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And Shabbethai - This verse, with Nehemiah 11:20, Nehemiah 11:21, Nehemiah 11:28, Nehemiah 11:29, Nehemiah 11:32, Nehemiah 11:33, Nehemiah 11:34, and Nehemiah 11:35, are all wanting in the Septuagint and the whole chapter is wanting in the Arabic, the translator not being concerned in Jewish genealogies.
The outward business - Calmet supposes that he provided the victuals for the priests, victims for the sacrifices, the sacerdotal vestments, the sacred vessels, and other necessaries for the service of the temple.
See the margin reference notes. Both accounts appear to be extracts from a public official register which Nehemiah caused to be made of his census. The census itself seems to have been confined to the dwellers at Jerusalem. The subjoined table exhibits the differences between the accounts of the entire population of Jerusalem as given in Nehemiah and in Chronicles:
(table not shown)According to Nehemiah‘s numbers, supplemented from Chronicles, the entire adult male population of the city was 3,734, which would give a total population of 14,936. According to Chronicles, supplemented from Nehemiah, the adult males were 4,370, and consequently the entire population, would have been 17,480. As the Nethinims and the Israelites of Ephraim and Manasseh 1 Chronicles 9:3 are not included in either list, we may conclude that the actual number of the inhabitants, after the efforts recorded in Nehemiah 11:1-2, was not much short of 20,000.
Nehemiah 11:16
The outward business of the house of God - Such as the collection of the newly-imposed tax Nehemiah 10:32, the providing of the regular sacrifices, the renewal of vestments, and the like.
Nehemiah 11:17
The principal to begin the thanksgiving - i. e., “the precentor,” or “leader of the choir.”