Ezra 3:8 Commentary and Bible Study

The work of rebuilding the temple begins under the oversight of Zerubbabel and Jeshua the high priest in the spring of the following year: the second month. By the second year they have cleared out the rubble and the dust, one assumes; they've exposed the foundations of the walls. The previous verse has told us that masons – and by implication stone – and carpenters and cedar have been made ready in preparation, and now the work proper begins. Again it involves the priests and the Levites, and the Levites are aged from twenty years old and upwards. The law of Moses had originally set the age of thirty as the age at which a Levite would begin to serve in the temple (Numbers 4:3), but Gill points out that David had revised this to twenty (1 Chronicles 23:24), the age at which Israelites were included in the census and able to go to war (Numbers 1:20, etc.)The new temple, the second temple, is not going to be as large as the original temple built by Solomon. In fact, it was some 60 cubits or 90 feet shorter. It was a much smaller affair. Neither did it have anything like the riches in it that the first temple had. Perhaps it was missing most of the gold leaf that was caked onto the ornate woodwork and all the expensive decorations. Ezra rather hints that there was none of it in these early days, because the chapter only refers to the robes of the priests as being authentic. They found the robes for the priests and the Levites, but there doesn't seem to have been much of value in the materials out of which the temple was constructed. It is as much as they could do to pay for the structure itself. However, before the new walls were built – they had only just got the foundations laid – already they are worshipping, and in verse 10 it mentions the trumpets and the symbols. It is all done according to the ordinance of David. Hezekiah too had looked back to David’s arrangements for worship as definitive for Israel, for it had been given through the prophets (2 Chronicles 29:20-25). The trumpets summoned the people. When there was worship to attend they were sounded. They had one other task also. Whenever an offering went up, the trumpets sounded. The importance of that long-term was that when the walls were built and the temple was constructed, most of the people would be in the temple court, outside of the area where the sacrifices were offered. So they couldn't see the sacrifice being made, and so the trumpets sounded to indicate to the people: now the sacrifice is going up. The cymbals were the same. They only sounded when the sacrifice was burning. When the smoke went up the trumpets and the cymbals were sounded. There would be thousands present at the time of sacrifice, and the people would then bow in worship; their sacrifice was being offered. Once the sacrifices were over – that particular sacrifice took a few minutes – the trumpets fell silent, the cymbals no longer clashed, and the people sang, accompanied only by the stringed instruments, which are mentioned in due course. They were the only instruments that were allowed in 2 Chronicles under David to accompany the singing, the song worship. So there was a great control over the instrumentation of the temple, and you notice it was observed the moment they came back and regrouped. ‘We want this to be authentic. We are going to do it exactly as were supposed to. David was punished for having more elaborate worship, and God gave him new ordinances of worship, and he faithfully abided by them, and we must do the same.’ This continued on with Nehemiah too; he did the same. Years later he follows scrupulously the ordinance given through David. So only the strings accompanied the song worship. Many, well, at least nine instruments named in the Old Testament were known to the Jews of old, but only two stringed instruments – more than two in number, but two types of stringed instruments – were actually permitted for the accompaniment of Psalms and Song. Why was that? Some people say it was to avoid as much as possible the cultic worship of the pagans which was done with every conceivable instrument. The idea was to achieve as much noise as possible, and to entertain and stir the people in a sensual manner. The house of God, it is assumed, was to be entirely different. Well yes, there is no doubt truth in that, but it's obvious also that the instrumentation for the sung worship was very simple so as not to distract from the sung worship. People were not there to enjoy the music. It was just accompaniment; they were there to focus on the words, to mean them and to wing them heavenward, to think about them and to be moved and affected by them. So there was to be no great distraction in the worship.