Ezra 3

3 ¹ When the seventh month came and the people of Israel were settled in their towns, they gathered together as one in Jerusalem. ² Then Jeshua son of Jozadak and his fellow priests, and Zerubbabel son of Shealtiel and his associates, set to work and built the altar of our Father, to offer burnt offerings on it, as it is written in the Law of Moses, the man of our Father. ³ They set the altar on its foundations, for they were afraid of the peoples of the surrounding lands, and on it they offered burnt offerings to our Father, morning and evening. ⁴ They kept the Feast of Booths as it is written, offering the prescribed number of daily burnt offerings, as each day required. ⁵ After that, they offered the regular burnt offerings, the offerings for the new moons and for all the appointed feasts of our Father, and the offerings of everyone who brought a freewill gift to our Father. ⁶ From the first day of the seventh month they began to offer burnt offerings to our Father, though the foundation of our Father's temple had not yet been laid. ⁷ So they paid the stonecutters and carpenters, and gave food, drink, and oil to the people of Sidon and Tyre, to bring cedar logs from Lebanon by sea to Joppa, as Cyrus king of Persia had authorized them.

The Father's House Begins to Rise

⁸ In the second month of the second year after they came to the house of our Father in Jerusalem, Zerubbabel son of Shealtiel and Jeshua son of Jozadak began the work, together with the rest of their people — the priests, the Levites, and all who had returned to Jerusalem from captivity. They appointed the Levites twenty years old and upward to supervise the work on the house of our Father. ⁹ Then Jeshua with his sons and brothers, and Kadmiel with his sons, the sons of Judah, joined together to supervise those working on the house of our Father, along with the sons of Henadad and their sons and brothers, the Levites.

¹⁰ When the builders laid the foundation of the temple of our Father, the priests in their robes took their places with trumpets, and the Levites, the sons of Asaph, with cymbals, to praise our Father as David king of Israel had directed. ¹¹ They sang responsively, praising and giving thanks to our Father: "For he is good; his faithful love toward Israel endures forever." And all the people gave a great shout of praise to him, because the foundation of the house of our Father had been laid.

¹² But many of the older priests and Levites and family heads, who had seen the first house, wept aloud when they saw the foundation of this house being laid, while many others shouted for joy. ¹³ No one could tell the joyful shouts from the sound of weeping, because the people shouted so loudly it could be heard far away.