Zorobabel (Heb. Zerubbābel, Babylonian name, Zir-Babili, "Seed" or "Sprout of Babel")

ZOROBABEL (Hebr. Zerubbābel, a name of Babylonian origin, zir-Babili, “seed” or “shoot of Babel”). — Prince of Judah, son of Ioachin (v.), who was a prisoner in Babylon; he is among the forefathers of the Messiah (Mt. 1:13; Lk. 3:27). He directed the return of the Jews from the Babylonian exile and the rebuilding of the Temple of Jerusalem. It is disputed whether or not he should be identified SASSABASAR (EBR. SĒBĀṢĀR) (v.), whose person and activity have many points of contact with Z.

After Cyrus issued the decree of liberation (Ezr. 1:2-4), Z. organized and led to Jerusalem, together with Josue son of Josedec, the first caravan of 42,360 Jews. The episode related in the apocryphal III Esd. (3:1-5:6) is legendary: it tells of a literary contest among three pages of Darius’s court, the third of whom, Z., having emerged victorious, is said to have obtained from the King every facility for bringing his fellow-countrymen, the Jews, back to their homeland. During the first months he concerned himself with settling the returnees, a task made difficult by the changed conditions of the country and by the hostility of the local population and other enemies of the Jews. But his principal concern was the House of Jahweh, destroyed by Wabuchodonosor (v.) in 587 B.C. In the seventh month after their arrival he erected an altar on the same site as the ancient one, and restored divine worship there by offering numerous holocausts (Ezr. 3:1-5); some have wrongly supposed that the Jews who had remained in the homeland had already restored the demolished altar: such an altar would have appeared illegal, or at least suspect, to the Jews returning from exile. In the following year work began on the construction of the Temple, and the event was solemnized with rites of religious rejoicing (ibid. 3:8-13). But after a short time the work had to be suspended, because “the people of the land weakened the hands of the people of Judah, frightening them from building and bribing counsellors against them to frustrate their plan: (this continued) throughout all the days of Cyrus king of Persia, until the reign of Darius” (ibid. 4:4-5). This hostility of the pagan and mixed population (the people of the land), especially of the Samaritans, together with the connivance of certain high state officials, prevented the work from being resumed for more than fifteen years. It is nevertheless permissible to suppose that, in the meantime, a central part had been built beyond the foundations, at least in rudimentary outline, sufficient to permit the principal acts of worship to be carried out. The work was resumed in the second year of King Darius (520 B.C.), thanks to the exhortation of the prophet Haggai (Hag. 1:1 ff.) and subsequently of Zachariah (Zech. 1-8), which succeeded in shaking off the Jews’ inertia and overcoming their sense of discouragement. Z. is still at the head of the returnees (Ezr. 5:2), and is now given the title of “governor (pehāh) of Judah” (Hag. 1:1). This time the work advanced rapidly; the dismay caused by the thought of the limited resources, which made it impossible to erect a splendid building like Solomon’s, was dispelled by Haggai’s second address, which foretold the future destiny of the new structure, in which the glory of the Lord would be manifested at the triumphant coming of the Messiah (ibid. 2:1-9). The threat of suspension made by the Persian satrap Tattenai, certainly instigated by the Samaritans, who had deliberately been excluded from the Temple works, came to nothing, because King Darius, having recognized the Jews’ rightful claim, not only reaffirmed Cyrus’s decree but also ordered that funds for the construction of the Temple and for the daily sacrifices to be offered for the life of the King and his sons be taken from the royal revenues. Thus, in 515 B.C., after four and a half years, the Temple had been rebuilt and was solemnly dedicated with the celebration of Passover, in the month of nīzān (Ezr. 6:14-22). In its principal features it reproduced the Solomonic temple, though it was far inferior to it in ornamentation and richness of materials. Once construction of the Temple was completed, Z., this renewer of Israel, the true signet ring in the hand of Jahweh, deservedly celebrated in the sacred books (cf. Hag. 2:22-24; Eccl. 49:13-14), disappears from history.