Esdras 4:24

24. Then ceased That is, as the evident connexion with the preceding section shows, when these enemies, by authority from the king, forcibly obliged them to stop work on the temple. This verse shows that the Artaxerxes of Ezra 4:23 cannot be the same as the one mentioned Ezra 6:14; Ezra 7:1, but is a king who preceded Darius.

Unto the second year of… Darius Artaxerxes, the pseudo-Smerdis, who issued the edict for the work to cease, was assassinated in less than a year after he began to reign, and Darius Hystaspes immediately took the kingdom, so that the work of rebuilding was not made to cease for more than two years, probably not much more than one. See on Ezra 5:16. This Darius was the son of Hystaspes, and a descendant of the ancient Achaemenian kings. On the death of Cambyses, who died without issue; he was probably the hereditary heir to the throne, and this fact may have had much to do with his daring efforts to slay the Magian usurper. Having obtained the kingdom he instituted a general slaughter of the Magi, apparently aiming at their extermination. He restored the Zoroastrian temples and worship, which the Magian had attempted to destroy, and it was therefore very natural that he should revoke the edict which had caused the rebuilding of the Jewish temple to cease. His genealogy, and the principal acts of the first four years of his reign, are recorded in the celebrated Behistun inscription on the rocks of western Persia. Under him began those great struggles with the West which finally ended in the fall of the Persian empire before the arms of Alexander. “Darius Hystaspes was, next to Cyrus, the greatest of the Persian kings, and he was even superior to Cyrus in some particulars. To him, and him alone, the empire owed its organization. He was a skillful administrator, a good financier, and a wise and far-seeking ruler. Of all the Persian princes he is the only one who can be called ‘many sided.’ He was organizer, general, statesman, administrator, builder, patron of art and literature, all in one. Without him Persia would probably have sunk as rapidly as she rose, and would be known to us only as one of the many meteor powers which have shot athwart the horizon of the East.” RAWLINSON, Ancient Monarchies, vol. iii, p. 445.