Making a Start: Here the first of the two implementations of the divine mandate given through Cyrus is completed. A nucleus of the exiled people had come home in order to rebuild the temple. To this end they brought with them Gentile gifts and recovered vessels from the first temple (ch. 1) and then added gifts of their own (2:68–69). Now they were to take the first step of reestablishing the worship of the Jerusalem temple by restoring the sacrificial system on a reconstituted altar (3:1–6) and laying anew the temple foundation (3:7–13).

3:1–3  The narrator continued to use his source; here we can see the identification of the new community from Nehemiah 7:73b–8:1a reworked as a fitting introduction to his own story. He returns to the time frame of the beginning of the seventh month in ver…