A Guarded City Needs a People

The doors left unhung in 6:1 are now in place. Porters belong at gates, but singers and Levites were temple staff, and posting them to the city’s gates is unusual; in 13:22 Nehemiah will again set Levites to keep the gates on the sabbath. The house of God lends its people to guard the city.

“The palace” is the birah, the fortress beside the temple for whose beams Nehemiah asked the king in 2:8; its site later held Herod’s Antonia. Hanani is the brother whose report opened the book (1:2), so the man who brought the bad news now keeps the city he described.

Gates normally opened at first light. Waiting until the sun is hot, mid-morning, means no one is let in while the city is half asleep. The phrase rendered “while they stand by” is obscure in the Hebrew; it may mean the gates are shut while the guards are still at their posts. A man watching opposite his own door has every reason to stay awake.

“Large and great” is literally “wide on both hands”, broad in every direction. The houses “not builded” means empty plots and ruins inside the circuit, not a city with no homes at all. The remedy comes in 11:1, when a tenth of the people are chosen by lot to move in.

“My God put into mine heart” is the phrase of 2:12, where Nehemiah kept secret what God had put in his heart for Jerusalem. He finds twice: he finds the register, then finds what is written in it. What follows is a document quoted, almost word for word the list in Ezra 2.

“Children of the province” uses medinah, a Persian administrative district. Judah returns as a province of the empire, not a kingdom, and the list is careful to name Nebuchadnezzar as the one who carried the fathers away. “Every one unto his city” describes families reclaiming their home towns, which is why so many entries that follow are places.

Nehemiah’s copy names twelve leaders where Ezra 2:2 names eleven; Nahamani is the extra name. Twelve returning leaders sound like a deliberate echo of the twelve tribes, as the twelve he goats offered at the temple’s dedication were “according to the number of the tribes” (Ezra 6:17). Several names differ slightly between the two copies, Azariah for Seraiah, Nehum for Rehum.

Parosh means “flea”, the word David uses of himself before Saul (1 Samuel 24:14). It heads the lay families and is among the largest. The family keeps turning up: more of them come with Ezra (Ezra 8:3), Pedaiah son of Parosh repairs the wall (3:25), and Parosh is the first lay name on the covenant in 10:14.

Shephatiah means “the LORD has judged”, and here both copies of the list agree to the last digit. That agreement matters, because it shows the differences elsewhere are not a different census but the same document handed down twice.

Ezra 2:5 counts 775 for Arah, a hundred and twenty three more. The usual explanations for such gaps are copying slips in the numbers, or one list reckoning families at departure and the other at arrival. Arah’s house has already appeared in 6:18, as the family Tobiah married into.

Pahath-moab means “governor of Moab”, an office turned into a family name, perhaps from an ancestor who administered Moab when Israel ruled it under David. At 2,818 it is the largest lay family, split into branches under Jeshua and Joab. Hashub of this house repaired a section of the wall (3:11).

Elam is also the name of the country east of Babylon, but here it is a Judean family. Its 1,254 is the same figure given in verse 34 for “the other Elam”, in both this list and Ezra’s. A coincidence that exact makes many suspect a scribe’s eye picked up the number twice.

Ezra 2:8 gives Zattu 945, exactly a hundred more. A difference of one round hundred is the kind of slip a copyist makes with a single figure. Zattu’s line appears among the covenant signers in 10:14 and among the men with foreign wives in Ezra 10:27.

Zaccai, “pure”, is the Hebrew name that later comes into Greek as Zacchaeus (Luke 19:2). Seven hundred and sixty stands identical in both copies of the register.

Ezra 2:10 calls this family Bani and counts 642. Binnui and Bani are two forms of a name built on banah, to build, which suits a book about building. The same pair of spellings trade places elsewhere in Ezra and Nehemiah, so they probably name the same house.

Five more for Bebai here than in Ezra 2:11. A further twenty eight of Bebai’s house came later with Ezra under Zechariah son of Bebai (Ezra 8:11), and four of the family were among those who had married foreign wives (Ezra 10:28).

Azgad’s 2,322 is the widest gap in the two lists: Ezra 2:12 counts 1,222, eleven hundred fewer. The name probably means “Gad is strong”, Gad being a word for fortune. Another hundred and ten of the house came with Ezra (Ezra 8:12), and Azgad signs the covenant in 10:15.

