Ezra 3

¹When the seventh month came , and the children of Israel were in the towns , the people gathered as one man to Jerusalem .

²Then arose Jeshua the son of Jozadak , with his fellow priests , and Zerubbabel the son of Shealtiel with his kinsmen , and they 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 the altar in its place , for fear was on them because of the peoples of the lands , and they offered burnt offerings on it to the Lord, burnt offerings morning and evening .

⁴And they kept the Feast of Booths , as it is written , and offered the daily burnt offerings by number according to the rule , as each day required ,

⁵and after that the regular offerings , the offerings at the new moon and at all the appointed feasts of the Lord, and the offerings of everyone who made a freewill offering to the Lord.

⁶From the first day of the seventh month they began to offer burnt offerings to the Lord. But the foundation of the temple of the Lord was not yet laid .

⁷So they gave money to the masons and the carpenters , and food , drink , and oil to the Sidonians and the Tyrians to bring cedar trees from Lebanon to the sea , to Joppa , according to the grant that they had from Cyrus king of Persia .

⁸Now in the second year after their coming to the house of God at Jerusalem , in the second month , Zerubbabel the son of Shealtiel and Jeshua the son of Jozadak made a beginning , together with the rest of their kinsmen , the priests and the Levites and all who had come to Jerusalem from the captivity . They appointed the Levites , from twenty years old and upward , to supervise the work of the house of the Lord.

⁹And Jeshua with his sons and his brothers , and Kadmiel and his sons , the sons of Judah , together supervised the workmen in the house of God , along with the sons of Henadad and the Levites , their sons and brothers .

¹⁰And when the builders laid the foundation of the temple of the Lord, the priests in their vestments came forward with trumpets , and the Levites , the sons of Asaph , with cymbals , to praise the Lord, according to the directions of David king of Israel .

¹¹And they sang responsively , praising and giving thanks to the Lord, For he is good , for his steadfast love endures forever toward Israel . And all the people shouted with a great shout when they praised the Lord, because the foundation of the house of the Lord was laid .

¹²But many of the priests and Levites and heads of fathers ’ houses, old men who had seen the first house , wept with a loud voice when they saw the foundation of this house being laid , though many shouted aloud for joy ,

¹³so that the people could not distinguish the sound of the joyful shout from the sound of the people’s weeping , for the people shouted with a great shout , and the sound was heard far away .