Ezra 3
The full text of Ezra 3 in the Trinity Bible Version — clear modern English, translated from the original Hebrew and Aramaic. Free to read.
1 When the seventh month came and the Israelites had settled 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 associates, began to build 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 up the altar on its foundation, despite their fear of the surrounding peoples, and they offered burnt offerings on it to the LORD—burnt offerings morning and evening.
4 They celebrated the Festival of Shelters as prescribed, and offered the daily burnt offerings in the number required for each day,
5 and after that, the regular burnt offerings, the New Moon offerings, and the offerings for all the appointed sacred festivals of the LORD, as well as those brought as freewill offerings to the LORD.
6 From the first day of the seventh month they began to offer burnt offerings to the LORD, though the foundation of the LORD's temple had not yet been laid.
7 They gave money to the stonecutters and carpenters, and food, drink, and oil to the people of Sidon and Tyre to bring cedar logs by sea from Lebanon to Joppa, as authorized by Cyrus king of Persia.
8 In the second month of the second year after their arrival at the house of God in Jerusalem, Zerubbabel son of Shealtiel, Jeshua son of Jozadak, and the rest of their associates—the priests, the Levites, and all who had returned from the captivity to Jerusalem—began the work. They appointed Levites twenty years old and older to supervise the work on the house of the LORD.
9 Jeshua and his sons and brothers, and Kadmiel and his sons—descendants of Hodaviah—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, all Levites.
10 When the builders laid the foundation of the temple of the LORD, the priests in their vestments took their positions 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, praising and giving thanks to the LORD: "For he is good; his loyal love toward Israel endures forever." And all the people gave a great shout of praise to the LORD, because the foundation of the house of the LORD was laid.
12 But many of the older priests, Levites, and heads of families who had seen the first house wept with a loud voice when they saw the foundation of this house, while many others shouted for joy.
13 No one could distinguish the sound of the joyful shouting from the sound of the weeping, because the people made so much noise. And the sound was heard far away.
Translation notes (4)
- Ezra 3:3a The Hebrew reads literally 'for in dread (be'eimah, 'in terror') upon them from the peoples of the lands'. The conjunction ki can mark cause as well as concession, so the clause may mean either that they built despite their fear or that fear itself drove them to seek the LORD's protection through restored worship; the rendering above adopts the concessive sense.
- Ezra 3:7a The arrangements deliberately echo Solomon's preparations for the first temple, in which Tyrian workers were paid in food, drink, and oil to float cedar from Lebanon by sea to Joppa (1 Kings 5:6-11; 2 Chronicles 2:16). The narrator thus presents the second temple as a legitimate continuation of the first, now built under the authorization of a Persian king rather than an Israelite one.
- Ezra 3:11a The refrain echoes Psalm 136:1 and the liturgies of 1 Chronicles 16:34 and 2 Chronicles 5:13, marking the restored worship as continuous with the first temple. Hebrew chesed (חסד), rendered here as 'loyal love', denotes the LORD's enduring covenant faithfulness; the singing was antiphonal, with alternating choirs answering one another.
- Ezra 3:12a The 'first house' is Solomon's temple, destroyed by the Babylonians in 586 BC, so the eldest returnees were recalling a building lost nearly fifty years earlier. Their weeping anticipates Haggai 2:3, where the prophet asks who remains that saw the house in its former glory, and Zechariah 4:10, which warns against despising the day of small things.
About this translation
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