God’s Word for You

Ezra 4:1-5 Samaritan heresies

by Pastor Timothy Smith on Monday, July 7, 2025

4:1 Now when the enemies of Judah and Benjamin heard that the exiles were building a temple to the LORD, the God of Israel, 2 they approached Zerubbabel and the heads of the families and said to them, “Let us build with you; for we worship your God just as you do, and we have been sacrificing to him ever since the days of Esarhaddon king of Assyria who brought us here.” 3 But Zerubbabel, Jeshua, and the rest of the family heads of Israel said to them, “You have nothing to do with us in building a house to our God; but we alone will build to the LORD, the God of Israel, as King Cyrus the king of Persia has commanded us.” 4 Then the people of the land discouraged the people of Judah, and made them afraid to build. 5 They bribed counselors against them to frustrate their purpose, all the days of Cyrus king of Persia, even to the reign of Darius king of Persia.

The enemies here are the Samaritans. This is clear from the way that they describe their origin: They were people brought into the land of Canaan by Esarhaddon, an Assyrian king who reigned from 684-669 BC. The transportation of exiles was one of Assyria’s policies that carried over into the Persian period, except that the Assyrians forced exiles into new lands, but the Persians, as we have seen, allowed exiles to go home if they wanted to.

The mixture of Assyrian exiles from many different lands with the remnant of the people of Ephraim and Manasseh created this new race, the Samaritans. They tried to establish their own religion as a mirror to the worship of the true God of Israel, but they stubbornly refused to travel to Jerusalem to do it—which, without leave to make a change from a prophet, was the only correct option open to them. Instead, they claimed the superiority of their own mountain (Gerizim). They talk about worshiping the Lord as “seeking” him, as we read about in Acts: “Men would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, through he is not far from each one of us” (Acts 17:27). The Samaritans from various nations each “made their own gods in the several towns where they settled, and set them up in the shrines the people of Samaria made at the high places… They worshiped the Lord, but they also appointed all sorts of their own people to officiate for them as priests in the shrines at the high places. They worshiped the Lord, but they also served their own gods in accordance with the customs of the nations from which they had been brought” (2 Kings 17:29, 33-34). And the author of 2 Kings goes on to say: “They persisted in their former practices. Even while these people were worshiping the Lord, they were serving their idols. To this day their children and grandchildren continue to do as their fathers did” (2 Kings 17:40-41).

Therefore the people of Judah would not allow them to join in the building of the temple. Just as they woud not allow anyone who was not a consecrated priest to participate in the offerings, so also they could not allow anyone who was not truly a believer in the one true God to help in the construction of God’s altar, or temple, or holy place. To purchase logs or stone is simply a matter of which lumber yard to use, just as Paul shows that shopping for meat is only a matter of who is the local butcher (1 Corinthians 8:7-8). But assemble that wood or stone? This should be done by the people of Israel, so that the Samaritans whose worship was mixed with false doctrine could not say, “We built the temple of the Lord, we have a place in the God of Israel.” Abraham did the same thing when he gave gifts to the King of Salem but would not give anything to nor accept anything from the King of Sodom (Genesis 14:21-23).

In the same way, we practice fellowship in the church when we separate from those who teach false doctrine. The Holy Spirit led Paul to command: “Watch out for those who cause divisions and offenses contrary to the teaching that your learned, and keep away from them” (Romans 16:17). One hundred years ago, a group calling themselves Lutheran insisted that Christians are saved “in view of their faith.” This is not what the Bible teaches, and our Lutheran church did not join with them. Seventy years ago, another Lutheran church allowed its Seminary faculty to teach that Genesis is nothing but a myth. There were other doctrines that gave us trouble at the time, but the blatant permitting of such an error snapped our ties of fellowship with them. Forty years ago a brand new Lutheran group formed, insisting upon women clergy and gay clergy and other things, but the most heinous error was lying under the surface and only became public a short while ago, which was the rejection of Christ as the only path to heaven. It was as if they took John 14:6, “No one comes to the Father except through me,” and crossed it out with a black pen from the Bible forever. It is clear that small questions and errors in doctrine are always accompanied by huge doctrinal mistakes that lurk beneath the surface—teachings or denials of teachings that tear away the faith of their people. They make the poor Christian in the pew question everything he has been taught, and they make salvation a question instead of a certainty. They boil away the Water of Life with their passions and make it a hot steam that their people choke on but can no longer drink.

Once the Samaritans had their false doctrine exposed, they did not repent. They did not turn to the Lord for forgiveness. When the Israelites showed that Cyrus the Great had commanded them to build this temple to the Lord (and therefore to no other false god), they became openly hostile toward the exiles instead. They discouraged the exiles (literally, “made their wings drop”), and caused real fear. False doctrine often shows its hand by becoming enraged when held up against God’s Word and the true teachings of the Prophets and Apostles.

The opposition of the Samaritans went on a long time. After the reign of Cyrus (538-530) this went on through the reigns of Cambyses (seven more years) and a man named Pseudo-Smerdis (whose name I have never found in a list of baby names!), and then into the reign of King Darius beginning in 521. In all, they put the pressure on for about sixteen years, and for a while they were successful.

We have a saying in the staff where I serve in Minnesota: The devil attacks during Lent, and especially during Holy Week. That means that it’s always when we are seemingly busiest doing the Lord’s work, proclaiming the gospel and reaching people with the message of forgiveness, that the devil gives us all sorts of distractions. Of course, it isn’t just during Lent. The devil has a long habit of kicking us when we’re down, of playing dirty, and even attacking us so ferociously that he bring pastors down from their pulpits, tears teachers out of their classrooms, and kills, actually physically kills Christians. This is promised in the Gospels (Mark 9:22) and by the lips of Jesus himself, who calls him a murderer and a liar (John 8:44). And isn’t this just what Job meant? He said: “When daylight is gone, the murderer rises up and kills the poor and needy; in the night he steals forth like a thief” (Job 24:14). An ancient pastor wrote as he was being taken to be put to death for his faith: “The prince of this age wants to carry me off and corrupt my mind set on God. None of you who are present must help him. Instead, be on my side (that is, God’s). Do not speak of Jesus Christ and yet desire the world. Do not let envy dwell among you” (Ignatius to the Romans 7:1-2).

The devil is cunning, and mankind is weak, but our Lord Jesus Christ overcame our weakness with his death on the cross. It is in that ultimate weakness that be brought down all the power of death and the grave, and rescued us through his resurrection. Praise him forever! When we are opposed by enemies, we fall back into our Savior’s loving arms (Isaiah 40:11), for with him there is strength, mercy, peace, and the power of God forever and ever.

In Christ,
Pastor Timothy Smith

 

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