Ezra 3
1 When the seventh month came, the Israelites were in their towns. The people gathered as one in Jerusalem.
2 Then Jeshua son of Jozadak and his fellow priests, together with Zerubbabel son of Shealtiel and his brothers, arose and built the altar of the God of Israel to offer burnt offerings on it, as it is written in the Law of Moses, the man of God.
3 They set the altar on its foundations, for they were afraid of the peoples of the lands. They offered burnt offerings to the LORD on it, burnt offerings morning and evening.
4 They celebrated the Festival of Shelters as it is written, offering the daily burnt offering in the number and manner prescribed for each day.
5 After that, they offered the regular burnt offering, the offerings for the new moons and for all the LORD’s appointed festivals, and the offering of everyone who brought a freewill offering to the LORD.
6 From the first day of the seventh month they began offering burnt offerings to the LORD, though the foundation of the LORD’s temple had not yet been laid.
7 They gave silver to the stonecutters and carpenters, and food, drink, and oil to the people of Sidon and Tyre, to bring cedar logs from Lebanon to the sea at Joppa, as authorized for them by Cyrus, king of Persia.
8 In the second year after they came to the house of God in Jerusalem, in the second month, the work began. Zerubbabel son of Shealtiel, Jeshua son of Jozadak, the rest of their fellow priests and Levites, and all who had returned from captivity to Jerusalem took part. They appointed the Levites twenty years old and older to oversee the work on the house of the LORD.
9 Jeshua, with his sons and brothers, and Kadmiel, with his sons—the sons of Judah—stood together to oversee those doing the work on the house of God. With them were the sons of Henadad, their sons and their brothers, the Levites.
10 When the builders laid the foundation of the temple of the LORD, the priests stood in their robes with trumpets, and the Levites, the sons of Asaph, with cymbals, to praise the LORD according to the directions of David, king of Israel.
11 They sang responsively with praise and thanks to the LORD: “For he is good; his faithful love for Israel endures forever.” All the people gave a great shout of praise to the LORD, because the foundation of the house of the LORD had been laid.
12 Many of the priests, Levites, and family heads, the elders who had seen the first house, wept loudly when they saw this house with its foundation laid; many others raised their voices in joyful shouts.
13 The people could not distinguish the sound of joyful shouting from the sound of the people weeping, for the people were shouting so loudly that the sound could be heard far away.
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