Ezra 3

1When the seventh month came, and the Israelites were in their towns, the people gathered together as one person in Jerusalem.

2Then Jeshua son of Jozadak and his brothers the priests, and Zerubbabel son of Shealtiel and his brothers, set to work 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.

3They set up the altar on its foundation, for they were afraid of the peoples of the lands, and they offered burnt offerings on it to Yahweh, the burnt offerings morning and evening.

4They kept the Festival of Booths, as it is written, and offered the daily burnt offerings in the required number, according to what was prescribed for each day.

5After that they offered the regular burnt offerings, the offerings for the new moons and for all the consecrated appointed festivals of Yahweh, and the offerings of everyone who brought a freewill offering to Yahweh.

6From the first day of the seventh month they began to offer burnt offerings to Yahweh, though the foundation of the temple of Yahweh had not yet been laid.

7So they gave money to the stonecutters and the carpenters, and food, drink, and oil to the people of Sidon and Tyre, to bring cedar logs from Lebanon to the sea at Joppa, according to the authorization they had received from Cyrus king of Persia.

8In the second month of the second year after they came to the house of God in Jerusalem, Zerubbabel son of Shealtiel, Jeshua son of Jozadak, and the rest of their brothers—the priests and the Levites and all who had come to Jerusalem from the captivity—began the work. They appointed the Levites twenty years old and older to supervise the work on the house of Yahweh.

9Jeshua with his sons and his brothers, and Kadmiel and his sons, the descendants of Judah, together took charge of supervising those doing the work on the house of God, along with the sons of Henadad and their sons and brothers, the Levites.

10When the builders laid the foundation of the temple of Yahweh, the priests in their vestments were stationed with trumpets, and the Levites, the sons of Asaph, with cymbals, to praise Yahweh as David king of Israel had directed.

11They sang responsively, praising and giving thanks to Yahweh: “For he is good; his steadfast love toward Israel endures forever.” And all the people gave a great shout as they praised Yahweh, because the foundation of the house of Yahweh had been laid.

12But many of the priests and Levites and heads of ancestral houses, the old men who had seen the first house, wept loudly when they saw the foundation of this house laid, while many others shouted aloud for joy.

13The people could not tell the sound of the joyful shouting from the sound of the people’s weeping, for the people were shouting so loudly that the sound was heard far away.