Ezra 6:20

20 All of the priests and the Levites had purified themselves; all of them were clean. They slaughtered the Passover animals for all the returned exiles, their fellow priests, and 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.

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FOOTNOTES:

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

Ezra 6:20 In-Context

18 They set the priests in their divisions and the Levites in their sections for the service of God in Jerusalem, as it is written in the scroll from Moses.

19 On the fourteenth day of the first month, the returned exiles celebrated the Passover.

20 All of the priests and the Levites had purified themselves; all of them were clean. They slaughtered the Passover animals for all the returned exiles, their fellow priests, and themselves.

21 The Israelites who had returned from exile, together with all those who had joined them by separating themselves from the pollutions of the nations of the land to worship the LORD, the God of Israel, ate the Passover meal.

22 They also joyfully celebrated the Festival of Unleavened Bread for seven days, because the LORD had made them joyful by changing the attitude of the king of Assyria toward them so that he assisted them in the work on the house of God, the God of Israel.