Ezra 8: What the Passage Says

The Chapter in a Sentence

Ezra lists the family heads and the number of men who traveled with him from Babylon in the reign of Artaxerxes. At the Ahava canal he finds no Levites among the group, sends leaders to Casiphia to bring back Levites and temple servants, and calls a fast to ask God for a safe journey instead of asking the king for an armed escort. He weighs out the silver, gold, and temple objects into the care of twelve priests, and after the journey the whole amount is weighed again in Jerusalem and recorded. The returned exiles then offer burnt offerings, and the king's written orders are handed to the officials of the province.

Claim by Claim

1. 8:1
   • These are the heads of the fathers' houses.
   • This is the genealogical record of those who went up with Ezra from Babylon.
   • The going up took place in the reign of King Artaxerxes.
2. 8:2
   • Of the sons of Phinehas: Gershom.
   • Of the sons of Ithamar: Daniel.
   • Of the sons of David: Hattush.
3. 8:3
   • Hattush was of the sons of Shechaniah.
   • Of the sons of Parosh: Zechariah.
   • With Zechariah were registered by genealogy 150 males.
4. 8:4
   • Of the sons of Pahath-moab: Eliehoenai son of Zerahiah.
   • With him were 200 males.
5. 8:5
   • Of the sons of Shechaniah: the son of Jahaziel.
   • With him were 300 males.
6. 8:6
   • Of the sons of Adin: Ebed son of Jonathan.
   • With him were 50 males.
7. 8:7
   • Of the sons of Elam: Jeshaiah son of Athaliah.
   • With him were 70 males.
8. 8:8
   • Of the sons of Shephatiah: Zebadiah son of Michael.
   • With him were 80 males.
9. 8:9
   • Of the sons of Joab: Obadiah son of Jehiel.
   • With him were 218 males.
10. 8:10
    • Of the sons of Shelomith: the son of Josiphiah.
    • With him were 160 males.
11. 8:11
    • Of the sons of Bebai: Zechariah son of Bebai.
    • With him were 28 males.
12. 8:12
    • Of the sons of Azgad: Johanan son of Hakkatan.
    • With him were 110 males.
13. 8:13
    • Of the later sons of Adonikam, these were their names.
    • Their names were Eliphelet, Jeiel, and Shemaiah.
    • With them were 60 males.
14. 8:14
    • Of the sons of Bigvai: Uthai and Zabbud.
    • With them were 70 males.
15. 8:15
    • Ezra gathered them to the river that runs to Ahava.
    • They camped there three days.
    • Ezra inspected the people and the priests.
    • Ezra found none of the sons of Levi there.
16. 8:16
    • Ezra sent for Eliezer, Ariel, Shemaiah, Elnathan, Jarib, Elnathan, Nathan, Zechariah, and Meshullam.
    • These men were chief men.
    • Ezra also sent for Joiarib and Elnathan.
    • Joiarib and Elnathan were men of understanding.
17. 8:17
    • Ezra sent them with a command to Iddo.
    • Iddo was the chief at the place Casiphia.
    • Ezra put in their mouths the words they should speak to Iddo and to his brethren.
    • His brethren were the temple servants at the place Casiphia.
    • The purpose was that they should bring ministers to Ezra's company for the house of God.
18. 8:18
    • By the good hand of God upon them, they brought a man of understanding.
    • The man was of the sons of Mahli, son of Levi, son of Israel.
    • They also brought Sherebiah with his sons and his brethren.
    • Sherebiah's sons and brethren numbered eighteen.
19. 8:19
    • They brought Hashabiah.
    • With Hashabiah was Jeshaiah of the sons of Merari.
    • His brethren and their sons numbered twenty.
20. 8:20
    • They also brought some of the temple servants.
    • David and the princes had appointed the temple servants for the service of the Levites.
    • These temple servants numbered 220.
    • All of them were designated by name.
21. 8:21
    • Ezra proclaimed a fast there at the river Ahava.
    • The purpose was that they might humble themselves before their God.
    • The purpose was to seek from him a straight way for themselves, for their little ones, and for all their goods.
22. 8:22
    • Ezra was ashamed to ask the king for a body of troops and horsemen.
    • The troops would have been to help them against the enemy on the road.
    • They had told the king that the hand of their God is upon all who seek him for good.
    • They had told the king that God's power and anger are against all who forsake him.
23. 8:23
    • They fasted.
    • They sought their God concerning this matter.
    • God was entreated by them.
24. 8:24
    • Ezra set apart twelve of the chief priests.
    • Ezra set apart Sherebiah and Hashabiah.
    • Ten of their brethren were with them.
25. 8:25
    • Ezra weighed out to them the silver, the gold, and the vessels.
    • These were the offering for the house of God.
    • The king, his counselors, his lords, and all Israel present there had offered them.
26. 8:26
    • Ezra weighed into their hand 650 talents of silver.
    • Ezra weighed out silver vessels of 100 talents.
    • Ezra weighed out 100 talents of gold.
27. 8:27
    • Ezra weighed out twenty gold bowls worth a thousand darics.
    • Ezra weighed out two vessels of fine polished bronze.
    • The bronze vessels were as precious as gold.
28. 8:28
    • Ezra said to them that they are holy to the LORD.
    • Ezra said the vessels are holy.
    • Ezra said the silver and the gold are a freewill offering to the LORD, the God of their fathers.
29. 8:29
    • Ezra commanded them to watch and guard the items.
    • They were to guard them until they weighed them out before the chief priests, the Levites, and the chiefs of the fathers' houses of Israel.
    • The weighing was to be at Jerusalem in the chambers of the house of the LORD.
30. 8:30
    • The priests and the Levites received the weighed silver, gold, and vessels.
    • They received them to bring them to Jerusalem to the house of God.
31. 8:31
    • They set out from the river Ahava on the twelfth day of the first month.
    • They set out to go to Jerusalem.
    • The hand of their God was upon them.
    • God delivered them from the hand of the enemy and of those lying in ambush along the way.
32. 8:32
    • They came to Jerusalem.
    • They stayed there three days.
33. 8:33
    • On the fourth day the silver, the gold, and the vessels were weighed in the house of God.
    • They were weighed into the hand of Meremoth son of Uriah the priest.
    • With him was Eleazar son of Phinehas.
    • With them were Jozabad son of Jeshua and Noadiah son of Binnui.
    • Jozabad and Noadiah were Levites.
34. 8:34
    • Everything was accounted for by number and by weight.
    • All the weight was written down at that time.
35. 8:35
    • Those who had come out of the captivity, the children of the exile, offered burnt offerings to the God of Israel.
    • They offered twelve bulls for all Israel.
    • They offered ninety-six rams.
    • They offered seventy-seven lambs.
    • They offered twelve male goats as a sin offering.
    • All of this was a burnt offering to the LORD.
36. 8:36
    • They delivered the king's decrees to the king's satraps.
    • They delivered them to the governors of the province Beyond the River.
    • These officials supported the people and the house of God.

