Return to Me

by Lynn Austin

  Saba picked up a linen towel and wiped his face and brow before fastening on his turban. “You need to pray the way you did as a boy and ask God to give you the answer. Ask Him to tell you what you should do.”

  Zechariah finished dressing and helped his grandfather walk to the platform where the musicians would stand. Thankfully, someone had laid down a layer of straw to protect their feet from the burning pavement. “I’ll meet you here after the service ends, Saba.” He crossed to where the other priests stood, his chest tight with anger as he glimpsed the gaping, weed-filled hole beyond the altar where the temple should be. The elderly Prince Sheshbazzar had died without completing his task. His nephew Zerubbabel had taken his place as governor. A new emperor sat on the Persian throne, a new provincial governor ruled the Trans-Euphrates Province in Samaria. Why couldn’t Zechariah’s fellow Jews see that the time had come to do the impossible, to trust God and start building?

  While he waited, a verse of Scripture sprang to mind, as clearly as if he’d read it from a scroll or watched it happen:

  The seed will grow well, the vine will yield its fruit, the ground will produce its crops, and the heavens will drop their dew. I will give these things as an inheritance to the remnant of this people. As you have been an object of cursing among the nations, O Judah and Israel, so will I save you, and you will be a blessing. Do not be afraid, but let your hands be strong.

  What a beautiful promise. But which prophet had spoken those words? He would search for it after the sacrifice and share it with the others—if he could find it. There had been so many other promises and warnings that he’d longed to share but he hadn’t been able to locate the verses.

  The high priest performed the sacrifice himself, leading the congregation in prayer, asking God to renew His favor and blessing on His people. The Levite choir sang, “Restore us again, O God our Savior, and put away your displeasure toward us. . . . Show us your unfailing love, O Lord, and grant us your salvation.”

  Zechariah bowed his head and did what his grandfather advised, asking the Almighty One to speak to him the way He had in Babylon. Show me what to do, Lord. Were he and Saba the only ones who believed that they must rebuild?

  By the time the service ended, the sky blazed with a crimson sunset. The motionless air radiated with heat, as fiery hot as the altar coals. The congregation would return home to their sweltering houses and bare storerooms and meager dinners. But before Zechariah or any of the other priests had a chance to move from their places, a man stepped forward from the crowd. Nothing in his appearance made him stand out. Middle-aged, no taller than the other men in the crowd, wearing simple robes, he could be anyone’s brother or father or uncle.

  “Listen!” the man shouted. “Listen, Zerubbabel and Jeshua. The Lord Almighty has something to say.” The courtyard went so still that Zechariah could hear the doves cooing in the treetops. The man took another step forward. “Why do you keep saying that the time hasn’t come for the Lord’s house to be built? Is it time for you to be living in your paneled houses, while His house remains a ruin?”

  Zechariah wondered if the heat had made him hallucinate. This stranger spoke the words of his own heart. He might look like an ordinary man, but his words carried power and authority. “Now this is what the Lord Almighty says,” the man continued. “‘Give careful thought to your ways. You’ve planted much, but have harvested little. You eat, but you never have your fill. You put on clothes in the winter, but you’re never warm. You earn wages but you may as well put them in a purse full of holes.’”

  The awareness of God’s holy presence slowly filled Zechariah, just as it had when he was a boy. But instead of warmth this time, it seemed as though a rain cloud had burst open, pouring life-giving water over him, water that could turn the dry riverbeds into rushing streams. Zechariah glanced around and saw that the others seemed just as spellbound by the force of the man’s words. He was more than a man—he was a prophet! Was this what it was like to hear Isaiah or Jeremiah preach? Zechariah scarcely dared to breathe as the prophet continued to speak for the Holy One.

  “‘Give careful thought to your ways. Go up into the mountains and bring down timber and build my house, so that I may take pleasure in it and be honored,’ says the Lord. ‘You expected much, but see? It turned out to be little. What you brought home, I blew away. Why?’ declares the Lord Almighty. ‘Because of my house which remains a ruin, while each of you is busy with his own house. Therefore, because of you the heavens have withheld their dew and the earth its crops. I called for drought on the fields and the mountains, on the grain, the new wine, the oil and whatever the ground produces, on men and cattle, and on the labor of your hands,’ says the Lord.”

