Beginning the rebuilding of the temple
Then they gave money to the masons and carpenters, and gave food and drink and oil to the people of Sidon and Tyre, so that they would bring cedar logs by sea from Lebanon to Joppa, as authorized by Cyrus king of Persia.
8 In the second month of the second year after their arrival at the house of God in Jerusalem, Zerubbabel son of Shealtiel, Jeshua son of Jozadak, and the rest of their brothers (the priests and the Levites and all who had returned from the captivity to Jerusalem) began the work, appointing Levites twenty years of age and older to supervise the building of the house of the LORD. 9 Jeshua and his sons and brothers and Kadmiel and his sons (descendants of Hodaviah) and the sons of Henadad and their sons and brothers—all Levites—joined together in supervising those working on the house of God.
10 When the builders laid the foundation of the temple of the LORD, the priests in their vestments and with trumpets, and the Levites (the sons of Asaph) with cymbals, took their places to praise the LORD, as prescribed by David king of Israel. 11 With praise and thanksgiving they sang to the LORD:
“He is good;
his love to Israel endures forever.”
And all the people gave a great shout of praise to the LORD, because the foundation of the house of the LORD was laid. 12 But many of the older priests and Levites and family heads, who had seen the former temple, wept aloud when they saw the foundation of this temple being laid, while many others shouted for joy. 13 No one could distinguish the sound of the shouts of joy from the sound of weeping, because the people made so much noise. And the sound was heard far away.
After they had had some time to establish their new homes, the leaders made the necessary arrangements for the rebuilding of the temple. The Jews traded for materials from the Phoenicians, Israel’s neighbors to the north in the area that is present-day Lebanon. The Phoenicians had also provided the materials for Solomon’s temple. Perhaps some of the hired craftsmen for the new temple were Phoenicians, as they had been at the building of the first temple (1 Kings 5). Because the temple was a house of God, the work was supervised by the Levites, the appointed caretakers of God’s house.
The building project began with a special ceremony similar to our groundbreaking or cornerstone laying ceremonies. The ceremony was led by members of the family of Asaph, one of the Levitical families whom David had appointed to be in charge of the temple music (1 Chronicles 25). The words of their song recorded by Ezra are similar to the refrain of Psalm 136 and other psalms. They are apparently just an excerpt from a psalm written or selected for the occasion.
Even though the rebuilding of the temple was an occasion for great joy, some of the old people wept as they remembered the destruction of the first temple. Perhaps their sorrow was caused in part by memories of the nation’s sins which had led to the destruction of the first temple and in part by the realization that the poor exiles could not build a temple which would match the riches and outward grandeur of Solomon’s temple. As the Lord said through the prophet Haggai, a contemporary of Zerubbabel, “Who of you is left who saw this house in its former glory? How does it look to you now? Does it not seem to you like nothing?” (2:3)