Shouting and Weeping
8 Now in the second year of their coming to God’s house at Jerusalem, in the second month, Zerubbabel the son of Shealtiel, Jeshua the son of Jozadak, and the rest of their brothers the priests and the Levites, and all those who had come out of the captivity to Jerusalem, began the work and appointed the Levites, from twenty years old and upward, to have the oversight of the work of Yahweh’s house. 9 Then Jeshua stood with his sons and his brothers, Kadmiel and his sons, the sons of Judah, together to have the oversight of the workmen in God’s house: the sons of Henadad, with their sons and their brothers the Levites. 10 When the builders laid the foundation of Yahweh’s temple, they set the priests in their vestments with trumpets, with the Levites the sons of Asaph with cymbals, to praise Yahweh, according to the directions of David king of Israel. 11 They sang to one another in praising and giving thanks to Yahweh, “For he is good, for his loving kindness endures forever toward Israel.” All the people shouted with a great shout, when they praised Yahweh, because the foundation of Yahweh’s house had been laid. 12 But many of the priests and Levites and heads of fathers’ households, the old men who had seen the first house, when the foundation of this house was laid before their eyes, wept with a loud voice. Many also shouted aloud for joy, 13 so that the people could not discern the noise of the shout of joy from the noise of the weeping of the people; for the people shouted with a loud shout, and the noise was heard far away.
Two sounds go up at the foundation and cannot be told apart, and the book declines to say which one was right.
The work begins in the second year of their coming to God's house at Jerusalem, in the second month — the same month Solomon had started, and a detail the book supplies without comment.
One administrative note carries the thinness of the returning community: Levites were appointed from twenty years old and upward to oversee the work. The old arrangement had set a later age for such service. With seventy-four Levites on the register Ezra 2:40, the threshold had to come down.
The ceremony at the foundation is arranged from an old script: priests in their vestments with trumpets, Levites with cymbals, praising according to the directions of David king of Israel. And the antiphon they sing is the shortest creed in the Psalms — for he is good, for his loving kindness endures forever toward Israel.
Then all the people shouted with a great shout.
And verse 12 puts a second sound beside it. Many of the priests and Levites and heads of fathers' households, the old men who had seen the first house, when the foundation of this house was laid before their eyes, wept with a loud voice.
The weeping is specifically located. It comes from the ones old enough to have seen Solomon's temple, and what triggers it is the foundation — the moment the new building's dimensions became visible. They were not weeping at a ruin. They were weeping at a beginning, because the beginning told them what the finished thing would be.
The same verse then records the other half in the same breath: many also shouted aloud for joy.
And verse 13 states the result without resolving it: the people could not discern the noise of the shout of joy from the noise of the weeping of the people.
Two verdicts on one event, indistinguishable at any distance. The book does not adjudicate between them — it does not say the old men were faithless or the young men shallow. Both responses are reported as accurate to what each group could see, and the noise that carried far away was made of both.
settled What this mark means