  As abruptly as he had appeared, the man turned to leave. The awareness of God’s presence vanished with his final words. Zechariah raced across the searing courtyard, the first of the priests to move, calling to the man to wait. He caught up with him before he disappeared into the crowd. “Please, we want to hear more. Come back and speak with us and with our leaders.” He took the man’s arm and led him to Prince Zerubbabel’s platform. The prophet’s entire body trembled as he crossed the pavement, but Zechariah didn’t think it was from fear. The man’s prophecy clearly had exhausted him, as if he’d expended a day’s worth of effort in the past few moments.

  The other priests gathered around the prophet, as well. Zechariah wondered if they were as deeply moved by his words as he was, or if they were angry at his rebuke, upset that their ceremony had been disrupted. “What’s your name?” Prince Zerubbabel asked the man.

  “Haggai.”

  “You spoke God’s word to us today, Haggai.”

  “Yes, my lord. He told me to say, ‘I am with you,’ declares the Lord.”

  Zechariah felt a shiver go through him. I am—the name God used when He spoke with Moses.

  “You are a prophet,” Jeshua said. But it didn’t seem to be a question. Haggai clearly was, the first prophet anointed by God since the exile. God was with them once again, speaking to them. Zechariah could no longer keep quiet.

  “We need to do what the Holy One said! Our fathers didn’t listen to the prophets, but we need to listen to Haggai! The Holy One has been waiting for us to get desperate enough to seek Him—and today we finally did. He answered through Haggai, His messenger.” Zechariah was the newest priest to be ordained, yet he was shouting at the others, shouting at the prince! No one silenced him.

  “You say that God wants us to resume building the temple?” Zerubbabel asked.

  “Yes,” Haggai replied. “You don’t need the Persian king’s sanction. You have the Almighty One’s sanction. ‘I am with you.’ That’s what He’s telling us.”

  “But what if it brings renewed attacks by our enemies?” one of the priests asked.

  “We can’t give in to fear!” Zechariah replied. He wanted to say more, but everyone began talking and arguing at once. Zerubbabel held up his hands for silence.

  “Listen,” he said. “I’m allowed to govern Judah and Jerusalem, but I’m under Persian authority. All building projects require their approval. If we resume building without it, they could interpret our actions as a rebellion. I don’t want to risk another invasion and exile.”

  “If we don’t obey, the drought will continue,” Haggai said. “We’ll slowly starve to death. Shall we submit to Persian authority or to God’s?”

  Once again, Zechariah couldn’t resist speaking. “The governor of Samaria who made us halt the construction is dead. So is the emperor who issued the order. God is telling us to rebuild, and He’s promising to be with us. What more do we need? Let our enemies try to stop us! ‘It’s not by might nor by power, but by my Spirit,’ says the Lord Almighty.”

  “I need time to think about this,” Zerubbabel said. He turned to leave, obviously wishing to postpone the decision, but Zechariah couldn’t let that happen.

  “Wait! Do you believe the Holy One has spoken through Haggai today, my lord?” He didn�
��t know where his sudden boldness came from, but he couldn’t keep quiet. “We came together here to pray about the drought—so do you believe this was God’s answer to us or not, my lord?”

  It took the prince a long time to reply but he finally said, “Yes. The Holy One spoke through Haggai today. . . . And I admit that I’m afraid to disobey Him—but I’m also afraid of the consequences if I do obey Him.”

  “Why not trust God—who brought us out of captivity in Babylon by His mighty hand—and begin building?” Haggai asked. “Yes, our enemies will send a report to the emperor, telling him what we’re doing. But let them wait for the slow movements of justice this time. Meanwhile, we’ll keep building—and we won’t let our enemies stop us again.”

  “Put me in charge of it,” Iddo said. “I’ve been waiting for this day for nearly twenty years.”

  Zechariah wasn’t surprised when several of the other priests began to argue against the idea, joined by many of the laymen who had come to Jerusalem to pray for the drought. But most of the people seemed to be siding with him and with Haggai, urging the prince to trust the Almighty One. The arguments grew louder and angrier until at last the prince held up his hands for silence once again.

