Ezra 6:20

20 The priests and Levites had made themselves clean. Then the Levites killed the Passover lambs for all the people who had returned from captivity, for their relatives the priests, and for themselves.

Ezra 6:20 Meaning and Commentary

Ezra 6:20

For the priests and the Levites were purified together, all of
them were pure
They were all to a man pure, and all purified as one man; all were of one mind to purify themselves, and took care to do it, and did it with as much dispatch as if only one man was purified; so that they were more generally prepared for service now than in the times of Hezekiah, ( 2 Chronicles 29:34 ) ( 30:3 )

and killed the passover for all the children of the captivity,
and for their brethren the priests and for themselves;
which seems to have been done by the Levites, for themselves and for the priests, and for all the people, who were not so pure as the priests and Levites; or otherwise they might have killed it themselves, ( Exodus 12:6 ) , as Bochart F14 thinks.


FOOTNOTES:

F14 Hierozoic. par. 1. l. 2. c. 50. col. 576.

Ezra 6:20 In-Context

18 Then they put the priests and the Levites into their separate groups. Each group had a certain time to serve God in the Temple at Jerusalem as it is written in the Book of Moses.
19 The Jewish people who returned from captivity celebrated the Passover on the fourteenth day of the first month.
20 The priests and Levites had made themselves clean. Then the Levites killed the Passover lambs for all the people who had returned from captivity, for their relatives the priests, and for themselves.
21 So all the people of Israel who returned from captivity ate the Passover lamb. So did the people who had given up the unclean ways of their non-Jewish neighbors in order to worship the Lord, the God of Israel.
22 For seven days they celebrated the Feast of Unleavened Bread in a very joyful way. The Lord had made them happy by changing the mind of the king of Assyria so that he helped them in the work on the Temple of the God of Israel.
Scripture taken from the New Century Version. Copyright © 1987, 1988, 1991 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved.