Ezra 3 explained: An Altar First, Then a Foundation

The altar rebuilt (vv. 1-3)

In the seventh month, an autumn month full of sacred festivals, the returned people gathered in Jerusalem, and their leaders rebuilt the altar on its old base. Despite fearing the peoples around them, they restarted the morning and evening burnt offerings, animals burned whole as a gift to God.

The festivals resume (vv. 4-6)

They kept the Festival of Tabernacles, a week of living in simple shelters to remember their ancestors' years in the desert, with the set offerings for each day. The full cycle of daily, monthly and festival offerings came back, plus voluntary gifts, even though the temple's foundation had not yet been laid.

Gathering materials (v. 7)

They paid stoneworkers and carpenters, and gave food and oil to the coastal cities of Tyre and Sidon to send cedar logs by sea from Lebanon to the port of Joppa. This followed the way Solomon had gotten timber for the first temple, and the Persian king Cyrus had given permission.

The building begins (vv. 8-9)

In the spring of their second year back, the leader Zerubbabel and the priest Joshua started the work, putting Levites, the tribe set apart to help with temple service, in charge of the workers. The Joshua named in verse 9 is probably a Levite family head, not the priest of verse 8.

Praise at the foundation (vv. 10-11)

When the foundation was laid, priests with trumpets and Levite musicians with cymbals led worship in the way King David had arranged long before. They sang a refrain also found in the Psalms, that the LORD is good and his love lasts forever, and the crowd answered with a great shout.

Tears and shouts together (vv. 12-13)

Older leaders who remembered Solomon's temple, destroyed about fifty years earlier, wept aloud, probably because this new start looked so small beside what they had lost. Their weeping and the others' cheering blended into one noise that carried far away.

Key verse: Ezra 3:11

Something to think about

Have you ever felt both joy and grief about the same new beginning, and what was each feeling telling you?