Then the prophets, Haggai the prophet, and Zechariah the son of Iddo, prophesied unto the Jews that were in Judah and Jerusalem in the name of the God of Israel, even unto them.
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Augustine of Hippo
AD 430
Both Haggai and Zechariah, the one within the year after the other, began to prophesy that which seemed to pertain to the restoration of the temple, as was foretold so long before. [EXPLANATION OF THE PSALMS 112.1]
Through the words he proclaimed and the letters he dispatched throughout his whole kingdom, Cyrus indeed permitted, or rather commanded concerning the whole people of Israel (which consisted of twelve tribes) that those whom God was with should go up to Jerusalem to build the Lord's house. Nevertheless, it was not the whole people who wished to go up but only some of those to whom Jerusalem itself and the Lord's temple had formerly belonged, namely those from Judah and Benjamin and the priestly and levitical tribe. For the remaining ten tribes had already been estranged from the Lord's temple and the practice of devotion while under King Jeroboam, and as a due reward for such great disobedience, they had been captured by the kings of the Assyrians and transported beyond the mountains of the Medes, and, so they say, none of them were ever allowed to return to the homeland. Moreover, the two tribes of Judah and Benjamin, which possessed Jerusalem and the surrounding regions of Judea, tog...
