Then the people of the land discouraged the people of Judah and made them afraid to build
The returned exiles had just begun rebuilding the temple when they refused an offer of help from the surrounding peoples. That refusal turned neighbours into open enemies, and it raises the question this chapter answers: what really stopped the work of God — the enemy outside, or something inside the builders?
The Mask of Friendship
The friendly offer earlier in the chapter and the hostility here are two stages of one campaign. Dennett sees the attack as proof of what the offer really was:
Edward DennettThey had failed to corrupt the work the returned exiles were doing. So now they throw off the mask of friendship and try to hinder it by open hostility. This is Satan's method in every age. He and his servants will often transform themselves into angels of light and ministers of righteousness. They do this because it is easier to deceive the saints than to scare them off. But the moment someone detects and exposes his presence and activity, his rage knows no bounds.
Rossier names the two forms the enemy takes, and what the builders forgot:
H. L. RossierThe people had stood firm and resisted the tricks and cunning that belong to the ancient serpent. But they become frightened when the adversary appears as a roaring lion. They forget that their enemy is a defeated enemy, and that he would have fled from anyone who stood up to him.
Who "the People of the Land" Were
Where the ESV says the people of the land "discouraged" Judah, older translations read that they "weakened the hands" of Judah — the wording these writers use. The opponents were not idol-worshippers from a foreign religion. Kelly notes how respectable they looked, and why that made no difference:
William KellyThen the people of the land weakened their hands. Now they showed what they really were — not friends, but adversaries. And notice: they were adversaries even though they worshipped the Lord God of Israel. They were adversaries even though they were not idolaters, as far as we know at this time. The text does not accuse them of that, but they were not Israel. That was enough.
Hardt draws the same line for the work of God today:
Michael HardtTo this day, the work of God must be done by the people of God. If the world offers to co-operate, we have to refuse. If we do, those who made the offer will soon show their true colours. But if we don't, we will soon spoil the work. We end up being governed by the world's principles in the work we wanted to do for God.
What Really Stopped the Building
A royal ban did come, but only much later and under a different king. Darby shows that the ban was not what stopped the work:
J. N. DarbyThere were adversaries in the land who made them afraid, and so prevented their building. It seems the Jews did not dare to continue... But the first thing was that the adversaries weakened the hands of the people. The ban only came two reigns later, but the Jews had already stopped building through fear of their adversaries... God was no more to be feared under Darius than under Cyrus or Artaxerxes. Their weakness came from having forgotten God.
Kelly presses the point into a rule about God's people in any age:
William KellyGod does not attribute the stopping of the work to the command of the king, although the king did give in at last... It was lack of faith, and not the king's authority, that stopped the work; and, dear friends, as a rule, is it not always so? When blessing stops among God's people, it is really never the work of the enemy outside. It is lack of faith, and therefore of faithfulness, within.
Where the Discouragement Led
Dennett traces the slide from fear to self-interest:
Edward DennettFear of their adversaries was stronger than their faith in God. So they lost heart, thought only of themselves and their own selfish interests, and began to build their own houses and to say, "The time has not yet come to rebuild the house of the LORD."
The Way Back
Patterson shows what restarted the work: two prophets, and one fear replacing another:
F. G. PattersonFear of man stopped the work of the Lord. The energy and beauty of their first efforts of faith were gone. God sends the prophets Haggai and Zechariah to stir up the people to the work of the Lord... Once stirred up, we find that they obeyed the voice of the Lord and did the work of the Lord. The fear of man gave place to the fear of the Lord; and God was there to accept and bless the renewed efforts of faith.
Summary
- Mask — the offer of help and the attack came from the same source. Refusal only exposed what was already there.
- Measure — these opponents worshipped the God of Israel and were still adversaries. The test was not their religion but whether they belonged to God's people.
- Method — cunning first, then open terror. The builders resisted the trick and gave way to the threat.
- Motive — the enemy weakened their hands before any law forbade the work; fear, not force, was the true hindrance.
- Mercy — God did not leave them there: two prophets replaced the fear of man with the fear of the Lord, and the work went on.