Ezra 3

₁By the 7th month of the year all the Israelites were in their towns where they wanted to live. Then they all came together in Jerusalem. ₂Jeshua, son of Jozadak, and the other priests and Zerubbabel, son of Shealtiel, and the other leaders started to build the altar of the God of Israel again. They wanted to sacrifice burnt-offerings on the altar. They wanted to do what the laws of Moses, the man of God, said. ₃They were afraid of the other people who also lived in the land but they built the altar at the place where it should be. Then they sacrificed burnt-offerings to the Lord on the altar, in the morning and in the evening. ₄They celebrated the Feast_of_shelters as the laws said. They sacrificed all the offerings that they had to sacrifice every day. ₅From that day they sacrificed burnt-offerings every day and also the offerings on the New-moon-feasts and the other feasts of the Lord. They also gave the offerings that people wanted to give to the Lord. ₆They started to sacrifice burnt-offerings to the Lord on the first day of the 7th month, but by then they had not yet started to build the foundations of the temple of the Lord.

₇They gave money to the men who had to cut the stones and to the other artisans. They gave food, wine and olive oil to the people of Sidon and Tyre so that they could bring cedar wood to the sea at the town of Joppa. King Cyrus of Persia said they should do it. ₈They started to build the temple in the 2nd month of the 2nd year after they had come to the place where the temple-ground was in Jerusalem. It was Zerubbabel, son of Shealtiel, Jeshua, son of Jozadak, and other people, and the priests and Levites and all who had been prisoners in Babylon but had come back to Jerusalem. They chose Levites who were 20 years old or older to see that the people did all the work at the temple in the right way. ₉Jeshua and his sons and brothers and Kadmiel and his sons, who helped him, were leaders of the people who did the work. They were all people of Judah and the people from the Henadad family helped them. ₁₀When the builders had finished building the foundations of the temple, the priests put on their special clothes and they stood ready with their trumpets. The Levites from the family of Asaph were ready with cymbals and they praised the Lord. They did it like King David of Israel had told them to do. ₁₁They started to praise the Lord and thank Him and they said:

All the people started to shout_loudly and they praised the Lord because they had built the foundation of the temple.

₁₂When the older priests, the Levites and family leaders who had seen the first temple saw the foundations of this temple, they cried loudly. Many of the people were so glad that they kept on shouting_loudly. ₁₃They shouted_so_loudly that they could not hear the people who were crying. People who were far away could hear them shouting.