What can we learn about this man? Perhaps he came from a lowly family. This may explain why his father is not mentioned. While Jewish tradition says he was a young priest when he returned from the Babylonian exile, we have nothing in Scripture to substantiate or deny this. He could equally have been a very old man who had seen, with his own eyes, the glories of Solomon’s temple before it had been destroyed by Nebuchadnezzar some sixty-six years earlier. Some scholars believe this to be the case because