Ezra 3:1-3

Amplified Bible, Classic Edition

3 When the seventh month came and the Israelites were in the towns, the people gathered together as one man to Jerusalem.

²Then stood up Jeshua son of Jozadak, and his brethren the priests, and Zerubbabel son of Shealtiel, and his brethren, and they built the altar of the God of Israel to offer burnt offerings upon it, as it is written in the ^[a]instructions of Moses the man of God.

³And they set the altar [in its place] upon its base, for fear was upon them because of the peoples of the countries; and they offered burnt offerings on it to the Lord morning and evening.

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Footnotes

Ezra 3:2 The Hebrew word here is torah, and although usually translated “law,” that is only one phase of its meaning, and so to use it, to the exclusion of its fuller sense, may defeat its intended purpose at times. The word torah is used more than 200 times in the Old Testament. When capitalized, Torah means the whole of the Pentateuch, the five books of Moses. Says Baker’s Dictionary of Theology (E.F. Harrison et al., eds.), “The Hebrew torah originally signified authoritative instruction (Prov. 1:8); hence it most commonly means an ‘oracle’ or ‘word’ of the Lord, whether delivered through an accredited spokesman such as Moses, or a prophet or priest. Thus torah comes to have the wider sense of ‘instruction’ (as in rv margin) from God.... It is therefore a synonym for the whole of the revealed will of God—the word, commandments, ways, judgments, precepts, etc., of the Lord, as in Gen. 26:5, and especially throughout Ps. 119.”