Ezra 6:18

Verse 16 names everyone who took part: “the children of Israel, the priests, and the Levites, and the rest of the children of the captivity”. The children of Israel are the returned community, God’s covenant people brought back to the land. The priests and Levites are named for their part in the worship of the house, and the rest of the returned exiles stand beside them, so the whole community that had come back from Babylon shares in the day. Then one word gives the mood of all of them: joy.

The verb “kept” is the Aramaic ʻăbad, which means to do, make, prepare or keep, and is often used for keeping a feast. The “dedication” is chănukkâʼ, from a root meaning to train or initiate. It names the formal opening of a building or an altar, when it is set apart for holy use, and here it sets the newly built house apart for the worship of the LORD alone. The same word in its Hebrew form later gave its name to Hanukkah, the Feast of Dedication, which remembered the rededication of the temple in the time of the Maccabees, and John records Jesus walking in the temple at that feast (John 10:22). The joy is chedvâh, gladness or rejoicing, the gladness of people who had watched God bring a long and hard-fought work to its end.

The words of verses 16 to 18 are Aramaic and those of verses 19 to 22 are Hebrew. That is why the joy of verse 16 and the joy of verse 22 are two different words that share the English one.

At the dedication the people offered “an hundred bullocks, two hundred rams, four hundred lambs”, and twelve he goats as a sin offering for all Israel. The verb “offered” is the Aramaic qᵉrêb, used for presenting sacrifices, and with these offerings the building became a holy sanctuary ready for its work.

The bullocks, rams and lambs were burnt offerings (ʿōlāh), which were wholly consumed on the altar (Leviticus 1:3–9). A burnt offering expressed complete devotion and thanks to God, and it also made atonement. The sheer number of animals matched the size of the day for the whole nation and the thanks the people owed the God who brought them home and let them finish his house. They honoured him with the best they had, and in abundance.

The goats were a different kind of offering. The sin offering, chaṭṭâʼâh, is the offering the law of Moses sets out for sin (Leviticus 4), for sins done unintentionally and for cleansing from defilement. The written text of this verse and the form read aloud spell it slightly differently, but it is one Aramaic word for sin offering. Even on a day of celebration the people came before God owning their need of his forgiveness, so their worship held both thanksgiving and confession.

Years later the wall of Jerusalem had its own dedication (Nehemiah 12:27).

With the house dedicated, the leaders of the community, Zerubbabel and Jeshua among them, “set the priests in their divisions, and the Levites in their courses, for the service of God”. “Set” is qûwm, to rise, stand, set up or appoint, and here it means to appoint and establish. “Divisions” is pᵉluggâh, a section or division, the groups into which the priestly families were arranged so that each took its turn. “Service” is ʻăbîydâh, labour, business or work. In the house of God it covers everything the priests and Levites did, from offering the sacrifices to caring for the sanctuary, teaching the law and leading the people in worship. The Levites’ share included helping the priests, guarding the house, singing and playing instruments, and keeping its courts.

The turns by courses go back to King David, who divided the Levites and the priests into their orders (1 Chronicles 23:6) so that the work went on all year in good order and every family bore its share (1 Chronicles 24:1–19). The verse rests the whole arrangement on Scripture: “as it is written in the book of Moses”. The book of Moses is the five books from Genesis to Deuteronomy, the law God gave Israel, with its commands for the priesthood, the Levites, the tabernacle, the sacrifices and the feasts. There the LORD gave the Levites to Aaron and his sons to serve with them (Numbers 3:5–10), and he set out the Levites’ charge in detail (Numbers 4).

So the returned community restored the service the LORD had commanded, in the order he had given, and took his written word as the authority for all of it. The service was “at Jerusalem”, the place he had chosen for his house. God is a God of order, and Paul gives the church the same rule: “Let all things be done decently and in order” (1 Corinthians 14:40).

“And the children of the captivity kept the passover upon the fourteenth day of the first month.” “Children” is bên, son, which in the plural takes in a whole people. Joined with gôwlâh, exile or the body of exiles, it makes the phrase “children of the captivity”, in Hebrew bene haggolah. They were the people who had gone through the exile in Babylon, they and their families, and had been brought home under the decree of Cyrus, a remnant preserved by God.

“Kept” is ʻâsâh, to do or make in the broadest sense, the ordinary verb for holding a feast. “Passover” is peçach, the name of the festival and its sacrifice, from a root meaning to pass over or spare. It recalls the night in Egypt when the LORD passed over the houses marked with the blood of the lamb. The people kept it on the day the law appointed and in the way God had first commanded it (Exodus 12:1–14), and as Moses repeated it for the place God would choose (Deuteronomy 16:1–8).

This was the first Passover at the rebuilt house. For people who had just come back from Babylon it remembered two deliverances: the first out of Egypt, and the one they had lived through themselves, when God gathered them home from captivity as he had promised (Isaiah 43:1–7). A later generation under Nehemiah kept the feast of tabernacles with the same great gladness (Nehemiah 8:17–18).

Two groups ate the Passover: “the children of Israel, which were come again out of captivity”, and “all such as had separated themselves unto them from the filthiness of the heathen of the land”. The second group were people from outside Israel who had turned from the idolatry of the peoples around Judah and joined themselves to the returned exiles and their God.