Adonikam, “my lord has arisen”, counts 667 here and 666 in Ezra 2:13, a single digit apart. Ezra 8:13 calls the later arrivals from this family “the last sons of Adonikam”, as though the house came back in two stages.

Bigvai is a Persian name, carried by one of the twelve leaders of verse 7 as well. A generation after Nehemiah an Aramaic letter from Elephantine in Egypt addresses Bagohi, governor of Judah, a closely related form. That Judean families carried Persian names shows how long they had lived inside the empire.

Ezra 2:15 has 454 for Adin; this copy has 655. Adin means “delicate” or “luxurious”, and the house of Adin sent fifty more men with Ezra (Ezra 8:6) and put its name to the covenant in 10:16.

“Of Hezekiah” marks one branch of Ater, apparently through a Hezekiah, whether the king or a later head of the house. On the covenant in 10:17, Ater and Hizkijah stand side by side. Another Ater appears in verse 45 among the porters, a different line.

Hashum counts 328 here and 223 in Ezra 2:19, and the two lists place it differently in the order. A Hashum is among the men standing at Ezra’s left hand during the reading of the law (8:4), so the house was prominent enough to be at the platform.

Bezai has 324 against Ezra’s 323, the smallest possible difference. The family name appears again on the covenant in 10:18.

Ezra 2:18 has Jorah for this family, with the same 112. Jorah is from yoreh, the early rain, and Hariph may be from choreph, autumn, the season of that rain; two seasonal names for one house, perhaps. Hariph signs the covenant in 10:19.

Ezra 2:20 reads Gibbar, with the same 95. Here the list begins to shift from families to towns, and Gibeon is where the Gibeonites deceived Joshua (Joshua 9). Men of Gibeon worked on the wall beside the men of Mizpah (3:7).

Ezra 2:21–22 counts these two towns separately, 123 and 56, which adds up to 179, not 188. Netophah lay near Bethlehem and was the home of two of David’s thirty mighty men (2 Samuel 23:28–29). Levite singers later lived in “the villages of Netophathi” (12:28).

Anathoth was Jeremiah’s town (Jeremiah 1:1). During the siege he bought a field there and sealed the deed in a jar, saying “houses and fields and vineyards shall be possessed again in this land” (Jeremiah 32:15). Here a hundred and twenty eight of its men come home.

Ezra 2:24 names the town simply Azmaveth; this copy calls it Beth-azmaveth, the house of Azmaveth. It lay a few miles north of Jerusalem near Anathoth, and singers later settled in its fields (12:29).

Three of the four Gibeonite towns of Joshua 9:17 appear together here. Kirjath-jearim held the ark for twenty years after the Philistines returned it (1 Samuel 7:1–2), and Uriah the prophet, killed by Jehoiakim, came from there (Jeremiah 26:20).

Ramah and Geba are border towns of Benjamin. Ramah is where Nebuzaradan found Jeremiah bound in chains among the captives being taken to Babylon and set him free (Jeremiah 40:1). Six hundred and twenty one of its people return along the road that carried their fathers away.

Michmas is where Jonathan and his armourbearer climbed the crag to the Philistine garrison (1 Samuel 13:23–14:14). Isaiah 10:28 imagines an Assyrian army leaving its baggage there on the march to Jerusalem. A hundred and twenty two return, the same in both copies.

Abraham pitched his tent between Bethel and Ai and built an altar there (Genesis 12:8); Ai was the town Joshua took at the second attempt, and Bethel held Jeroboam’s golden calf. Ezra 2:28 counts 223, a hundred more than this copy.

“The other Nebo” distinguishes this Judean town from Mount Nebo in Moab, from which Moses saw the land. Ezra 2:29 has plain Nebo, and then lists Magbish with 156, a town this copy leaves out altogether.

The other Elam repeats verse 12’s 1,254 exactly, as it does in Ezra. “Other” here may separate a town called Elam from the family of that name, since the entries around it are places.

There are two Harims in this register: this lay family of 320, and a priestly house of 1,017 in verse 42. Both names stand on the covenant in chapter 10, the priest in verse 5 and the layman in verse 27.

Jericho, whose rebuilding Joshua cursed (Joshua 6:26) and which Hiel rebuilt at the cost of his sons (1 Kings 16:34), sends 345. Its men built the stretch next to the priests at the Sheep Gate (3:2).

These are the towns of the coastal lowland; Ono is the plain where Sanballat proposed the meeting of 6:2. Lod is the Lydda where Peter healed Aeneas (Acts 9:32–35). Ezra 2:33 counts 725, four more.