  “The decision is mine alone to make, and I’ll bear the responsibility for it. Your arguments for and against won’t sway me. I need to discern the word of the Lord for myself.” He paused, and Zechariah sent up a silent prayer as he waited in suspense. “Today I believe that I have heard from Him,” the prince finally said. “It’s time to rebuild the temple.”

  The gathered men were silent for a long moment as if trying to comprehend the importance of what the prince had just said. Zechariah didn’t wait for anyone else’s response. He sank down on his knees on the scorching pavement and praised God.

  Iddo presided over the first meeting to discuss rebuilding the temple. He assigned workers to assess construction needs, delegated specific tasks to engineers and laborers. And the next day, the terrible khamsin winds died away.

  Restless to begin, he made it his goal to have constuction under way before the Feast of Tabernacles in less than a month. But he knew that the real labor couldn’t begin until new materials arrived and new timbers were brought up from the forests. They had to repair the crane after letting it sit idle for so many years, and hundreds of building stones had to be cut and shaped. Iddo kept a record of costs and expenditures and noted in his log that work on the house of the Lord began on the twenty-fourth day of the sixth month. On that day he went to the yeshiva and recruited all of the Torah students to pull weeds and chop away the growth that had accumulated around the temple’s foundation. Iddo led the work himself.

  “We’re not going to hire laborers to do this,” he told the young men and boys, “because we need to do it ourselves as penance for allowing the work to stop and these weeds to grow so huge. Sin is like these weeds, with roots that go down very deep and require great effort to uproot. And it will require renewed diligence on our part to keep the weeds of unbelief and apathy from taking over our lives again the way these have. And vigilance! We may think we’ve eliminated sin, but if even a very small seed of it remains, it quickly takes over our lives.”

  As Iddo and his students paused for lunch a few hours later, the first rain clouds appeared on the western horizon, rising from the Mediterrean Sea. The students pointed to them, whispering with excitement. The clouds continued to thicken and soon concealed the sun, darkening the sky above Jerusalem. But the weeding and Iddo’s Torah lessons continued. “The rain never came last year, remember?” he asked. “Just a few spitting drops from clouds that had no substance, no life-giving water. That’s what we must seem like to the Holy One. We’ve been all talk and hot air when it comes to our faith and to rebuilding His temple, but with no life-producing results.”

  They managed to clear away a good portion of the undergrowth by the time the first raindrops began to fall. Neither Iddo nor his students stopped working. The rain felt refreshing after the long, hot summer. “Why does the Holy One need this temple?” Iddo asked the group. “What does Scripture tell us?”

  He listened with satisfaction to the lively buzz of voices as his students discussed the question for a while, offering Scripture verses that supported their arguments. One of the brightest boys replied that the Almighty One didn’t need it, quoting from King Solomon’s prayer during the dedication for the first temple: “‘The heavens, even the highest heavens, cannot contain you. How much less this temple I have built!’”

  Another student shouted out, “It says in the psalms to ‘Exalt the Lord our God and worship at his footstool; he is holy.’”

  “So, if the Almighty One’s temple is in the heavens and if earth is His footstool,” Iddo challenged, “why does He need us to rebuild the temple?”

  The discussion continued, the students’ voices loud at times as they argued and quoted Scripture. At last, one of the young men summarized their collective conclusion: “Because we’re the ones who need it, not Him. It’s a place where our sins can be forgiven so we can approach the Holy One. A place where we can meet with Him and recover the fellowship we lost in Eden.”

  “It’s a privilege and a blessing to have the Holy One dwelling among us,” another added. “He promised Abraham that He would be with him and his descendants always.”

  “Very good. But do we really want the Holy One to be with us?” Iddo asked. “Do we want Him badly enough to work with all our strength in spite of persecution or threats from our enemies? Is our longing for Him so great that we’re willing to defy an emperor’s decree?”

  Every young man and boy agreed that obeying God at all costs was more important than giving in to fear. The rain was falling harder now, but no one wanted to stop the discussion or the work. If the winter rains truly had begun, Iddo was determined to build throughout the entire rainy season.

