Ezra 6:19-22
The returned remnant celebrates Passover with purified worship and great joy because the Lord has restored both His house and His people’s covenant remembrance.
19 The children of the captivity kept the Passover on the fourteenth day of the first month.
20 Because the priests and the Levites had purified themselves together, all of them were pure. They killed the Passover for all the children of the captivity, for their brothers the priests, and for themselves.
21 The children of Israel who had returned out of the captivity, and all who had separated themselves to them from the filthiness of the nations of the land, to seek Yahweh, the God of Israel, ate,
22 and kept the feast of unleavened bread seven days with joy; because Yahweh had made them joyful, and had turned the heart of the king of Assyria to them, to strengthen their hands in the work of God, the God of Israel’s house.
The returned remnant celebrates Passover with purified worship and great joy because the LORD has restored both His house and His people’s covenant remembrance.
Ezra records that the rebuilt temple immediately becomes the setting for renewed covenant worship: the returned exiles keep the Passover, the priests and Levites purify themselves, separated seekers join the feast, and the LORD turns imperial power to strengthen the work of His house.
Ezra 6:19-22 concludes the Ezra 1-6 restoration arc. After the temple is completed (6:13-15) and dedicated with ordered priestly service (6:16-18), the narrative culminates in Passover and Unleavened Bread observance, before Ezra 7 begins a new movement centered on Ezra's arrival and devotion to the Law.
After the completion and dedication of the second temple in the sixth year of Darius, the returned exiles keep Passover in Jerusalem on the fourteenth day of the first month.