At 3,930 Senaah is the largest single group in the whole register, and Ezra 2:35 has 3,630. A town that size would be surprising, so some read the name as “the hated”, a description of a class of poorer returnees rather than a place. The sons of Hassenaah built the Fish Gate (3:3).

The priests begin, and their four houses total 4,289, about a tenth of the whole congregation of verse 66. Jedaiah is counted “of the house of Jeshua”, the high priest who returned with Zerubbabel, so this line ran through the leading priestly family.

Immer’s house had a sharp history: Pashur son of Immer beat Jeremiah and put him in the stocks (Jeremiah 20:1–2). In the rebuilding, Zadok son of Immer repaired the wall opposite his own house (3:29).

Pashur is not among the twenty four priestly courses David arranged (1 Chronicles 24), which suggests a house that grew later. At 1,247 it is still large. Six of its priests had married foreign wives and put them away in Ezra’s reform (Ezra 10:22).

Harim held the third of David’s priestly courses (1 Chronicles 24:8). Its 1,017 matches Ezra’s figure exactly, as do all four priestly counts, the steadiest section of the register.

Seventy four Levites against more than four thousand priests. The imbalance is not a copying accident; when Ezra later gathered his caravan at the river Ahava he found no Levites at all and had to send for them (Ezra 8:15–19). Hodevah is spelled Hodaviah in Ezra 2:40.

Only the sons of Asaph are named among the singers; the other two musical families of David’s arrangement, Heman and Jeduthun, are missing. Asaph’s name stands over twelve psalms (50 and 73–83). Ezra 2:41 counts 128, twenty fewer.

Six gatekeeping families, a hundred and thirty eight men, one fewer than Ezra 2:42. Shallum is the name of the chief porter of 1 Chronicles 9:17–19, keeper of the king’s gate on the east side, and Akkub and Talmon appear again as gate wardens in 11:19 and 12:25.

Nethinims means “given ones”, from natan, to give: people given to the sanctuary for its heavy work. Many have linked them with the Gibeonites Joshua made hewers of wood and drawers of water for the altar (Joshua 9:27), an old identification rather than a stated one. Ziha later oversees them on Ophel (11:21).

Siaha in Ezra 2:44 is Sia here, one of many small spelling shifts in the temple servants’ names. Padon comes from padah, to ransom, an apt name in a list of people whose ancestors were bound to service.

Ezra 2:45–46 has Akkub and Hagab in this stretch of the list, names this copy does not carry. Lebana probably means “white”, a poetic word for the moon (Isaiah 24:23). Short gaps like these show a list copied more than once by hand.

Hanan means “gracious”, a name common enough to belong to a covenant signer (10:10) and a storehouse treasurer (13:13) as well. Gahar may mean “ruddy”. The Book of Nehemiah preserves the names of the temple’s lowest servants as carefully as the names of priests.

Rezin is the name of the Aramean king of Damascus who marched on Jerusalem with Pekah (Isaiah 7:1). Nekoda turns up again in verse 62, among the families unable to prove their Israelite descent, so the name crossed between groups.

Gazzam is from gazam, the palmerworm of Joel 1:4, and Hagaba in verse 48 means locust. Insect names fit the pattern of nicknames and bodily descriptions that fills this list. Uzza shares a name with the man struck dead for steadying the ark (2 Samuel 6:6–7).

Meunim are the Meunites, an Arab people Uzziah fought (2 Chronicles 26:7), and Nephishesim recalls Naphish, a son of Ishmael (Genesis 25:15). The names suggest that some temple servant families began as foreign captives or dependants absorbed into Israel’s worship.

Bakbuk is the word for a narrow-necked flask, named for the gurgling sound it makes; Jeremiah smashes a potter’s bakbuk in Jeremiah 19:1. Harhur is related to the fever or “extreme burning” of Deuteronomy 28:22. Names like these read as nicknames that stuck.

Bazlith here is Bazluth in Ezra 2:52, one vowel apart, the sort of variation that comes from a name being heard and written down more than once. Harsha may be from a root meaning craftsman, fitting for a family of temple labourers.

Sisera is the name of the Canaanite general Jael killed with a tent peg (Judges 4:21), here borne by a family of temple servants. Barkos appears to contain the name of Qos, the god of Edom, another sign of foreign origins behind some of these households.

