A Guarded Trust Without a Military Escort

“With me” keeps the first person of Ezra’s memoir. “Genealogy” here means enrolment: these heads are registered by family, as the first return was in chapter 2, so that the second wave can be checked against the first.

Gershom shares the name of Moses’ son, and this Daniel is not the prophet. The two priests represent both priestly lines, Phinehas through Eleazar and the lesser line of Ithamar. Hattush appears in 1 Chronicles 3:22 as a descendant of Zerubbabel, which puts a great-great-grandson of King Jehoiachin in Ezra’s caravan.

The verse division is probably misplaced: “of the sons of Shechaniah” most likely belongs with Hattush in verse 2, as 1 Chronicles 3:22 suggests. Pharosh is Parosh, the largest lay family of 2:3. The hundred and fifty are males only; women and children travelled too (8:21).

Elihoenai means “unto the LORD are my eyes”, the posture of Psalm 123:2. Pahath-moab, the “governor of Moab” clan, had sent 2,812 people in the first return (2:6) and sends two hundred more men now.

The family name seems to have dropped out of the Hebrew. The Greek 1 Esdras reads “of the sons of Zattu, Shechaniah son of Jahaziel”, which would restore a clan from 2:8. Three hundred males make this the largest group in Ezra’s list.

Ebed means simply “servant”, probably short for a longer name like Obadiah, “servant of the LORD”. Adin’s family, 454 strong in the first return (2:15), adds fifty men.

Athaliah is here a man’s name, the father of Jeshaiah. The same name belonged to the queen who murdered the royal heirs (2 Chronicles 22:10). Names did not always carry the history later readers attach to them.

Zebadiah means “the LORD has given”, and his father’s name, Michael, asks “who is like God?” The family of Shephatiah, 372 in the first list (2:4), sends eighty men.

Joab was a branch of Pahath-moab in 2:6. Here it stands alone with 218 males, suggesting the sub-clan had become large enough to be registered separately in the intervening eighty years.

A family name seems to have fallen out of this verse as well; the Greek tradition supplies “of the sons of Bani, Shelomith the son of Josiphiah”. Bani was one of the families of the first return (2:10).

Zechariah son of Bebai bears the clan founder’s name as his father’s, a sign of how names cycled through families. His twenty-eight men are the smallest group in the list.

“Hakkatan” means “the small one” or “the younger”, a nickname that has become a father’s name. Azgad was the family with the widest numerical discrepancy between the two lists of chapter 2 and Nehemiah 7.

“The last sons of Adonikam” may mean the last of that family still in Babylon, the rest having gone with Zerubbabel. Unusually the verse gives three leaders by name, Eliphelet, Jeiel and Shemaiah, instead of one.

The twelve family groups add up to 1,496 males, plus leaders. All but two of the family names already appear in chapter 2, so this is largely the same clans finishing what their relatives began two or three generations earlier. Twelve groups again answer to the twelve tribes.

Ahava was a canal or river near Babylon, otherwise unknown, used as a mustering point. Three days of camping was time for inspection, and Ezra found priests but not a single Levite. The first return had brought only seventy-four (2:40).

Eleven men are named, and Elnathan appears three times, either three men with a common name or a copying repetition. The last two are called “men of understanding”, mevinim, teachers, the same word used of the Levites who explain the law in Nehemiah 8:7.

“The place Casiphia” uses hammaqom, “the place”, a term often used for a sanctuary, and the word appears twice. Many suspect a Jewish religious centre there, perhaps a school of Levites. “I told them what they should say” is literally “I put words in their mouth”.

“A man of understanding” may be a description or a proper name, Ishsechel. Mahli was a grandson of Levi through Merari (Exodus 6:19). Sherebiah recurs among the Levites who explain the law and lead the prayer of Nehemiah 8:7 and 9:4.

Hashabiah and Jeshaiah bring twenty more of the sons of Merari. With the eighteen of verse 18, Ezra’s appeal yields thirty-eight Levites, a modest number for all the effort, but enough.

The Nethinims, 220 of them, outnumber the Levites nearly six to one. Only here are they traced to David and his princes. “Expressed by name” means registered individually, the same phrase used of those enrolled in 1 Chronicles 12:31.

“Afflict ourselves” is the language of the day of atonement (Leviticus 16:29), meaning to fast. “A right way” is a straight, level road, the image of Isaiah 40:3. The little ones are named because families travelled, and the “substance” included the temple treasure.

Thirteen years later Nehemiah travelled the same route with army captains and horsemen provided by the same king (Nehemiah 2:9), and the Book of Nehemiah records it without comment. Ezra’s reasoning is personal: he had talked of God’s hand to the king, and asking for troops would contradict it.

“He was intreated of us” means God let himself be moved by their prayer. The answer is reported before the journey begins, so the reader knows the outcome while the travellers do not.

Sherebiah and Hashabiah are Levites (verses 18-19), so the Hebrew probably intends twelve priests and, besides them, Sherebiah, Hashabiah and ten more: twelve Levites. Verse 30 confirms that both priests and Levites carried the load.

Everything is weighed, because the Persian empire still reckoned precious metal by weight. “The offering” is terumah, the contribution lifted off and set apart for God. The donors include the king, his counsellors and lords, and the Jews who stayed behind.

Six hundred and fifty talents of silver is about twenty-two tonnes, and a hundred talents of gold over three tonnes. The sums are enormous, and some scholars think the figures grew in transmission. The verb “weighed unto their hand” makes each priest personally answerable.

“A thousand drams” is a thousand darics, the Persian gold coin first struck under Darius I. The “fine copper, precious as gold” was probably a bright bronze alloy, which at its best could be valued like gold.

Ezra says the priests are holy and the vessels are holy, placing people and objects under the same rule. In the law only consecrated men could handle the holy things (Numbers 4:15). The silver and gold are set apart as a freewill offering, which adds to the weight of the charge.

“Watch ye” is shiqdu, be wakeful, a verb related to the almond tree, the first to wake in spring (Jeremiah 1:11-12). The treasure is to be weighed again “in the chambers”, the storerooms around the temple court.

“Took … the weight” means they received the metal by weight, a receipt as well as a burden. The priests and Levites now carry both the goods and the obligation to deliver the same weight at the other end.

Departure is on the twelfth of the first month; the muster began on the first (7:9), so twelve days passed at the river. Ezra does not describe any attack, only that God delivered them from enemies and ambushers along a road where both were real.

Three days of rest after four months on the road is the same pause Nehemiah takes on his arrival (Nehemiah 2:11). It may also have included the sabbath.

Meremoth son of Uriah reappears repairing two sections of wall in Nehemiah 3:4 and 3:21. Eleazar son of Phinehas bears the names of Aaron’s son and grandson. Two Levites witness with the priests, so the receipt is signed by both orders.

“By number and by weight of every one” means every item was counted and weighed. The total was written down at once. What left Babylon under oath arrived in Jerusalem under audit.

The offerings are built on twelve: twelve bullocks, ninety-six rams (twelve times eight), twelve goats for sin. Seventy-seven lambs breaks the pattern; 1 Esdras reads seventy-two, twelve times six. Those who offer are called “the children of those that had been carried away”, a second generation of exiles.

“The king’s lieutenants” are satraps, ahashdarpenim, a Persian word, the governors of the great provinces of the empire. “Furthered” is literally “lifted up”: the same officials who once wrote against Jerusalem are now obliged to support it.