going to be dispossessed. During the captivity in Babylon, they have taken over many of the homesteads and smallholdings left by Jewish people, and now they are returning and reclaiming them, so there is tremendous hostility.