In ancient times, when a nation proved to be especially rebellious, the opposing and victorious kingdom destroyed the capital and the culture (religious institutions) of the weaker and rebellious nation, and they carried the elite of the weaker nation captive to the victor’s land. The rebels would live under the strict authority of the victors for one or more generations, and their descendants would be brought up loyal to the authority of the victorious nation. Afterward, they would repopulate the lands of other weaker and rebellious nations, thereby insuring loyalty to the whole empire of the strong nation. Their culture would be that of the nation under whose authority the new generation had been brought up. The former culture of the original rebels would have been destroyed, not having been practiced in the land of the stronger nation.
This is what occurred when the House of Israel, the northern kingdom, was destroyed by the King of Assyria. The king brought men from various nations into former Israel (2Kings 17:24), and they possessed the land, vis-à-vis they were the new authorities in the land. Thus, the Kingdom of Israel was destroyed by Assyria prior to the days of Nebuchadnezzar, when he destroyed Jerusalem and the Temple of the Kingdom of Judah (the southern kingdom). However, due to the promise of God through the prophet Jeremiah (Jeremiah 25:12-14; 29:10), this didn’t happen to the Jews of the Kingdom of Judah. The next generation of exiles were permitted to renew their culture, vis-à-vis rebuild their capital and their Temple, and live, once more, in the land of their fathers. As for the remnant of the Israelites in the northern kingdom, they mingled with the foreign people, whom the king of Assyria had brought in an effort to ensure the loyalty of the remnant of the nation he destroyed.
Enemies often come to us under the guise of friendship, but good will is not their intention. What they really want is to be a mover and a shaker of what we do. In other words, they seek to influence us in how we think and in what we do. They really want us to accept their culture over our own. Difference of opinion, just being different is often understood to be dangerous, so effort is made to cause those who are different to become more like those who offer their friendship. In the context of our study in the Book of Ezra, when the folks in Samaria heard that the Jews were rebuilding their Temple, reinstituting their culture or rebuilding that which made them who they were in the eyes of the world, the Samaritans offered their friendship, and sought to help them rebuild something that wasn’t truly their own. The Samaritans, under the guise of friendship sought to change the Jews into something more like what the Samaritans had become.
Over a century ago, their ancestors were of the House of Israel, but the king of Assyria had taken their leaders and the elite of their society captive to Assyria, and the king replaced them with folks from Babylon and other nations, whom they as assimilated into Assyrian culture. These foreigners then mingled with the remnant of the Kingdom of Israel (2Kings 17:24) and the culture, that was once similar to that of the Jews in the Kingdom of Judah was lost.
Now, this ‘new’ culture sought to do the same with the returning exiles. The leaders of Samaria came to Zerubbabel and the other leaders of the Province of Judah at Jerusalem and offered to help them rebuild their culture—the Temple of God—and make it similar to what they believed. In other words, they wanted a voice in what the Jews would become, after all, hadn’t they, the Samaritans, been worshipers of the same God the Jews worshiped (Ezra 4:1-2)?
Zerubbabel and the other leaders of the returning exiles refused their covert offer of friendship. In other words, they recognized the Samaritan offer of friendship for what it truly was, and the Jews said they would rebuild their Temple themselves, and in doing so, they would retain who they were as a people (Ezra 4:3).
As a result of the Jews’ intention to reject all foreign influence and maintain the value of their own identity, the Samaritans became their open enemies and troubled the Jews’ labor throughout the process of rebuilding Jerusalem and the Temple of God. They even bribed Persian officials, who had power to create difficulties for the Jews, to frustrate their work, creating delays and even stopping the rebuilding of the city and the Temple (Ezra 4:4-5).
Although they weren’t very successful with Cyrus, who believed the Lord had given him the responsibility of rebuilding Jerusalem and the House of God, they were successful with his son, Cambyses, Ahasuerus in the text (cp. Daniel 11:2). They wrote a letter to him immediately after the death of Cyrus, when Ahasuerus had just begun to reign, accusing the Jews of laboring against the king’s good, and he stopped the rebuilding altogether (Ezra 4:6; cp. Nehemiah 1:1-3), and the work of God lay dormant for over 20 years (cp. Nehemiah 2:1).
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