Ezra 3:1-13

3:1 | The previous chapter describes the return of the people. Chapter 3 now introduces the commencement of legitimate worship. The people being in the cities simply means that having arrived in the land, they were already settled. Gathered together as one man to Jerusalem illustrates unity and a return to the form of worship detailed in the law.

3:2-6 | When the Jews returned to Jerusalem, their first act was to rebuild the altar where it was before (on its bases). Their first priority was worship.

3:3 | The people the Israelites feared were those who chose to stay in the land – Jews and Samaritans – not the people of neighboring countries. There were Jews who remained in the land of Judah (2 Kgs. 25:22), many of them by choice (Jer. 40:1-6).

3:10-11 | Once the temple’s foundation was laid, the people’s gratitude for a permanent place of worship prompted a worship service. Praise was conducted in the manner prescribed by the ordinance of David, meaning that worship in Israel’s present reflected worship in Israel’s past – particularly the celebration associated with the building of the first temple (1 Chron. 6:31; 16:4-6; 25:1; 2 Chron. 5:13; Ps. 136:1).

3:12-13 | The returned exiles had mixed emotions that day: many of the people shouted for joy while the old men, who remembered the original temple from the days of their childhood, wept with a loud voice because this newly built house of worship did not compare to the glory of the original.