Before the first verse *And now the seventh month was come.* Which among us is October, solemn beyond the rest by the observance of the law, in which also the dedication of the temple was celebrated. Fitly therefore, when they had first entered their own cities and provided themselves dwellings, they presently flowed together into Jerusalem and built the altar, and that at the time at which the temple with its altar and all its vessels had of old been consecrated, and at which they were wont to come yearly to the day of the consecration. Mystically. The seventh month signifies the grace of the Holy Spirit. In this month, after the captivity, we come together out of our cities into Jerusalem, when, the filth of the vices taken away, after the beginning of good works we are enlightened by a greater grace of the same Spirit, and are kindled in the love of the peace above, which is in true unity. For Jerusalem is called the vision of peace.
1 And now the seventh month was come, and the children of Israel were in their cities: and the people gathered themselves together as one man to Jerusalem.
2 And Josue the son of Josedec rose up, and his brethren the priests, and Zorobabel the son of Salathiel, and his brethren, and they built the altar of the God of Israel that they might offer holocausts upon it, as it is written in the law of Moses the man of God.
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VERS. 2.-- *And Josue rose up.* Of the priestly tribe, which signifies Christ the true priest, who washed us from our sins in his own blood, and now stands before the face of God for us. *And his brethren the priests.* Of whom it is said: *Go, tell my brethren*. These are the higher ones in the Church, and, cleaving more familiarly to Christ, they build the Church. To the whole Church too it is said: *But you are a chosen generation, a kingly priesthood*. For the elect are members of the highest priest, offering their bodies a living victim. *And they built.* With great foresight they first built the altar, etc., *as far as* but they had not Christ as advocate with the Father.
3 And they set the altar of God upon its bases, while the people of the lands round about put them in fear, and they offered upon it a holocaust to the Lord morning and evening.
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VERS. 3.-- *Its bases.* The hearts, that is, of the elect, prepared for receiving the sacraments of faith by the precepts of the masters as by the irons of smiths, etc., *as far as* when the faithful submit their hearts and their bodies with humble intent to practise by working what they believe. *And they offered.* Morning and evening we offer a holocaust to the Lord upon his altar, etc., *as far as* according to that: *Let my prayer be directed as incense in thy sight, the lifting up of thy hands an evening sacrifice*.
4 And they kept the feast of tabernacles, as it is written, and offered the holocaust every day orderly according to the commandment, the duty of the day in its day.
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VERS. 4.-- *And they made.* They who had gone up out of Babylon into Jerusalem, etc., *as far as* and elsewhere: *We have not here a lasting city, but we seek one to come*. *The solemnity of tabernacles.* Which in Greek is called scenophegia, that is, the fixing of tabernacles, which begins on the fifteenth day of the seventh month and lasts seven days: in which the Lord commanded the people to dwell in tabernacles, and daily, searching the law, to offer holocausts to the Lord: because of old they tarried, that is, in tabernacles in the wilderness, while Moses preached the law and God often appeared to them, long awaiting the promised rest, that is, lest the grace of so great a benefit should ever come into forgetfulness. *In order.* Because whatever is done out of order loses the merit of perfection: because the honour of the king loveth judgment. For the things which we do in honour of the highest king, being assured, it is needful that we distinguish, by the discernment of judgment, when and how much they are to be done.
5 And afterwards the continual holocaust, both on the new moons, and on all the solemnities of the Lord, that were consecrated, and on all in which a freewill offering was made to the Lord.
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VERS. 5.-- *On the Kalends, as on all,* etc. That is, on the beginnings of the months at the rising of the moon, from which the Hebrews always began their months, having no months but lunar ones: whence for Kalends the Greeks better call them neomeniae, that is, new moons. But if the months, because of the thirty days by which they are filled, signify the fulness of the works of light, when in the faith of the holy Trinity we accomplish the precepts of the Decalogue, what do the beginnings of the months designate, in which the moon, that it may shine anew, is said to be lately kindled by the sun, but the beginnings of good working, which by the gift of the Creator's grace we receive as by the presence of the Sun of justice? For the signifying whereof of that divine enlightenment, without which we should be able to begin or to accomplish nothing of good. God commanded all the Kalends, that is, the beginnings of the months, to be kept; whence: *Sound ye at the beginning of the month the trumpet, in the noted day of your solemnity*. And it is well said that, the festivity of tabernacles being finished, the children of the transmigration made a continual holocaust, etc. Because after the mind has once perfectly renounced this world, it behoves that it spend itself wholly in obedience to the divine will.
