Ezra 4:2 - Joseph Benson’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments

They came to Zerubbabel, &c., and said, Let us build with you Hearing that the temple was in building, they were presently aware that it would be a fatal blow to their superstition, and therefore set themselves to oppose it. But as they had not power to do it openly and by force, they endeavoured to do it secretly and by wiles. They offer their service to build with them, but only that by this conjunction with them they might pry into their counsels, find some matter of accusation against them, and thereby retard the work, while they pretended to further it. For we seek your God, as ye do This was false; for though they sought the same God, they did not seek him only, nor seek him in the way he had appointed, as the true Jews did. And we do sacrifice unto him since the days of Esar-haddon Son of Sennacherib, and after him king of Assyria, who brought or sent these persons thither, either, 1st, in the days of Shalmaneser, who reigned in Assyria but eight years before Esar-haddon, and so Esar-haddon might be one of his commanders, and the man by whom that colony was sent; or, 2d, in the reign of Esar-haddon, who sent a second colony to strengthen the first.