And they set the altar upon its bases; for fear was upon them because of the people of those countries: and they offered burnt offerings thereon unto the LORD, even burnt offerings morning and evening.
All Commentaries on Ezra 3:3 Go To Ezra 3
Bede
AD 735
And they set the altar of God upon its bases, because they were in fear of the peoples of the lands around them, and they offered a holocaust to the Lord upon it morning and evening. For the bases of the altar are the hearts of the elect which are prepared as it were by the tools of craftsmen to receive the mysteries of the Lord's faith by the precepts of the teachers who went before. And it is fitting that there is one altar but several bases supporting it, because there is one Lord, one faith, one baptism, and one God but many are the hearts of the faithful which, having been taught by the single rule of truth as though they had been brought together into the same bosom, carry the burden of the heavenly mysteries with a common devotion. Otherwise, anyone who entrusts the mysteries of the faith to those who have been insufficiently instructed and are not yet endeavouring to abandon their past sins is like one who places the Lord's altar on the ground without its bases, surrendering the things of heaven to minds which are still earthly. Now this accords with that passage in the Gospel where the Lord says: Neither do men light a lamp and put it under a bushel, but they put it upon a stand, that it may give light to everyone in the house. For just as the Lord is rightly called an altar since he cleanses us from our transgressions because, receiving the offerings of our prayers, he commends them to the Father, in the same way he can be not inappropriately called a lamp, since he placed the light of his eternal divinity in the vessel of the humanity that he had assumed. Furthermore, the bases are put under the altar and the lampstand is put under the lamp when all the faithful submit their own hearts and bodies with humble determination to practice through their works what they believe.
