C. F. Keil and Franz Delitzsch on Ezra 6:15

Ezr 6:15

And this house was finished on the third day of the month Adar (the twelfth month), which is the sixth year of the reign of King Darius. שׁיציא, according to the Keri שׁיצי, with the א dropped, is the Shaphel of יצא, to bring a thing to an end, to finish it. The form שׁיציא is not a participle pass. formed from the Shaphel (Gesen.), for this would be משׁיציא, but a Hebraized passive form of the Shaphel in the meaning of the Targumistic Ishtaphal, like חיתיוּ, Dan 3:13, and חיתית, Dan 6:18, with the active היתיו, Dan 6:17. In the Targums שׁיצי has mostly an active, and only in a few passages the intransitive meaning, to end, to be at the end; comp. Levy, chald. Wörterbuch, s.v.Instead of the “third day,” which the lxx also has, in accordance with the Hebrew text, 1 Esdr. 7:5 gives the three-and-twentieth day of the month Adar, - a statement which Bertheau arbitrarily insists upon regarding as the original reading, because “the view that the compiler altered the third into the twenty-third day, because it seemed to him more fitting to assume an eight days’ celebration of the dedication (comp. 1Ki 8:60; 2Ch 29:18), and to fill up therewith also the eight last days of the year, is rather far-fetched.” Such a view, however, would be entirely consistent with the whole spirit of 1 Esdras.