The temple servants end at thirty two families, three fewer than in Ezra. Hatipha is from chataph, to seize, the verb of Judges 21:21 where the men of Benjamin catch wives at the Shiloh dance. Neziah may mean “pre-eminent” or “faithful”.

Solomon’s servants descend from the Canaanites Solomon put to forced labour (1 Kings 9:20–21). Some of their names are titles: Sophereth means “scribe” in a feminine form used for an office, as Pochereth does in verse 59. Ezra 2:55 spells the last name Peruda.

Giddel is also a family among the temple servants in verse 49. Jaala means a mountain goat, the doe of Proverbs 5:19. Two groups of dependants with overlapping names suggest their lines ran close together, and the next verse counts them together.

Pochereth of Zebaim means “gazelle catcher”, a trade become a name. Shephatiah shares its name with the lay family of verse 9, and Amon, where Ezra 2:57 reads Ami, shares his with the Judean king who was murdered by his servants (2 Kings 21:23).

The temple servants and Solomon’s servants are counted as one group, 392 in both copies. Their headquarters was on Ophel, the ridge south of the temple, where 3:26 places them next to the Water Gate on the east.

Tel means a mound of ruins, and these are places in Babylonia, as Ezekiel lived among the exiles at Tel-abib (Ezekiel 3:15). Tel-melah is “salt mound”. Immer is a place here, though it is also the name of the priestly house of verse 40. Having lived among foreign ruins, these families had lost the proof of who they were.

Ezra 2:60 counts 652, ten more. This Tobiah has nothing to do with the Ammonite of chapter 6; the name was common. What these households lacked was paper, not faith: they are still counted among those who went up.

Barzillai the Gileadite fed David and his men at Mahanaim when Absalom drove him out (2 Samuel 17:27–29). A priest married into that honoured family and took its name, and by doing so seems to have blurred his own line in the priestly records.

The proof they needed was written: “register” is ketav, a writing. “As polluted” is ga’al, to defile, treated as unfit for service at the altar. The priesthood was hereditary, and a gap in the documents meant a gap in the right to serve.

Tirshatha is a Persian title, probably “his excellency”; the Book of Nehemiah later applies it to Nehemiah himself (8:9; 10:1), but in this older document it refers to the earlier governor. Urim and Thummim, the lots carried in the high priest’s breastplate (Exodus 28:30), are last seen being consulted in the days of Saul and David.

Both copies of the list give the same total, 42,360, but the entries do not add up to it: this chapter’s figures sum to 31,089 and Ezra’s to 29,818. The difference has been put down to women, to returnees from tribes other than Judah and Benjamin, or to families not itemised. The total is the fixed point.

Seven thousand three hundred and thirty seven slaves, about one for every six free persons. The singing men and women are not the temple singers of verse 44; they are the kind hired for feasts and funerals (2 Chronicles 35:25; Ecclesiastes 2:8). Ezra 2:65 counts 200; this copy’s 245 matches the mules of the next verse, where a scribe’s eye may have slipped.

Most Hebrew manuscripts of Nehemiah lack this verse, and many modern Hebrew Bibles number the chapter one short. The King James includes it, as it stands in Ezra 2:66 and in some manuscripts here. Horses were a rich man’s mount: 736 for more than forty thousand people.

Camels carried loads across the desert road from Babylon, a four month journey when Ezra made it (Ezra 7:9). The 6,720 asses carried everything else, and the old, the sick and the young. The list counts the animals as carefully as the families, because the move was freight as well as people.

“Drams” are darics, the gold coin of the Persian kings; here the governor gives a thousand of them. Ezra 2:69 gives one lump sum, but Nehemiah’s copy breaks the gifts down by giver: governor, heads of houses, and people. The “basons” are the sprinkling bowls used for the blood at the altar.

“Pound” is the maneh, the mina, worth about sixty shekels, so 2,200 of them is a large quantity of silver. The heads of the houses give to “the treasure of the work”, a building fund, the same phrase Ezra 2:69 uses.

The rest of the people match the heads of houses in gold, twenty thousand darics each. Add the three gifts together and Nehemiah’s copy reaches 41,000 darics, 4,200 minas and 597 garments, where Ezra 2:69 has 61,000, 5,000 and 100. Ordinary families gave nearly half the treasure.

The seventh month is Tishri, the month of trumpets, the Day of Atonement and the feast of tabernacles (Leviticus 23:24–36). Ezra 3:1 begins with the same words, and there too the people then gather in Jerusalem. The Book of Nehemiah quotes the list to its end and lets its last line open the next scene.