Ezra2chapter 2

a.The priests: the children of Jedaiah: The order now shifts from town to office: priests first, drawn from only four priestly houses, then Levites, then the singers of Asaph's line, then the porters who kept the gates. John Gill notes the Levites number just seventy four against the thirty eight thousand who served in David's day, a remnant carrying an office a nation once filled. The same order, priests before singers before gatekeepers, is the order worship takes up again once the altar stands in the next chapter.

a.The Nethinims: the children of Ziha: The Nethinims are temple servants first appointed under David and Solomon to assist the Levites, their name meaning the given ones, handed over to the sanctuary's lower labor. Thirty five family names run unbroken from verse 43 to 54, none of them numbered, the roll itself standing as their only record. Their place in this charter beside priest and Levite marks them full members of the restored community, whatever the rank of the work their fathers once did.

a.the children of Sotai: The children of Solomon's servants close the temple-staff roll, descendants of labor Solomon once raised for his building projects and now folded into Israel's own registry. Verse 58 sums Nethinims and Solomon's servants together at three hundred ninety and two, one figure for two originally distinct groups. Jamieson Fausset and Brown read the servants as either that conscripted labor or household staff from Solomon's own palace, and leave the question open, as the text itself does.

a.Verses 59 to 61 name families who returned from Babylonian towns without any register to show they belonged to Israel by descent, and priests among them who carried the name of Barzillai the Gileadite after marrying into his line. The exile had broken written records along with everything else it broke, and the list keeps that gap honest rather than smoothing it over. John Gill reads the towns named, Tel-melah and Tel-harsa, as Babylonian settlements otherwise unknown, the families' only address left to history.

a.These sought their register among: those enrolled by genealogy and were not found, so they were put from the priesthood as polluted, barred from the most holy things until a priest should rise who could consult the Urim and the Thummim. That priest and that oracle never return anywhere else in Scripture, and the text lets the sentence hang unresolved rather than close it. Matthew Henry reads the loss as the nation's push toward a written canon in place of the oracle, while John Gill notes the strict Jewish record-keeping of priestly descent that made a claim like this checkable at all.

a.The whole congregation together was: John Gill totals the family counts and finds them nearly twelve thousand short of the stated forty two thousand three hundred and threescore, a gap the Jewish tradition he cites explains as members of other tribes who joined the builders without a family count of their own. Servants, maids and two hundred singers travel with the congregation, and the caravan's wealth is counted in animals too, horses, mules, camels and asses, riches a people stripped bare by exile now carries home. Adam Clarke reads the numbers as evidence of restored fortune after captivity, though he notes the manuscripts vary on the horses' own count.

a.the chief of the fathers: Some of the chief of the fathers give freely at the very ruins of the temple, offering before one stone of the new house is laid, treasure and priestly garments both counted out to the last portion of silver. Matthew Henry reads their coming to the house of the Lord while it still lay in rubble as the mark of true devotion, worship offered to the place before the place itself was rebuilt. The chapter closes with the whole company settled each in his own city, priests, Levites, singers, porters, Nethinims and the rest of Israel, closing the circuit that opened with the province going up to its own city in verse 1.