And when I heard this thing, I tore my garment and my mantle, and plucked off the hair of my head and of my beard, and sat down appalled.
All Commentaries on Ezra 9:3 Go To Ezra 9
Bede
AD 735
Then Jeshua and his sons and his brethren, Kadmiel and his sons, and the sons of Judah, as one man came and took charge of the workmen in the temple of the Lord, along with the descendents of Henadad, with their sons and their brethren, the Levites. In this passage he means by Jeshua not the high priest son of Jozadak but one of the Lévites concerning whom it was said earlier that they were appointed from twenty years and above to hasten forward the work of the Lord. Of these there were Kadmiel and the sons of Henadad, who are likewise said to have taken charge of the work enjoined upon them with their sons and brethren. In fact, in the catalogue of the people of Israel above, they are the first of the Lévites to be mentioned by name after the priests: the Lévites, the sons of Jeshua and of Kadmiel, the sons of Hodaviah, seventy-four. It is thus implicit in these two passages that they were the leaders and patriarchs of the Lévites of that time. The descendants of Judah are justly put in the midst of the Lévites since together with them they have taken on the task of building the Lord's temple, and they are recalled to have stood as one man because of the same unity of their devotion. For here is that kind of virtue which, as we have said earlier, we should always imitate, namely that not only all the orders dedicated to God but also the shared devotion of all the people should build their Holy Church, each according to their own capacity.
