Opposition during the time of Zerubbabel
When the enemies of Judah and Benjamin heard that the exiles were building a temple for the LORD, the God of Israel, 2 they came to Zerubbabel and to the heads of the families and said, “Let us help you build because, like you, we seek your God and have been sacrificing to him since the time of Esarhaddon king of Assyria, who brought us here.”
3 But Zerubbabel, Jeshua and the rest of the heads of the families of Israel answered, “You have no part with us in building a temple to our God. We alone will build it for the LORD, the God of Israel, as King Cyrus, the king of Persia, commanded us.”
4 Then the peoples around them set out to discourage the people of Judah and make them afraid to go on building. 5 They hired counselors to work against them and frustrate their plans during the entire reign of Cyrus king of Persia and down to the reign of Darius king of Persia.
The enemies who began to oppose the building of the temple were the Samaritans. They were descendants of people whom the Assyrian kings had imported from Mesopotamia nearly two hundred years earlier to replace the Israelites who had been deported from the Northern Kingdom in 722 B.C. At that time they had adopted a religion that mixed worship of their heathen gods with worship of the true God. Their worship of the Lord was led by apostate priests provided to them from the Northern Kingdom rather than by true priests from Jerusalem (2 Kings 17:24-41).
The Samaritans had come from many different places in Mesopotamia in several different waves of settlement. They undoubtedly mixed with those Israelites who remained in the land in spite of the deportations. All these factors contributed to the very mixed nature of their religion. It was undoubtedly this mixed worship that influenced the exiles to reject the participation and fellowship of the Samaritans in the rebuilding of the temple. Because they resented this rejection, the Samaritans began to oppose the temple at Jerusalem. This hostility lasted into New Testament times (John 4).
The Samaritans hired men whom we would call “lobbyists” to turn the Persian government against the rebuilding project and to cut off funds. This lobbying continued for about 20 years, throughout the remaining years of Cyrus’ reign, through the reigns of Cambyses and Pseudo-Smerdis, who are not mentioned in the Bible, and into the reign of Darius I, which began in 521 B.C.