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Ezra 6:13-15
The story returns to action, showing officials complying, the elders building successfully with prophetic support, and the completion date recorded.
Meaning in context
The story returns to action, showing officials complying, the elders building successfully with prophetic support, and the completion date recorded.
Section 5 of 7
Work resumes and the temple is finished
The story returns to action, showing officials complying, the elders building successfully with prophetic support, and the completion date recorded.
Movement
From exile to restored worship
Artifact
Return decree and temple rebuilding
Biblical Timeline
Exile & Return
Ezra context: 586 BC - 400 BC
Biblical Timeline
Exile & Return
Ezra context
Exile & Return / 586 BC - 400 BC
Ezra context is set in the exile and return, where Babylonian exile, return, rebuilding, and renewed covenant life under Persian rule.
Scripture Text
Thesis
The story returns to action, showing officials complying, the elders building successfully with prophetic support, and the completion date recorded.
Verse by Verse
Officials carry out Darius’s order Tattenai, Shethar-bozenai, and their associates respond to the message “sent” by Darius. Instead of delaying or resisting, they act “accordingly” and do it with urgency. The verse highlights that the same people who had raised the question now become the ones ensuring compliance.
Building succeeds with prophetic support and multiple authorizations The “elders of the Jews” continue the work and it goes well. The passage links this progress to the ongoing preaching of Haggai and Zechariah, presenting their words as a real factor in the community’s forward motion. The writer then stacks reasons the project is legitimate: it is aligned with the command of Israel’s God and also with the decrees of Persian kings—named as Cyrus, Darius, and Artaxerxes.
The completion is dated and anchored to Darius’s reign The temple (“this house”) is reported as finished on a specific day: the third day of the month Adar. The date is further fixed by the political calendar: it is the sixth year of King Darius. The story’s point here is not celebration yet, but certainty—this building project reached its endpoint at a defined time under a named ruler.
Literary Context
These verses conclude a longer sequence where opposition to the rebuilding leads not to shutdown but to formal verification. Just before this, the story reports Darius’s response to the inquiry: he confirms Cyrus’s earlier authorization and issues further instructions to support the work (Ezra 6:1–12). Ezra 6:13–15 then shows the immediate result: officials comply, builders prosper, and the temple is completed. The narrative’s logic moves from investigation, to written royal confirmation, to effective enforcement, and finally to a dated finish that signals the project’s closure and transition to the next actions in the community’s life.
Historical Context
The scene takes place under the Persian Empire’s provincial administration. Tattenai is described as governor of the region “beyond the River,” meaning the territory west of the Euphrates under Persian oversight. The temple rebuilding in Jerusalem is happening within this imperial system: local leaders build, but permissions and protections are tied to royal decrees. The passage situates the completion in the sixth year of Darius, placing it in the early Persian period when administrative correspondence and official enforcement could decide whether a local project advanced or was stopped.
Theological Significance
Questions
Keep Studying
Ezra 6:13–15 closes the “will this rebuilding be stopped?” storyline with a clear outcome: the same Persian officials who investigated the project now enforce the king’s decision quickly. The narrative presents the temple’s completion as the result of several converging factors: imperial authorization, local leadership (“the elders”), and prophetic preaching.
The text explicitly credits the prophets Haggai and Zechariah as part of what helped the work move forward. It also explicitly places the rebuilding under two kinds of authorization: the command of Israel’s God and the decrees of Persian kings. That combination fits Ezra’s broader theme that political processes can serve larger divine purposes.
Ezra 6:14 lists “Cyrus, and Darius, and Artaxerxes king of Persia” as connected to the work being finished. Readers differ on how to understand Artaxerxes here.
One view is that the writer is summing up the whole Persian-era support for the temple and its worship, so Artaxerxes is included because later royal actions helped stabilize or protect the community and its religious life, even if the building itself was completed under Darius.
Another view is that the reference is narrower: it should be read as part of the legal paper trail behind the temple project itself. On that reading, Artaxerxes is either mentioned because he confirmed earlier policies in some way, or the line reflects a broader editorial perspective that compresses related authorizations.
A smaller, related question is the tone of v.13: “because Darius…had sent” can be heard as pure coercion (“they had to comply”) or as emphasizing prompt, orderly cooperation once the official word arrived.
The passage gives a very exact completion date in Darius’s sixth year, yet it also names Artaxerxes alongside kings tied to the rebuilding authorization. Since Artaxerxes is best known elsewhere in Ezra for later events, readers have to decide whether v.14 is strictly about the construction permit or more generally about royal backing for the restored temple community.
The text clearly claims that (1) imperial officials executed Darius’s orders with urgency, (2) the Jewish leaders continued building successfully, (3) prophetic preaching accompanied and supported the work, (4) the project is framed as aligned with both God’s command and Persian decrees, and (5) the temple’s completion is anchored to a specific calendar date (3rd of Adar) in a specific regnal year (Darius’s sixth). The dated finish functions like a narrative “receipt”: the work reached a definite endpoint in real time, under a real empire, without the story presenting this as accidental. Ezra 6:13–15