Who is there among you of all his people? his God be with him, and let him go up to Jerusalem, which is in Judah, and build the house of the LORD God of Israel, (he is the God,) which is in Jerusalem.
All Commentaries on Ezra 1:3 Go To Ezra 1
Bede
AD 735
And now the seventh month had come, and the children of Israel were in their cities; so the people gathered together as one man in Jerusalem. The seventh month, which we call October, was more than all the other months solemn with the observance of ceremonies according to the Law, and was also the time when the dedication of the temple was celebrated. It was thus appropriate to the devotion of the faithful who had come up from the captivity that, as soon as they had individually entered their own cities with the livestock and money they had brought with them and there built homes suitable for themselves and their families, they should all presently gather together in Jerusalem and construct an altar there for offering holocausts to God, and this at the time of year when this temple was originally consecrated with the altar and all of its vessels and when they had been accustomed to come there every year for the day of this consecration. In a higher sense, however, the seventh month suggests the grace of the Holy Spirit, which is described as sevenfold in the prophet Isaiah and in the Apocalypse of Saint John. We come together in Jerusalem in this month from our cities after captivity when, after the stains and errors of the vices have been washed away, and after the defenses of good works have been begun, we are illuminated by the greater grace of the same Spirit and set ablaze with the love of heavenly peace, which resides in true unity; for Jerusalem, to be sure, means 'vision of peace'. And it is well said that in the seventh month all of Israel gathered in Jerusalem as one man. For this occurs daily in the spiritual Israel3 when, through the grace of the Holy Spirit, all the elect throughout the world worship God with one and the same faith, and aspire with one no less equal love to the joys of everlasting peace and happiness and imitate these things, insofar as they can even in this life, by loving and being patient with one another.