“Separated” is bâdal, to divide, distinguish or set apart, and these people had set themselves apart from the ways of the nations. “Filthiness” is ṭumʼâh, religious uncleanness or defilement, the uncleanness the law saw in the worship of idols and the immoral ways that went with it. God had warned Israel that such abominations defile a land (Leviticus 18:24–30), and the exile had taught them how seriously he meant it.

Both groups came for the same reason, “to seek the LORD God of Israel”. “Seek” is dârash, to seek, inquire of, require or care for. To seek the LORD is to come to him in earnest to worship and obey him, and Moses had promised that those who seek him with all their heart will find him (Deuteronomy 4:29). Then they “did eat”, sharing the Passover meal as one company.

After the Passover the people “kept the feast of unleavened bread seven days with joy”. The feast followed straight on from the Passover and remembered how Israel left Egypt in such haste that the bread went out unleavened (Exodus 12:15–20). For the returned exiles, keeping it in the rebuilt house marked a new beginning after their own deliverance.

The word for joy here is simchâh, joy, gladness or mirth, the joy people feel and show, and it often belongs to Israel’s feasts. Then the verse gives the reason: “for the LORD had made them joyful”. The gladness was his gift. He had brought them home, finished his house through their hands, and filled their hearts with joy at what he had done. Nehemiah would later tell the people, “the joy of the LORD is your strength” (Nehemiah 8:10).

The verse gives a second reason: the LORD had “turned the heart of the king of Assyria unto them”. “Turned” is çâbab, to turn about, surround or reverse. God turned the king’s heart toward his people, so that the throne which might have hindered them helped them. “The king’s heart is in the hand of the LORD, as the rivers of water: he turneth it whithersoever he will” (Proverbs 21:1). The same truth lies behind Paul’s call to pray for kings and all who are in authority (1 Timothy 2:1–2).

The king’s favour had a purpose: “to strengthen their hands in the work of the house of God, the God of Israel”. In this form châzaq means to make strong, strengthen, encourage or make firm, and to strengthen someone’s hands is to give them the means and the courage for a task. Darius’s decree gave the builders protection and money, and behind the decree stood God, whose house it was.

The house dedicated in verse 16 points forward to Jesus. He said, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up”, and he spoke of the temple of his body (John 2:19–21). He is the true temple, in whom God dwells fully among us. Through him believers are built into a temple too. Paul tells the church that they are the temple of God (1 Corinthians 3:16) and that a believer’s body is the temple of the Holy Ghost (1 Corinthians 6:19–20), and Peter calls believers lively stones built up into a spiritual house (1 Peter 2:5).

The many sacrifices of verse 17 point to his one offering. Christ came to do the Father’s will (Hebrews 10:5–7), gave himself for us as an offering and a sacrifice to God (Ephesians 5:2), and by that offering we are sanctified once for all (Hebrews 10:10). John the Baptist called him “the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world” (John 1:29). His own blood, offered through the eternal Spirit, purges the conscience to serve the living God (Hebrews 9:11–14). The twelve goats were offered for Israel, and his sacrifice reaches the whole world.

The priests of verse 18 served in their courses and were purified before they killed the Passover. The law with its priesthood was a shadow of good things to come (Hebrews 10:1). Christ is the high priest who is holy, harmless and undefiled in himself (Hebrews 7:26), a priest for ever after the order of Melchizedek (Hebrews 7:17), who ministers now in the true tabernacle in heaven (Hebrews 8:1–2) as the mediator of a better covenant (Hebrews 8:6–13). His people are a royal priesthood who offer the sacrifice of praise and of doing good (Hebrews 13:15–16), and who present their bodies as living sacrifices (Romans 12:1).

The Passover of verses 19 to 21 finds its fulfilment in him: “For even Christ our passover is sacrificed for us” (1 Corinthians 5:7). On the night he was betrayed he gave his disciples the bread and the cup of the new covenant in his blood (Luke 22:19–20), and the church keeps that supper to show his death till he come (1 Corinthians 11:23–26). He delivers his people from the deeper captivity of sin and death, for “the wages of sin is death; but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord” (Romans 6:23).

The joy and the strengthened hands of verse 22 point to him as well. In God’s presence is fulness of joy (Psalm 16:11). The God of hope fills believers with joy and peace through the power of the Holy Ghost (Romans 15:13), and Paul tells the church to rejoice in the Lord always (Philippians 4:4). The God who turned a king’s heart has given his Son all power in heaven and in earth, and the Son sends his church out with the promise of his presence to the end of the world (Matthew 28:18–20) and the power of the Holy Spirit for the work (Acts 1:8).

The God of these verses keeps his promises across seventy years and through every kind of opposition. He finishes the work he begins, and he is honoured when his people gather to thank him and to confess their sin together. He orders his worship by his written word, and he calls those who serve at his altar to come clean before him. His table was open to the stranger who turned from idols to seek him. He holds the hearts of kings and turns them to help his people, and he is the one who makes his people glad. All of this comes to its fullness in Christ, the temple in whom God dwells and the Passover sacrificed for us, and the joy of the returned exiles is a foretaste of the joy he gives to all who come to him.