Ezra 3: What the Passage Says

The Chapter in a Sentence

In the seventh month, the returned exiles gather in Jerusalem, where Jeshua and Zerubbabel rebuild the altar and begin the daily burnt offerings, keep the Feast of Tabernacles, and resume the appointed festivals, even though the temple foundation has not yet been laid. They pay workers and send food, drink, and oil to Sidon and Tyre for cedar from Lebanon, as Cyrus had allowed. In the second month of the second year, the Levites are put in charge of the work, and when the foundation is laid the priests and Levites lead a service of praise. The people shout for joy while older men who had seen the first temple weep, and the two sounds cannot be told apart.

Claim by Claim

1. 3:1
   • The seventh month arrived.
   • The children of Israel were in their cities.
   • The people gathered together to Jerusalem.
   • The people gathered as one man.
2. 3:2
   • Jeshua son of Jozadak rose up.
   • Jeshua's brethren the priests rose up with him.
   • Zerubbabel son of Shealtiel rose up.
   • Zerubbabel's brethren rose up with him.
   • They built the altar of the God of Israel.
   • They built the altar in order to offer burnt offerings on it.
   • The offering of burnt offerings was as written in the law of Moses.
   • Moses is called the man of God.
3. 3:3
   • They set the altar upon its bases.
   • Dread was upon them because of the peoples of the lands.
   • They offered burnt offerings on the altar to the LORD.
   • They offered burnt offerings in the morning and in the evening.
4. 3:4
   • They kept the feast of tabernacles.
   • They kept it as it is written.
   • They offered the daily burnt offerings by number.
   • The number offered each day was according to the prescribed requirement for that day.
5. 3:5
   • Afterward they offered the continual burnt offering.
   • They offered the burnt offerings of the new moons.
   • They offered the burnt offerings of all the appointed feasts of the LORD that were consecrated.
   • They offered the offerings of everyone who willingly gave a freewill offering to the LORD.
6. 3:6
   • They began to offer burnt offerings to the LORD from the first day of the seventh month.
   • The foundation of the temple of the LORD had not yet been laid.
7. 3:7
   • They gave money to the masons.
   • They gave money to the craftsmen.
   • They gave food, drink, and oil to the Sidonians and the Tyrians.
   • The purpose was to bring cedar timber from Lebanon to the sea at Joppa.
   • This was done according to the grant given them by Cyrus king of Persia.
8. 3:8
   • It was the second year after their coming to the house of God at Jerusalem.
   • It was the second month.
   • Zerubbabel son of Shealtiel began the work.
   • Jeshua son of Jozadak began the work.
   • The rest of their brethren, the priests and the Levites, began the work.
   • All those who had come out of the captivity to Jerusalem began the work.
   • They appointed the Levites from twenty years old and upward.
   • The Levites were appointed to oversee the work of the house of the LORD.
9. 3:9
   • Jeshua stood with his sons and his brethren.
   • Kadmiel stood with his sons.
   • They are identified as the sons of Judah.
   • They stood together to oversee the workmen in the house of God.
   • The sons of Henadad stood with them.
   • The sons and brethren of Henadad's sons, the Levites, stood with them.
10. 3:10
    • The builders laid the foundation of the temple of the LORD.
    • The priests were stationed in their vestments with trumpets.
    • The Levites, the sons of Asaph, were stationed with cymbals.
    • They were stationed to praise the LORD.
    • The praising was according to the direction of David king of Israel.
11. 3:11
    • They sang responsively in praise and thanksgiving to the LORD.
    • They sang that he is good.
    • They sang that his covenant love toward Israel endures forever.
    • All the people shouted a great shout.
    • The people shouted while praising the LORD.
    • They shouted because the foundation of the house of the LORD had been laid.
12. 3:12
    • Many of the priests were old men who had seen the first house.
    • Many of the Levites were old men who had seen the first house.
    • Many of the heads of the fathers' houses were old men who had seen the first house.
    • The foundation of this house was laid before their eyes.
    • They wept with a loud voice.
    • Many others shouted aloud for joy.
13. 3:13
    • The people could not distinguish the sound of the shout of joy from the sound of the weeping of the people.
    • The people were shouting with a great shout.
    • The sound was heard far away.

