The First Return under Zerubbabel and the Halt of the Building

Few went up. The list in Ezra gives 42,360—against a community that stayed in Babylon, settled and rooted. Two men led them: Zerubbabel son of Shealtiel, of David's line, and Joshua son of Jehozadak, the High Priest.

The first thing they did was rebuild the altar on its site, "for fear was upon them because of the peoples of the lands," and in the seventh month they kept Sukkot—before a single stone of the Temple was laid. A year later they laid the foundation of the Sanctuary. Priests stood with trumpets, Levites with cymbals, and the people shouted for joy, while the old men who had seen the First House wept aloud, "and the people could not distinguish the sound of joy from the sound of weeping."

Then the neighbors came—the Samaritans settled by Assyria in place of the ten tribes: "Let us build with you, for like you we seek your God." Zerubbabel refused. They began to weaken the hands of the people of Judah, hired counselors at the Persian court and wrote that this was a rebellious city. An order came, and the work halted—until the second year of Darius, in 3408, when the prophets Haggai and Zechariah roused the people.

The traditional Seder Olam chronology of the Persian period differs from the accepted academic one by about 165 years. On this timeline the event may therefore fall earlier or later relative to parallel world events than it does in standard history books.