Since that time even until now hath it been in building. It is not quite clear whether these words are part of the answer given by the Jews to Tatnai, which he reports to Darius (see Ezra 5:11), or Tatnai's own statement of what he believes to have been the fact.
Perhaps the latter view is the more probable; and we may suppose Tatnai not to have been aware that from the second year of Cyrus to the commencement of the reign of Smerdis, and again during the latter part of this reign and the first eighteen months of the reign of Darius, the work had been suspended.