Ezra 6:13-22

13Tattenai, ruler of the region west of the Euphrates river, Shethar-Bozenai and their friends carefully obeyed King Darius's command.

14So the leaders of the Jews continued to build the temple. The work went very well. They listened to the messages from God that the prophet Haggai and Iddo's grandson, Zechariah, were teaching them. They finished building the temple. Israel's God had commanded them to do that. Cyrus, Darius and Artaxerxes, the kings of Persia, had also commanded them to do it.

15They finished building the temple on the third day of Adar month. King Darius had then been king for six years.

16Then the Israelite people offered the temple to God, so that he would bless it. The priests, the Levites and the other people who had returned from Babylon were all very happy.

17They offered 100 bulls, 200 male sheep and 400 lambs. Then they sacrificed 12 male goats as a sin offering for all Israel. There was one goat for each of the 12 tribes of Israel.

18They decided how each group of priests and Levites should work in God's temple in Jerusalem. Moses had written in his book how they should do this.

19On the 14th day of the first month, the people ate the Passover feast.

20The priests and Levites had all made themselves clean for their special work. The Levites killed the lambs for the Passover sacrifice. They did that on behalf of all the people, the priests and themselves.

21So all the people who had returned from Babylon ate the feast. Other Israelites in Jerusalem had turned away from the bad things that other nations who lived there did. They had decided to worship the Lord, Israel's God. So they also ate the feast.

22Then they ate the Feast of Flat Bread for seven days. The Lord had caused them to be very happy, because the king of Assyria had helped them. The Lord had made the king think in a different way about the Jews in Jerusalem. He had decided to help them to build the God of Israel's temple.