Ezra 5: Tattenai Txts Darius

Ezra 5:5 "But the eye of their God was watching over the elders of the Jews, and they were not stopped until a report could go to Darius and his written reply be received."

So Tattenai is this governor of the Trans-Euphrates region, and he's demanding to know just why Zerubbabel and Jeshua think they can just rebuild their temple. A seemingly insignificant undertaking by a tiny rabble in a vast landscape.

I had to give verse 5 some extra thought. "The eye of God was watching them." Does that mean that they continued building the temple and Tattenai and his people were powerless to stop them? Couldn't see them? Saw them and didn't say anything, like they were under a Jedi mind trick? I don't know, but I'm curious about this. Maybe God influenced Tattenai to be willing to compromise to allow the Israelites to continue to build until Darius responded to a letter. That's less spectacular, but maybe that's all this was. I don't know, I wasn't there.

Its cool that the Israelites went ahead and told the truth to Tattenai when he wanted to know what they were doing. The information wasn't exactly boastworthy, talking about how they screwed up and were wicked and God delivered them into the hands of Nebuchadnezzar and the kingdom went to pot. Notable here is that they realized what happened all those years ago...they were conscious of the fact that they failed to hold up their end of the deal, so captivity came as little surprise. Secondly, its important to mention that it was God who delivered Israel into that captivity, lest Nebuchadnezzar get any credit for conquering the nation on his own, and with his own power. Then Cyrus gets a mention again to allow the man-oriented mind of Tattenai attach some weight to what he was being told.

So he sent all this info to Darius to see what the deal was.