Ezra3chapter 3

Ezra 3:1-2

The seventh month brings the feast of trumpets, and the returned exiles gather themselves together as one man to Jerusalem before a single stone of the temple is laid. Jeshua the priest and Zerubbabel the governor stand up together and build the altar of the God of Israel, offering burnt offerings on it as it is written in the law of Moses. Worship comes first, ahead of any wall or roof, restored the moment the exiles are home.

Ezra 3:3

They set the altar upon his bases, the old foundation rediscovered under the rubble, and fear of the surrounding peoples presses on them even as they worship. The morning and evening burnt offering, silenced through the exile, resumes as the first continual habit of the restored community. Matthew Henry reads the daily lamb as a shadow of the Lamb of God, so the smoke rising over Jerusalem again points to a substitute already promised.

Ezra 3:4-6

the feast of tabernacles: They keep the feast of tabernacles as it is written, offering the daily burnt offering by number according to the custom of each day, then add the offerings of the new moons and every freewill offering besides. Verse six carries the point the whole chapter is built on: offerings begin from the first day of the seventh month, but the foundation of the temple of the Lord was not yet laid. The altar and the calendar of feasts run a full season ahead of any wall or roof.

Ezra 3:7

Money goes to masons and carpenters, and meat, drink and oil go to the men of Sidon and Tyre for cedar trees from Lebanon brought down to Joppa, the same route and the same partners Solomon once used to raise the first temple. This time the timber travels under the grant of Cyrus king of Persia rather than a treaty between two covenant kings, a pagan decree standing in the place a king of Israel once filled. A ruined house is rebuilt by the means that first raised it, under a new and unlikely patron.

Ezra 3:8-9

In the second year, second month, the leaders appoint Levites from twenty years old and upward to set forward the work of the house of the Lord, the lowered age David set for temple ministry in 1 Chronicles 23:24 and 27 rather than the thirty years Numbers 4 required for the older tabernacle service. A second man named Jeshua, a Levite and not the high priest, stands with Kadmiel and the sons of Henadad to oversee the workmen, so two men bearing the same name serve the project at different ranks. The names come straight out of the registry of the previous chapter, the list already doing the work of setting each family in its place.

Ezra 3:10-11

When the builders lay the foundation, the priests take up their trumpets and the Levites of Asaph their cymbals, set in order after the ordinance of David king of Israel, the worship of the first house resumed under fewer hands and a leaner budget. They sing by course the refrain of 1 Chronicles 16:34, because he is good, for his mercy endureth for ever toward Israel, the same liturgy that once opened the ark's rest under David now opening a foundation stone under Persian rule. All the people answer with a great shout, so that praise rather than silence marks the first finished stage of the house.

Ezra 3:12-13

Many of the priests, Levites and chief fathers were old enough to have seen the first house, and they weep with a loud voice at a foundation their memory measures against Solomon's temple, while others shout aloud for joy at a house finally begun. The two sounds run together until the people cannot discern the shout of joy from the noise of the weeping, one great noise heard far off carrying grief and hope at once. Haggai later speaks to these same old men directly, asking who is left that saw this house in her first glory and how it looks now by comparison, so a prophet answers the very tears this verse records.