  “Now comes the hardest question,” he told his students. “This temple was destroyed because our ancestors stopped obeying God’s Law. They became just like the Gentiles—promiscuous, filled with hatred and greed, worshiping false gods. Are we willing to live in such a way that the Holy One will remain with us this time? Will we make sure He won’t turn His back on us in wrath again? Each one of you needs to answer that question in his heart and then decide if you want to come back and work here again tomorrow—and the next day, and the next. Will you come back when our enemies attack us and try to discourage us?” The rain poured down now. Everyone was getting soaked. But so was the land. They continued working until time for the evening sacrifice, singing psalms of praise as they did.

  Dinah reprimanded Iddo when he returned home that evening. “You’ll make yourself ill! You’re too old to be standing outside in the rain and getting soaked.”

  “It isn’t rain, Dinah, it’s God’s blessings. We obeyed Him, and He heard our prayers.”

  “But look at you! You’re drenched to the skin.”

  “And it feels glorious!” Iddo went to bed that night knowing that if he was the only man who showed up tomorrow, he would pull weeds and prepare to build all by himself.

  He awoke the next morning to the sound of rain pattering on the roof. In spite of the weather, an enormous crowd assembled for the morning sacrifice, not caring that they were getting wet. The clouds still poured when the sacrifice ended and Iddo walked back to the temple’s foundation to resume clearing weeds. He stared in astonishment. Not only his yeshiva students, but young men of all ages filled the site. And they already had begun to work, filling baskets with weeds that pulled easily from the rain-softened earth.

  Chapter

  39

  On the first day of the seventh month, Zechariah stood in the rain on a special platform and blew the silver trumpet to announce the Feast of Trumpets for the first time in his life. As the sound echoed off the distant mountains, the Holy One’s presence filled him, just as it had back in Babylon. He closed his eyes and thanked God for the rain and for speaking through His proph
et, Haggai. Work on the temple had resumed. The first course of cut stones would soon be ready to place on the foundation.

  Zechariah had waited all these silent years, wondering why God wouldn’t speak to him again, and now he understood. The Holy One hadn’t been silent—He simply hadn’t changed His mind. He had told Zechariah to leave Babylon and rebuild His temple, and those instructions hadn’t changed. Today Zechariah sounded the trumpet with all his might, praying that it would awaken God’s people from their spiritual slumber, praying that they would believe He was the God of the impossible.

  On the twenty-second day of Tishri, the last day of the Feast of Ingathering, Zechariah stood on the temple mount again for the sacred assembly. The festival celebrated a harvest that had never come, and instead of slaying multiple sacrifices, the high priest offered a single male goat for a sin offering. Yet Zechariah and the others praised the Almighty One, joining with the Levite choir and musical instruments in singing, “Give thanks to the Lord, for he is good. His love endures forever.”

  Zechariah hated for the service to end, but when it finally did and the last strains of music died away, Haggai stepped forward from the crowd once again. Zechariah’s heart sped up. The milling worshipers who had been preparing to leave fell silent.

  “Who of you is left who saw God’s house in its former glory?” Haggai asked, gesturing to the newly cleared foundation beyond the altar. “How does it look to you now? Doesn’t it seem like nothing to you? ‘But now be strong, O Zerubbabel,’ declares the Lord. ‘Be strong, Jeshua son of Jehozadak, the high priest. Be strong, all you people of the land,’ declares the Lord, ‘and work. For I am with you,’ declares the Lord Almighty. ‘This is what I covenanted with you when you came out of Egypt. And my Spirit remains among you. Do not fear.’”

  Zechariah saw determination and renewed hope in the faces of the priests and the people in the courtyards. Haggai gazed solemnly at the temple’s foundation as if seeing into the future as he continued to speak. “This is what the Lord Almighty says: ‘In a little while I will once more shake the heavens and the earth, the sea and the dry land. I will shake all nations, and the desired of all nations will come. I will fill this house with glory,’ says the Lord Almighty. ‘The silver is mine and the gold is mine,’ declares the Lord Almighty. ‘The glory of this present house will be greater than the glory of the former house. And in this place I will grant peace.’”