Words Worth Explaining

Every language note in this chapter, gathered. These explain what a word meant, never what it means for the reader.

8:1

"Family leaders" are the heads of ancestral houses, the extended-family units Israel was organized by. Artaxerxes is Artaxerxes I of Persia, and this journey is usually dated to about 458 BC; Judah's exiles had been living in Babylon for generations, by now under Persian rather than Babylonian rule. "Went up" is the standard phrase for traveling to Jerusalem, which stands high in the hill country. The genealogical record is not decoration: a returning family had to be able to document its descent, and those who could not were excluded from certain rights and from the priesthood (see Ezra 2:59-62).

8:2

Aaron, Israel's first priest, had two surviving sons, Eleazar and Ithamar, and Phinehas was Eleazar's son. So the first two entries name the two branches of the priesthood, listed before everyone else. Hattush belongs to the family of King David, the old royal house of Judah, now simply one family among the exiles under a Persian king.

8:3

The counts throughout this list are of adult males only, so the group actually on the road, with women and children, was several times larger than the numbers suggest.

8:5

The Hebrew text here says only "of the descendants of Shechaniah, the son of Jahaziel", the man's own name appears to have dropped out in copying, and the family name is missing too. The ancient Greek translation reads "of the descendants of Zattu, Shechaniah son of Jahaziel," which is why some modern versions print Zattu here.

8:8

The King James counts in scores, an old English unit meaning twenty. "Fourscore" is four twenties, so eighty; "threescore" in verses 10 and 13 is sixty, and "an hundred and threescore" is a hundred and sixty.

8:10

As in verse 5, the Hebrew has lost a name: it reads "of the descendants of Shelomith, the son of Josiphiah." The ancient Greek supplies the family name Bani, giving "of the descendants of Bani, Shelomith son of Josiphiah."

