4 Now when the enemies of Judah and Benjamin heard that the people of the exile were building a temple to the Lord God of Israel, 2 they approached Zerubbabel and the heads of fathers’ households, and said to them, “Let us build with you, for we, like you, seek your God; and we have been sacrificing to Him since the days of Esarhaddon king of Assyria, who brought us up here.” 3 But Zerubbabel and Jeshua and the rest of the heads of fathers’ households of Israel said to them, “You have nothing in common with us in building a house to our God; but we ourselves will together build to the Lord God of Israel, as King Cyrus, the king of Persia has commanded us.”
4 Then the people of the land [a]discouraged the people of Judah, and frightened them from building, 5 and hired counselors against them to frustrate their counsel all the days of Cyrus king of Persia, even until the reign of Darius king of Persia. Ezra 4:1-5 [NASB]
At first it seems they weren’t enemies. They offered to help out the people of God with the rebuilding of the temple. Indeed, they even declared their intention to seek God and to sacrifice to him.
We would wonder at Zerubbabel’s refusal of their help. Somehow he recognized that they were enemies – which they proved to be when they tried to discourage and frighten off the workers and when they went so far as to intervene against them in the court of Cyrus the king.
Perhaps Zerubbabel recognized they weren’t quite sincere in their worship of God. It was not uncommon in those times to worship more than one god at a time. Perhaps their worship was unacceptable – a mix of other traditions directed towards God. To join together in common labour would give these outsiders an influence and even an ownership in the temple. Being, as it turns out, enemies of God, they would inevitably undermine the spiritual ministry of God’s people.
We do well to similarly distrust those who offer to help us in our building of the temple of Christ. Is their worship of Christ sincere and acceptable? Will they be able to influence or take ownership of the Christ’s temple? Will they have a say in how Christians should worship and serve God?
To accept the assistance of outsiders is to put ourselves under their influence – perhaps even under their power.
– SSXG