As God had foretold through the prophets Jeremiah (25:11-12) and Ezekiel (11:14-17), the people of Israel returned home from the land of their exile. God had allotted seventy years for the time of Israel's punishing exile, and when that time ended, he acted in history to overthrow the Babylonian regime when it was conquered by the Persians under Cyrus.

The prophet Isaiah sees Cyrus as God's anointed king. "This is what the Lord says to his anointed, to Cyrus, whose right hand I take hold of to subdue nations before him. . . . " (Isaiah 45:1ff.). In all this we see that even in the realm of international politics and warfare, God is sovereign and is working out his own purposes.

The return came in three waves: the first after Cyrus's decree (Ezra 1:1-4), the second eighty years later under Ezra (Ezra 7), and the third a few years later under Nehemiah.

When the Jews began to return to their land, they also began to rebuild Jerusalem, especially the temple, which represented God's presence among his people and was the focal point of all Israelite worship. Cyrus had encouraged them to do this by sending back the "articles of silver and gold" that were used in the temple worship. Notice how Ezra includes an inventory of them (1:9-11). The first thing Ezra did with that first ragtag group of returnees was to build an altar to the Lord on the ruins of the temple of Solomon, which had been destroyed. At least the rhythm of sacrifice could begin again, even before the temple was completed.

After some time, the returnees set about the task of actually rebuilding the temple itself. It began with collections of money and materials, including the all-important cedar logs from Lebanon with which to provide the strong framework. Then the priest Zerubbabel led the actual building process, which would end up taking twenty years.

When the foundations were laid, the people held a celebration, complete with vestments and trumpets, offering up praises to the Lord. "And all the people gave a great shout of praise to the Lord because the foundation of the house of the Lord was laid" (3:11).

But it was a bittersweet celebration. Some of the older priests and Levites had actually seen the former temple, the temple of Solomon, in all its glory. Next to that memory, this paltry foundation, a fraction of the size of the previous temple, caused them to weep. Ezra captures these mixed feelings in a remarkable verse: "No one could distinguish the sound of the shouts of joy from the sound of weeping, because the people made so much noise" (3:13).