The post-exilic prince of the Jewish people who, together with the priest Joshualed the first Jewish group of exiles back to Judah once the edict from Cyrus permitting the conquered people to return and rebuild their own homelands was issued in 538 BC.
Zerubbabel is consistently referred to in books of Ezra-Nehemiah and Haggai as "son of Shealtiel" (Ezr 3:2, 8; 5:2; Neh 12:1; H ag 1:1, 12, 14, 2:2, 23) though 1 Chron 3:19 lists him and a certain Shimei as the sons of Pedaiah. The two assertions are not necessarily contradictory. Shieltiel (listed first and, therefore, the elder) and Pedaiah were brothers, both sons of one of Judah's last kings, Jehoiachin, who had been taken as prisoner to Babylon and still recognized as the legitimate king (1 Chron 3:17; 2 Ki 25:27-30). Zerubbabel may indeed have been the natural son of Pedaiah as Chronicles asserts. If Shieltiel had died before he could father a son, Pedaih would have been duty-bound under the law of levirate marriage to take Shieltiel's widow as wife. Born under such circumstances, Zerubbabel would have been recognized as son of Shieltiel and, therefore, inherited his role as head of the royal family and to lead the first delegationg of exiles to return to Judah. For nearly two decades he lived on as the recognized head of the Jews as they rebuild the Temple in Jerusalem; we last hear of him in the words of the prophets Haggai and Zechariah addressed to him "in the second year of Darius" (esp., Hag 1:1, 12, 14; 2:2, 4, 21; 23), i.e., c.520 BC. As to his character and life, we are told little; the actual role he played in the restoration of Judah may have been, largely, symbolic rather than actual.
Zerubbabel is mentioned 22x (over 21 verses) in the OT and another 3x (in the Greek form, Zorobabel (cf., KJV), in the NT, in the genealogies in Matt & Lk.
Read the entry in:
Eaton's Illustrated Bible Dictionary
International Standard Bible Encyclopedia
Resources:
Stanley Arthur Cook, "The Age of Zerubbabel," in Studies in Old Testament Prophecy Presented to Professor Theodiere H. Robinson, ed. by H.H. Rowley, by the Society for Old Testament Study on his Sixty-Fifth Birthday August 9th 1946 (Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1957), 19-36.
Pdf N 6 (Open on Phone)
E. L. Ellison, From Babylon to Bethlehem, esp., Chap 6, "From Zerubbabel to Ezra and Nehemiah," (London: Paternoster Press, 1976). Reproduced by BiblicalStudies.org.
Pdf N 5-6 (Open on Phone)
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