Words Worth Explaining

Every language note in this chapter, gathered. These explain what a word meant, never what it means for the reader.

3:1

The seventh month is Tishri (roughly September–October), the most crowded month in the Israelite calendar: it opened with a day of trumpet blasts, contained the Day of Atonement, and ended with the week-long Feast of Tabernacles. "As one man" is a Hebrew idiom for acting with complete unanimity, as a single body.

3:2

Jeshua is the high priest and Zerubbabel the civil governor, a descendant of the royal house of David; between them they represent the two lines of leadership the returning exiles had. A burnt offering was one burned whole on the altar, with no part kept back to be eaten, as against offerings that were shared out among priests and worshipers. "The law of Moses" means the first five books of the Bible, and "man of God" is a standard title for a prophet, not a comment on Moses' character.

3:3

Setting the altar "on its own foundation" means rebuilding it on the exact spot the old altar had stood, which mattered because the site itself was held to be the one place sacrifice could rightly be offered. The peoples living around them were the populations who had remained in the land or been settled there during the seventy years the exiles were away, and who regarded the returnees as intruders. Morning and evening burnt offerings were the fixed twice-daily sacrifices commanded in the law.

3:4

The Feast of Tabernacles (Sukkot) was a seven-day autumn harvest festival during which people lived in temporary shelters of branches, recalling the years Israel spent camping in the wilderness. Its distinctive feature was a descending count of bull sacrifices (thirteen on the first day, twelve on the second, and so on) which is what "the required number" and "the rule for what each day called for" refer to.

3:5

New moons: the first day of each lunar month, marked by its own prescribed sacrifices, since the Israelite calendar ran by the moon. A freewill offering was one nobody was obliged to bring, given purely by choice, over and above what the law required.

3:6

The order matters: sacrifice restarted on an open-air altar months before any building work began, because the altar, not the building around it, was what the offerings actually required.

3:7

Sidon and Tyre were Phoenician port cities on the coast of what is now Lebanon, the timber merchants and shippers of the region. Cedar from the mountains of Lebanon was the prestige building timber of the ancient Near East. Paying in food, drink and olive oil rather than coin was the same arrangement Solomon had made for the first temple. The logs were floated down the coast by sea to Joppa (modern Jaffa), the nearest port to Jerusalem, about thirty-five miles away. The authorization from Cyrus is the decree described in chapter 1.

3:8

The second month falls in roughly April–May; the work therefore began about a year and a half after the return. Levites were members of the tribe of Levi who were not descended from Aaron: they served as the temple's assistants, musicians, gatekeepers and supervisors rather than as sacrificing priests. Twenty was the minimum age for this duty; elsewhere the law sets it at twenty-five or thirty, and the lower figure here may reflect a shortage of men.

3:9

"The descendants of Judah" translates a Hebrew word that may be a personal name (Hodaviah or Yehudah, a Levite family head listed in chapter 2) rather than the tribe of Judah; the text is genuinely unclear. Henadad is another Levite family line.

3:10

The priests' robes were the prescribed vestments for temple service. The trumpets were the straight silver trumpets used for signals and ceremony, quite unlike the curved ram's horn. Asaph was a musician appointed by David to lead worship, and "the sons of Asaph" means the hereditary guild of temple singers descended from him. The ceremony deliberately follows the pattern David had laid down for the first temple.

3:11

Singing "back and forth" means antiphonally: two groups answering each other, verse by verse. The words they sang are the refrain of several psalms. "Faithful love" renders the Hebrew word hesed, which covers loyalty, kindness and steady commitment within a binding relationship, and has no single English equivalent.

3:12

The first temple was Solomon's, destroyed by the Babylonians about fifty years earlier. The men weeping were old enough to have seen it standing; the modest foundation now in front of them fell far short of what they remembered.