8:13

"Later descendants" distinguishes them from members of Adonikam's family who had already gone back to Jerusalem in the earlier return under Zerubbabel (Ezra 2:13). These are the ones who came afterwards.

8:15

The canal was one of the irrigation channels that ran off the Euphrates through Babylonia; Ahava itself cannot now be located. The problem Ezra finds is a staffing one: priests were the descendants of Aaron who handled the altar and the sacrifices, while Levites were the rest of the tribe of Levi, who did the supporting work of the temple, carrying, guarding, singing, maintenance. A returning party with priests but no Levites could not run the temple service.

8:16

The Hebrew word behind "men of insight" describes men with trained understanding who could instruct others, in effect teachers of the law, as distinct from the family leaders named just before them.

8:17

The temple servants (Hebrew *nethinim*, "the given ones") were a hereditary class attached to the temple who did its manual labor, ranked below the Levites. Casiphia's location is unknown, but it was evidently a place in Babylonia where Levites and temple servants had settled together.

8:18

"The hand of our God was on us" is a set phrase running through this book, meaning his favor and protection were with them; it does not describe a physical touch. Levi's three sons founded the three Levite clans, and Merari was one of them; Mahli was Merari's son, so this man belongs to the Merarite clan, as do the men in the next verse.

8:19

Merari was one of the three great divisions of the tribe of Levi, alongside Gershon and Kohath, each with its own traditional duties. Naming the division is a way of certifying that these men are the real thing.

8:20

David was a king of Israel who lived hundreds of years before this. He set up the jobs for the workers at God's house.

8:21

A fast meant going without food, usually publicly and for a set time, as a way of showing grief or of putting oneself low before God. The King James phrase is "afflict ourselves," the standard Hebrew expression for it.

8:22

The party was carrying a fortune in silver and gold roughly nine hundred miles across open country where armed robbery was a real risk. An armed escort was the normal arrangement for such a caravan, and Ezra had the standing to request one; his embarrassment is about having already told the king that his God would protect them.

8:23

"He was intreated of us" is old English for "he responded to our request." To entreat someone meant to make an earnest appeal to them, so being entreated means granting the appeal, not being badly treated.

8:24

There is a difficulty here that the Hebrew leaves unresolved: Sherebiah and Hashabiah were named in verses 18-19 as Levites, not priests. The sentence can be read as "twelve of the leading priests, namely Sherebiah, Hashabiah and ten of their relatives," or as "twelve of the leading priests, and Sherebiah, Hashabiah and ten of their relatives": that is, twelve priests plus twelve Levites, twenty-four men in all.

8:25

Silver and gold were handled by weight rather than counted as coins. Weighing the consignment out before witnesses at the start, and weighing it in again at the far end (verses 33-34), was a formal audit: it made the carriers accountable for an exact amount and protected them from any later charge of theft.

8:26

A talent weighed roughly 75 pounds (about 34 kilograms). So 650 talents of silver is on the order of 22 tons, and 100 talents of gold about 3.4 tons. These totals are enormous by ancient standards, and it is debated whether the figures are exact, rounded, or reckoned in a smaller unit than the usual talent.

8:27

A daric was a Persian gold coin of about a third of an ounce (8.4 grams), named after Darius I; the King James "drams" is an older word for the same coin. The metal of the two remaining objects is described by a rare Hebrew word of uncertain meaning, some kind of polished or burnished bronze, valued here as highly as gold.

8:28

"Holy" here means set apart for God's exclusive use and barred from ordinary use: it is a statement about status, not about character. A freewill offering was a voluntary gift, given over and above anything the law required.

8:29

The "rooms" are the storerooms built along the sides of the temple, which served as its treasury and depot.

8:31

The first month is Nisan, falling in March-April. Ezra 7:9 says they set out from Babylon on the first day of that month and reached Jerusalem on the first day of the fifth month, so the journey of roughly nine hundred miles took about four months.

8:35

In a burnt offering the whole animal was burned on the altar and none of it eaten, the most complete form of gift. A sin offering was made to clear ritual impurity or wrongdoing and restore standing. The twelve bulls and twelve goats stand for the twelve tribes of Israel, even though the returning exiles came mainly from Judah, Benjamin and Levi; the number is a claim that these people represent the whole nation.

8:36

The written orders are the royal authorisation quoted in Ezra 7:11-26. "Provincial officials" translates *satraps*, the governors of the large administrative regions of the Persian empire. The region "west of the Euphrates" was the Persian province called Beyond the River, covering Syria and Palestine, so named from the standpoint of the Persian court to the east.