Despite their fear of the peoples around them, they built the altar on its foundation and sacrificed burnt offerings on it to the LORD, both the morning and evening sacrifices. – Ezra 3:3

 Today's Scripture Reading (August 16, 2020): Ezra 3

Jerusalem is one of the oldest cities on the planet. The city might have been called Rusalim four thousand years ago, and then Urusalim and Jebus before it was finally christened Jerusalem, a name that means "The City of Peace." Yet, peace was something that Jerusalem seems to have rarely known during the long years of its existence. Throughout the pages of history, Jerusalem was destroyed at least twice. It was a city under siege twenty-three times, captured and recaptured forty-four times, and attacked at least fifty-two times. Today, the peace of the city is an uneasy one, as the city has been divided into four cultural and religious quarters; the Jewish Quarter, the Muslim Quarter, the Christian Quarter, and the Armenian Quarter.

As Ezra tells his story, Jerusalem is struggling, two generations after Nebuchadnezzar had destroyed the city, which was likely the first time that the city had been completely destroyed. But it was not necessarily uninhabited. Jerusalem, even after its destruction, remained an important city. There is no doubt that the remnant of the Jewish population left in Israel frequently found its way back to the city to worship. Those who wished to worship the God of Israel had likely built crude family altars around the place where Solomon's Temple had once stood. It is also likely that those who worshiped gods other than Yahweh had found their way to Jerusalem as well, celebrating the ancient Canaanite gods of the land on the mountain that had once been dedicated only to the worship of the God of Israel.

So as Israel returns to Jerusalem, they have some decisions to make. Everything has been destroyed, and so the needs of the city are vast. But they decide that the first thing that they need to do is rebuild the altar. The rebuilding of the altar, on its previous foundation, made sense. They knew where the altar had to go, it was an easy rebuild, and it reflected the spiritual priority of people and worshippers who were returning. If Jerusalem were going to succeed, it would only be because they had chosen to place the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob first and resume their worship of him.

But there was another problem. Those who had been worshipping on the mountain for the past two generations had left their altars and religious paraphernalia on the holy site. And many of them had no desire to be kicked off of the mountain just because the exiles had decided it was time to come home. But for the altar to be correctly rebuilt, that was precisely what was going to have to happen.

And so, the people are scared. They know that they don't need more enemies in the area that we were now trying to inhabit. But they also wanted to do things right. And so, they tore down the crude altars that had been built in the area, so that they could rebuild the altar that they believed that their God demanded. And they were not going to allow their fear to stop them from doing what was right.  

Tomorrow's Scripture Reading: Ezra 4