In the first year of King Cyrus, the king issued a decree concerning the temple of God in Jerusalem: Let the temple be rebuilt as a place to present sacrifices, and let its foundations be laid. It is to be sixty cubits high and sixty cubits wide … - Ezra 6:3

Today's Scripture Reading (November 15, 2026): Ezra 6

When the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center fell, it didn't take long for discussions to begin about rebuilding the Trade Center complex. Many ideas emerged, including an initial argument that the complex should not be rebuilt at all, but eventually other ideas won out. The winning argument was that the spirit of man demanded that the Trade Center be rebuilt bigger and better than before. What better response could there be to those who attacked the Trade Center in the first place than to prove that the United States could not be defeated by terrorists? The Trade Center would rise from the ashes, bigger and better than ever before. It is a common reaction. When something is destroyed, no matter how it happened, we often feel it is our responsibility to rebuild it bigger and better than before.

Ezra says that, at the request of Jerusalem's enemies, the King was to search to see whether a decree had ever been issued to rebuild the destroyed Temple of Jerusalem. The Temple had been the center of all life in Jerusalem, and those who opposed Israel also opposed the Temple's rebuilding, fearing that it could be the spark that would give life to the defeated Children of Israel.

And so, a search was made, and an edict was found. The edict was issued in the first year of Cyrus the Great's reign. The edict did, in fact, order the rebuilding of the Temple in Jerusalem. But the edict did more than just order the rebuilding of the Temple; it also appears to give the dimensions of the future Temple. The Temple seems to be ordered to be a cube, sixty cubits (or 27.5 meters or 90 feet) in every direction. The new Temple that had been ordered by Cyrus would be bigger and better than the one Nebuchadnezzar had destroyed.

But there is a problem. When the Second Temple was finished, it was actually smaller than the First, not bigger. The most obvious reason for the discrepancy is that while the spirit of man demanded something bigger, the reality was that the people living in Judah, and those returning from exile, were poor. They couldn't afford the temple that Cyrus had allowed them to build, so they built something smaller. While the spirit of man demanded something bigger, the pocketbook couldn't keep up.

The exiles built what they could, the best they could afford, as their sacrifice to their God. This smaller Temple would once again become the center of life in Jerusalem, and though it was smaller, it would stand as a testimony to the nations.

Tomorrow's Scripture Reading: Haggai 1