Second Temple Dedicated

The foundation of the second Temple had been laid in 536 BC, but opposition from the local population — the proto-Samaritans and others — stalled the work for sixteen years. In 520 BC the prophets Haggai and Zechariah rose up to rebuke Zerubbabel and Joshua for living in panelled houses while the Temple lay in ruins (Hag 1). Construction resumed; the Persian governor Tattenai sent a hostile report to Darius, but Darius found Cyrus’s original decree in the royal archives at Ecbatana and not only confirmed it but ordered Tattenai to pay the rebuilding costs out of his own tribute (Ezra 6:6–10). The work was finished on the third day of Adar, in the sixth year of Darius — 12 March 516 BC — seventy years almost to the day after the destruction of the first Temple. The dedication offered a hundred bulls, two hundred rams, four hundred lambs, and twelve goats as a sin-offering for the twelve tribes (Ezra 6:17). The structure was outwardly modest — the older men who remembered Solomon’s Temple wept at the comparison (Ezra 3:12) — but Haggai had been promised, "the latter glory of this house shall be greater than the former" (Hag 2:9), a prophecy fulfilled in the coming of Christ into this very Temple.