1. This is the genealogy. The list of exiles presented in 1-14 parallels that of 2:3-19, repeating for the most part the same family names, though not in exactly the same order. The numbers here are in each case much smaller, always less than one third and sometimes less than one twelfth. At the most, three new families of colonists are mentionedâthose of Shechaniah ( 5), Joab ( 9), and Shelomith ( 10), but in two of these cases the reading of the name is not certain. On the whole, Ezra was accompanied to Jerusalem by members of the same families as represented by those who were with Zerubbabel, though with Ezra there were fewer families, and fewer members in each family. Ezra’s list is thus much shorter than that of Zerubbabel, who had returned some 80 years before.
Altogether, 1,754 men are listed, but for a few groups no numbers are given. Estimating three to four women and children to every man, the total number of men, women, and children who returned with Ezra was approximately 8,000. That Ezra’s group should be smaller in comparison with that of Zerubbabel 80 years earlier can easily be explained. The same considerations that kept many back then were even more pressing now. In the Orient it is not easy to detach a family from the locality in which it has lived for a long period of time. By now, the Jews who remained in the land of exile had been there for almost a century and a half. Excavations of Nippur have brought to light numerous documents that show that many wealthy Jews lived in that region of Mesopotamia during the reign of Artaxerxes I. Hence, it may have been a difficult task for Ezra and his fellow leaders to convince as many to return as did accompany him. These returning colonists could expect only a hard pioneering life in the old homeland, with far fewer comforts than in Babylonia. In view of these considerations it is surprising to find that Ezra succeeded in persuading almost 2,000 families to cast in their lot with their brethren in the old homeland.