Ezra 3:12

Wept] Though the younger among the people were filled with hope, now that the house of the Lord was once more established in their midst, the older, who could remember the earlier Temple, destroyed about 50 years before, wept at the contrast to it which was presented by the meanness of the new building, and the inadequate resources available for its completion: cp. Haggai 2:3; Zechariah 4:10.

Some scholars have questioned whether the foundations of the Temple were really laid by Zerubbabel in the second year after the Return, as related in Ezra 3:8, on the ground that Haggai and Zechariah seem to imply that it was not begun until the 2nd year of Darius Hystaspis (520 b.c.): see Haggai 2:15; Zechariah 8:9. But the language of the prophets is sufficiently explained if it is assumed that only a commencement was made in 536, that the progress of the work was very soon suspended, and that the renewal of it in 520 was practically a fresh start, as indeed the book of Ezra itself declares it to have been (Ezra 5:2).