The rebuilt temple is dedicated and Passover is kept
Exile & Return · Draft · BSB
Content revision: 998866876afa54e3 · No editorial review date recorded
Date: Darius · Sixth year, Adar · Passover follows
The officials carry out Darius’s orders, and the elders complete the temple in his sixth year. The community dedicates it with joy, offers a sin offering for all twelve tribes and organizes priestly service. Returnees and others who join in seeking the LORD celebrate Passover.
This completion is later than the foundation in Ezra 3 and earlier than Nehemiah’s walls. The retrospective mention of Artaxerxes does not move the stated completion out of Darius’s sixth year. The unusual reference to a king of Assyria at the end should not be used to invent a new Assyrian ruler in this Persian setting.
Primary Scripture
6:13 In response, Tattenai the governor of the region west of the Euphrates, Shethar-bozenai, and their associates diligently carried out what King Darius had decreed.
6:14 So the Jewish elders built and prospered through the prophesying of Haggai the prophet and Zechariah son of Iddo. They finished building according to the command of the God of Israel and the decrees of Cyrus, Darius, and Artaxerxes, kings of Persia.
6:15 And this temple was completed on the third day of the month of Adar, in the sixth year of the reign of King Darius.
6:16 Then the people of Israel—the priests, the Levites, and the rest of the exiles—celebrated the dedication of the house of God with joy.
6:17 For the dedication of the house of God they offered a hundred bulls, two hundred rams, four hundred lambs, and a sin offering for all Israel of twelve male goats, one for each tribe of Israel.
6:18 They also appointed the priests by their divisions and the Levites by their groups to the service of God in Jerusalem, according to what is written in the Book of Moses.
6:19 On the fourteenth day of the first month, the exiles kept the Passover.
6:20 All the priests and Levites had purified themselves and were ceremonially clean. And the Levites slaughtered the Passover lamb for all the exiles, for their priestly brothers, and for themselves.
6:21 The Israelites who had returned from exile ate it, together with all who had separated themselves from the uncleanness of the peoples of the land to seek the LORD, the God of Israel.
6:22 For seven days they kept the Feast of Unleavened Bread with joy, because the LORD had made them joyful and turned the heart of the king of Assyria toward them to strengthen their hands in the work on the house of the God of Israel.
Related Scripture
The Passover instructions recall deliverance from Egypt and worship at the chosen place.
Location evidence
Jerusalem is an identified city. The marker locates the city, not a precisely verified house, gate, platform or section of ancient wall.
Event map marker: Identified site; [longitude, latitude] = [35.234167, 31.776667]. This is a teaching marker, not an exact event venue.
Jerusalem: Identified site. Coordinates [longitude, latitude]: [35.234167, 31.776667]. Classification source: editorial.
OpenBible.info: Jerusalem (CC BY 4.0)
OpenBible.info: Jerusalem (CC BY 4.0)
For the class
How do the twelve-tribe offering and the Passover express the community’s identity?
Interpretation and reuse
Narrative order is a reading arrangement, not a proven chronology. Dates retain their stated uncertainty. An identified locality does not establish the exact venue or prove an event. Region extents and routes are illustrative, not surveyed boundaries or ancient roads. Draft material has not completed editorial review.
Record source: editorial (content/authored/exile-return.json)
Place coordinates from OpenBible.info Bible Geocoding Data, CC BY 4.0.
Teaching stops, summaries and regional extents are original editorial content of this atlas.
Berean Standard Bible (BSB), public domain. https://berean.bible/licensing.htm