Ezra 3:11 - Joseph Benson’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments

And they sang together by course That is, answered one another alternately. And all the people shouted with a great shout The people were very differently affected upon this occasion. Those that had only known the misery of having no temple at all, praised the Lord with shouts of joy when they saw the foundation of this laid, for to them this was as life from the dead. But many that had seen the first house Which divers of them had, because it had not been destroyed quite sixty years ago, and who remembered the glory of that temple, wept with a loud voice “Not only because this temple was likely to prove far inferior to that of Solomon, as to its outward structure, but because it was to want those extraordinary marks of the divine favour wherewith the other temple was honoured. Both the temples, without all doubt, were of the same dimensions; but here was the sad difference which drew tears from the eyes of the elders, that in all appearance there were no hopes that the poor beginnings of the latter temple would ever be raised to the grandeur and magnificence of the former, since the one had been built by the wisest and richest king, and constantly adorned by some one or other of his posterity; the other now begun by a small company of exiles just returned from their captivity: the one in a time of profound peace and the greatest opulence; the other in a time of common calamity and distress: the one finished with the most costly stones and timber, wrought with exquisite art, and overlaid with vast quantities of gold; the other to be raised out of no better materials than what could be dug from the ruinous foundation of the old one. But the occasion of their grief was not only this, that the materials and ornaments of the second temple were even as nothing in comparison with the first, (Haggai 2:3,) but that the ark of the covenant, and the mercy- seat which was upon it, the holy fire upon the altar, the Urim and Thummim, the spirit of prophecy, the Shechinah or divine presence, the five great things for which the former temple was so renowned, were lost and gone, and never to be recovered to this other. This was a just matter of lamentation to those who had seen these singular tokens of the divine favour in the former temple, and a discouragement of their proceeding with the building of the present; and therefore the Prophet Haggai was sent to inform them that all these wants and defects should be abundantly repaired by the coming of the Messiah, the true Shechinah of the Divine Majesty, in the time of the second temple: (Ezra 2:7-9:) I will shake all nations, and the desire of all nations shall come; and I will fill this house with glory: the glory of this latter house shall be greater than of the former, saith the Lord of hosts.” Dodd.