John Gill Commentary Ezra 4

Now when the adversaries of Judah and Benjamin
The Samaritans, as appears from (Ezra 4:2Ezra 4:10) ,

heard that the children of the captivity ;
the Jews, who had been in captivity seventy years, and were just come out of it, and still were not quite free, but under the jurisdiction and control of the king of Persia:

built the temple unto the Lord God of Israel ;
that they were going about it, and had laid the foundation of it, which might soon come to their ears, the distance not being very great. Josephus ^F3 says they heard the sound of the trumpets, and came to know the meaning of it.

FOOTNOTES:

• F3: Antiqu. l. 11. c. 4. sect. 3.

Then they came to Zerubbabel, and the chief of the fathers ,
&c.] These they addressed, as knowing that if they could not prevail with them, they could never succeed in their design; and these were no doubt the principal of the Samaritans that applied:

and said unto them, let us build with you ;
that is, the temple, they proposed to join with them, and assist them in it; which proposal at first sight might seem very agreeable and welcome, and would have been so had they been sincere, but they were not; they hoped, by getting among them, to have sown discord among them, and disunited them; and so by these or other means to have retarded the building; or if it went forward, that they might have a claim to it as theirs, at least as to set up their own idols in a part of it; the reasons they gave follow:

for we seek your God as you do ;
which was false, for they did not worship him alone, but with idols, nor in the same manner as the Jews did:

and we do sacrifice unto him ;
but even that could not recommend them to the Jews, since they ought not to sacrifice, even to the Lord himself, but at Jerusalem: there is a various reading here; the textual reading is, "we do not sacrifice"; that is, to idols; the marginal reading is, "we sacrifice to him", which we follow; Aben Ezra takes in both, perhaps most rightly; "we do not sacrifice to any other, but to him"; which was also false:

since the days of Esarhaddon, king of Assur, who brought us up hither ;
to Samaria, from Babylon, and other places; see (2 Kings 17:24) .

But Zerubbabel, and Joshua, and the rest of the chief of the fathers, said to them

The prince and high priest, and chief of the people:

you have nothing to do with us to build an house to our God ;

being neither of the same nation, nor of the same religion:

but we ourselves together will build to the Lord God of Israel ;

we and we only, who are together as one man, united in one body of people, and in the same religious sentiments, being Israelites; we separately, without admitting strangers among us, will build a temple to the God of Israel:

as King Cyrus, the king of Persia, has commanded us ;

thereby letting them know that they acted by his authority, and the commission they had from him only concerned themselves, and not others.

Then the people of the land weakened the hands of the people of
Judah, and troubled them in building .
] By threatening them, or by dissuading the workmen from going on, by endeavouring to hinder their having materials from the Tyrians and Zidonians, or money out of the king's revenues to bear the expenses as ordered; see (Ezra 6:4) .

And hired counsellors against them, to frustrate their purpose ,
&c.] Either to advise and persuade the king of Persia's officers in those parts not to supply them with money, or to influence the great men at his court to get the edict revoked: and this they did

all the days of Cyrus king of Persia ;
who, though the hearty friend and patron of the Jews, yet being engaged in wars abroad with the Lydians and Scythians, and leaving his son as viceroy in his absence, who was no friend unto them, the work went on but slowly, attended with interruptions and discouragements:

even until the reign of Darius king of Persia ;
who was Darius Hystaspis, between whom and Cyrus were Cambyses the son of Cyrus, and Smerdis the impostor, who pretended to be Smerdis, the brother of Cambyses; a space of about fifteen years.