prophets of God’ implies that God was inspiring them and that they were speaking for him. As earlier, when the prophesying of Jeremiah was referred to (1:1), the words of these prophets are not recorded. In Haggai 1:5–11, all blame for the delay in building the temple is laid on the people, but such a view is alien to Ezra 4, which wholly attributes it to the enmity of adversaries. There need be no contradiction, for neither biblical passage gives a full picture of events. Perhaps the tension between