The Decree Is Found, and the Temple Is Finished

“The house of the rolls” is literally the house of books, the archive, and it was lodged with the treasures, since documents of state were valuables too. The search begins where the elders asked for it (5:17), in Babylon, and comes up empty there.

Achmetha is Ecbatana, modern Hamadan in Iran, the old Median capital that Persian kings used as a summer residence. Cyrus was there in 538 BC. The document is a “roll”, a scroll of leather or papyrus, and “record” is dikhronah, a memorandum, the internal file note rather than the public proclamation of chapter 1.

Sixty cubits high and sixty wide, roughly 27 metres, with no length given. Solomon’s temple was sixty long, twenty wide and thirty high (1 Kings 6:2). The figures may be an upper limit set by the treasury rather than a plan; either way they do not match what Haggai’s generation felt they had built.

Three courses of great stone to one of timber is the building method of 1 Kings 6:36. The Aramaic says “new timber”, which the Septuagint reads as “one row”. Royal funding was Persian policy toward favoured shrines, a way of buying the goodwill of their gods and priests.

“Every one to his place” means each vessel returned to its old station in the house, not merely delivered to Jerusalem. The memorandum confirms, in the king’s own records, the list the Book of Ezra gave in 1:9-11.

“Be ye far from thence” is a legal formula meaning keep your hands off: do not interfere. Darius addresses Tatnai and his colleagues by name and title, answering them in the same form they had used in 5:6.

“The governor of the Jews” is Zerubbabel, called governor of Judah in Haggai 1:1, though the decree leaves him unnamed. “In his place” repeats the phrase of 5:15, confirming the site as well as the building.

“Forthwith” translates asparna, a Persian loanword meaning diligently or exactly, which recurs in verses 12 and 13. The money is to come from the provincial tribute, so the officials who had questioned the work now have to pay for it.

Salt is listed with the other sacrificial supplies because every grain offering was to be salted (Leviticus 2:13). “According to the appointment of the priests” lets the Jerusalem priests set the requirements, and the imperial treasury meets them daily.

The Cyrus Cylinder asks the restored gods to pray daily for Cyrus and his son, so the request is Persian policy. It also matches Jeremiah’s letter to the exiles, which told them to pray for the peace of the city where they lived (Jeremiah 29:7).

Impaling on a beam was a Persian punishment; Darius’s inscription at Behistun records impaling rebels, and Herodotus says he impaled three thousand Babylonians. Turning a house into a dunghill, a refuse heap, is the threat Nebuchadnezzar makes in Daniel 2:5.

“The God that hath caused his name to dwell there” is the language of Deuteronomy 12:11, and it appears here in a Persian decree, perhaps drafted with the help of Jewish scribes at court. The curse reaches to kings as well, a warning to Darius’s own successors.

“Speedily” is asparna again, the decree’s own word turned back as a description of how it was obeyed. The men who came to question the work now carry out the order to support it, with no further protest recorded.

Artaxerxes is named although he reigned sixty years later. The Book of Ezra is listing all three Persian kings who supported the house; Artaxerxes’ gifts come in 7:15-24. The commandment of God stands first in the list, before any king.

The third of Adar in Darius’s sixth year is about 12 March 515 BC, roughly seventy years after the burning of 586. Zechariah 1:12 speaks of seventy years of indignation against Jerusalem. The temple finished here stood, with later rebuilding under Herod, until AD 70.

“Dedication” is the Aramaic hanukkah, the word later used for the Maccabean rededication of this same temple in 164 BC. The order of the celebrants, the children of Israel, priests, Levites, then the rest of the returned, lays out the whole community.

One hundred bullocks, two hundred rams and four hundred lambs is modest; Solomon offered 22,000 oxen and 120,000 sheep (1 Kings 8:63). The twelve goats for “all Israel” claim all twelve tribes, although the returned were mainly Judah, Benjamin and Levi.

The courses themselves were David’s arrangement (1 Chronicles 24), but the consecration and duties of priests and Levites go back to Moses (Numbers 3 and 8). With this verse the Aramaic section that began at 4:8 ends, and the next verse returns to Hebrew.

The Hebrew resumes with the Passover, about six weeks after the dedication, on the fourteenth of Nisan. The first full festival kept at the new house is the feast of the first deliverance from a foreign land.

“All of them were pure” contrasts with Hezekiah’s Passover, when many priests and Levites were not ready and the feast was delayed (2 Chronicles 30:3, 30:17). The Levites kill the lambs for everyone, the practice of Josiah’s Passover (2 Chronicles 35:11).

The table is open to those who had “separated themselves” from the uncleanness of the land to seek the LORD, probably people who had not gone into exile or converts. Exodus 12:48 allows a stranger to keep the Passover if he is circumcised; separation, not birth, is the condition named.

Calling Darius “the king of Assyria” is deliberate. He ruled the lands of the old Assyrian empire, the power that had first deported Israel, and now that throne turns its heart toward them. “To strengthen their hands” reverses the weakening of 4:4.