But many of the priests and Levites, and chief of the fathers,
who were ancient men
Seventy or eighty years of age:
that had seen the first house;
the temple built by Solomon, as they very well might, since then it had been destroyed but fifty two years; for the seventy years captivity are to be reckoned from the fourth of Jehoiakim, when it began, and which was eighteen years before the destruction of the temple; the beginning of the next clause,
when in the foundation,
according to the Hebrew accents, is to be connected with this,
that had seen the first house;
not when first founded, for that was five hundred years ago, but in "its foundation"; they saw it standing upon its foundation, in all its glory, and so the Septuagint version; and we may read on, when
this house was before their eyes, wept with a loud voice;
seeing what it was like to be by the foundation now laid, and was in their sight as nothing in comparison of the former; see ( Haggai 2:3 ) but Aben Ezra connects this clause as we do,
when the foundation of this house was laid;
not but that the dimensions of this house strictly taken were as large as the former: see ( Ezra 6:3 Ezra 6:4 ) , but not the courts and appendages to it: besides, what might affect them, there was no likelihood of its being so richly decorated with gold and silver as the former temple, and many things would be wanting in it, as the Urim and Thummim
and many shouted aloud for joy;
of the younger sort, who had never seen the grandeur of the first temple, and were highly delighted with the beginning of this, and the hope of seeing it finished.