6 From the first day of the seventh month they began to offer holocausts to the Lord: but the temple of God was not yet founded.
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VERS. 6.-- *From the first day.* From the beginning, that is, of the divine inspiration, by which the human conscience is changed, and, pleasures being neglected, burns for those things alone which are the Lord's, as the apostles, who, inflamed by the Holy Spirit and made as it were a holocaust, preached the great works of God in all tongues. Hence among the Hebrews the seventh month is called the new year: because it is given by the Holy Spirit to the faithful to fulfil the new commandment of charity, and to render a new canticle in the building of the house of God. But it is to be noted that in the seventh month the people was gathered together in Jerusalem, and that, all being gathered, Josue and Zorobabel with their brethren are related to have built the altar and from the first day of the seventh month to have offered a holocaust: whence it is gathered that this altar was put together very swiftly of unpolished stones: not, as of old, wrought of wood and covered with plates of brass. For otherwise, even with a very great crowd of builders pressing on, it could not have been begun and finished in one day, and made ready for the offering of the holocaust. For in the book of the Machabees it is said to have been made of stones: *And they took whole stones according to the law, and built a new altar according to that which was before*. It is to be noted that the beginning of the fifth age, like that of the four preceding, is consecrated by holocausts offered to the Lord. For in the first, Abel the protomartyr, first of all the elect, offered to God a holocaust of the firstlings of the sheep, and dedicated the entrance of the new-born world first with victims of cattle, at last with his own blood. Noe consecrated the rise of the second age with holocausts offered to God of those things which had been in the ark. Melchisedech and Abraham hallowed the third age, this one in bread and wine, that one by the offering of his own son. David consecrated the fourth age to the Lord, an altar being built in the floor of Horna the Jebusite, and holocausts offered to God, by which he might appease him whom he had offended by numbering the people; where Abraham is reported to have offered his son, and afterwards, when the temple had been built by Solomon, it is agreed that the altar of holocausts was set. The beginning of the fifth age Josue and Zorobabel now offered, an altar being built in that same place and holocausts offered to God, as soon as the yoke of the captivity was shaken off, and afterwards they appeased the Lord toward themselves by a continual holocaust. All these things went before in figure of him who in the sixth age redeemed the whole world by the victim of his own flesh.
7 And they gave money to hewers of stones and to masons: and meat and drink, and oil to the Sidonians and Tyrians, to bring cedar trees from Libanus to the sea of Joppe, according to the orders which Cyrus king of the Persians had given them.
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VERS. 7.-- *And they gave.* They who, delivered from the captivity, had come to Jerusalem, etc., *as far as* The foundation of the temple signifies those who, lately converted, prepare a place for the Lord in themselves; whence: *Your members are the temple of the Holy Spirit,* etc. *To the stone-cutters.* The stone-cutters in the construction of the house of God are those who instruct the hearts of their neighbours by teaching or by rebuking, etc., *as far as* and the tabernacle composed of curtains and of boards. *To the masons.* The masons are the preachers, who, while they bind together to one another in the bond of charity those whom they train in good works, join them, as squared and polished stones, by the pouring in of cement, lest they should loosen the order of the composition, saying: *And before all things having a mutual continual charity among yourselves,* etc.. Thence Paul: *But above all things have charity, which is the bond of perfection*. *To the Sidonians and Tyrians.* The Sidonians also and the Tyrians represent the preachers, who cast down from the state of their first manner of life men once lofty and shining in the glory of the world, by the axe of the word of God, so that, wholesomely laid low and as it were boiled clean of the corrupting moisture of their inborn sense, they may correct them from all the strength of the vices, and press them into the adornment or the fortification of the Church. Whence in the psalm which is inscribed at the finishing of the tabernacle: *The voice of the Lord breaking the cedars*. *To the Sidonians and Tyrians.* The princes of the fathers give, etc., *as far as* because they have pressure in the world, though confident, because the Lord hath overcome the world. *That they should bring wood.* They bring the wood that was cut down to the sea, etc., *as far as* and through the reconciliation of the priests we are gathered to the Church. *Joppe.* Whence, that is, they were to be carried by land to the work of the temple, as was done in the first building of the temple, but Solomon by his royal power easily obtained from king Hiram what he would: whereas these, returning from the captivity and not having the power of a kingdom, bought everything. *But in the year.* Since it is said above that in the seventh month they came into Jerusalem, etc., *as far as* or it announces the resurrection of the bodies which we who work well hope for.
