Passage Overview · Free · Ezra 6:19–22
Passover after Exile: A New Exodus Celebration
After the temple is completed, the returned exiles keep Passover and the Feast of Unleavened Bread. Priests and Levites purify themselves, the Passover is killed, and the feast is shared not only by returnees but also by people who had separated themselves from the impurity of the surrounding peoples in order to seek the LORD.
This is one of Ezra’s strongest canonical Threads. Passover remembers the original Exodus from slavery; now a community restored after another exile celebrates the same feast in a rebuilt sanctuary. Exodus memory becomes the language of postexilic identity.