From the Elder's Pen "Temple" Part 2 6/30/02 Past/Future Articles

After long years of exile in Babylonian captivity Cyrus issued an edict that God’s people return to their own land.  They are urged to do so to reestablish their national institutions and rebuild the Temple, the central fact of their religious life.  Their return to Palestine was the beginning of that last period of preparation for the coming of the Messiah.  The central fact of this theocratic history is the Temple.  It symbolized the presence of Jehovah.  Its sacrifices and services brought the people into right relations with their covenant-keeping God.

Zerubbabel led back to Jerusalem about 50,000 people.  The second Temple was begun about 520 B.C. (Hag. 1:4,8) and was finished about four years later.  It did not have the magnificence of the structure reared by Solomon.  Nebuchadnezzar had made the Temple proper and its courts a heap of ruins.  The substructions laid by Solomon were, no doubt, as they were built and upon this plateau the second Temple was erected.  It differed with its predecessor, Solomon’s Temple chiefly in regard to simplicity.  The wooden partition between the holy place and the Holy of Holies was replaced by a vail.  One golden candlestick instead of ten stood in the holy place.  The ark, which had been destroyed, was not replaced.

There were many in Zerubbabel’s company who would have a clear recollection of the first Temple.  Those who were twenty years of age when Jerusalem fell would now be seventy.  They could not but compare the two Temples.  But the important thing was that the significance of the one was precisely that of the other in all of its divine character and institutions.  The return of the Jews to Palestine is, in a way, the rebirth of a nation.  It reminds us of their deliverance from Egypt.  During their Exile in Babylon the prophets continually kept before the nation that the Exile would not signify the cessation, but just an interruption of their National career, that they were still the chosen people of Jehovah through whom His redemptive plans would be accomplished.  Micah announced in 5:2 that the Messiah would be born in Bethlehem, not in Babylon, Persia, or any other state, hence the return to their inheritance and the rebuilding of Zerubbabel’s Temple and the keeping of the law until the time was fully come.  Micah also foretold in 4:1-2 that “the house of the Lord would be established in the top of the mountain” and His word would flow from this hilltop in Jerusalem.  Before Temple II was taken down, the materials for Temple III (Herodian Temple) were gathered.  (To be continued)