8 And in the second year of their coming to the temple of God in Jerusalem, the second month, Zorobabel the son of Salathiel, and Josue the son of Josedec, and the rest of their brethren the priests, and the Levites, and all that were come from the captivity to Jerusalem began, and they appointed Levites from twenty years old and upward, to hasten forward the work of the Lord.
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VERS. 8.-- *In Jerusalem.* The place, that is, of the temple where they desired to build the temple. For the Jews are deceived who say that the walls of the temple were never overthrown by the Chaldeans, but only the roof, since it is plain that Esdras the son of the transmigration made the temple from the foundations. *And every one who.* Great was the devotion of the whole people. For they rejoiced that they had returned from the captivity, and by how much they shuddered at the enormities of the proud city, by so much they desired to see the comeliness of Jerusalem: by how much they abominated the shrines, by so much they laboured that the temple of God should be restored. So not only ought bishops and priests to build the people of the faithful, that is, the house of God, but the people also, called from the captivity of the vices to the vision of true peace, ought to choose the ministry of the word from those who have learned to teach, which ministers of the word, that is, Levites, are appointed from twenty years and upward: because such men are appointed for preaching, and are to be preferred, as show the Decalogue to their hearers not only by doing it, but also keep the purity and integrity of the heart undefiled in the sight of God. *From twenty years.* It is not to be doubted that there the state of the Church takes projection through the spirit, etc., *as far as* but Zorobabel indeed were sprung of the royal tribe.
9 Then Josue and his sons and his brethren, Cedmihel, and his sons, and the children of Juda, as one man, stood to hasten them that did the work in the temple of God: the sons of Henadad, and their sons, and their brethren the Levites.
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VERS. 9.-- *And he stood.* Not the son of Josedec, etc., *as far as* They praise also by the hand of David the king, when they diligently attend to and imitate, as far as they can, the works of Christ which he wrought through the flesh.
10 And when the masons laid the foundations of the temple of the Lord, the priests stood in their ornaments with trumpets: and the Levites the sons of Asaph with cymbals, to praise God by the hands of David king of Israel.
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VERS. 10.-- *The priests stood in their ornament.* The great devotion of all persons is shown, when, the temple being founded, all according to their grade praise the mercy of the Lord. The priests indeed adorned in holy vestments, as they had been wont while the temple yet stood, sounding with trumpets and kindling the heart of the people to the sweetness of the praise above; the Levites singing hymns together to the Lord on well-sounding cymbals; the people, praising God with a common cry, showing the affection of the heart.
11 And they sung together hymns, and praise to the Lord: because he is good, for his mercy endureth for ever towards Israel. And all the people shouted with a great shout, praising the Lord, because the foundations of the temple of the Lord were laid.
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VERS. 11.-- *And they sang together in hymns.* On instruments, that is, which he himself made, or in psalms which he appointed, or because David, at the placing of the ark, made Asaph and his brethren chief for confessing to the Lord, as the Words of the Days testify, of whom again it is said: that his sons were under his hand prophesying beside the king. Rightly, when the sons of Asaph here praised and confessed to the Lord by the hand of David, they are to be understood to have done this according to his disposition.
12 But many of the priests and the Levites, and the chief of the fathers and the ancients that had seen the former temple; when they had the foundation of this temple before their eyes, wept with a loud voice: and many shouting for joy, lifted up their voice.
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VERS. 12.-- *They wept* (BEDA *ubi supra* ), namely, seeing how far the poverty of that time was distant from the magnificent power of Solomon of old, by which the temple was first founded, etc., *as far as* In the second, Christ and the apostles announce the grace of the New Testament and the entrance of the heavenly kingdom. They wept at the building of the spiritual temple, etc., *as far as* nor are the temptings of the depraved lacking amid the increases of the pious, who either by feignedly showing good, or by openly thrusting in evil, strive to hurt the saints.
13 So that one could not distinguish the voice of the shout of joy, from the noise of the weeping of the people: for one with another the people shouted with a loud shout, and the voice was heard afar off.