Zerubbabel, Jesbua, etc. In the corresponding verse of Nehemiah (Nehemiah 7:7) there are twelve names, one of which (it is probable) has accidentally fallen out here. The twelve are reasonably regarded as either the actual heads of the twelve tribes, or at any rate as representing them.
Notwithstanding the small number among the returned exiles who belonged to other tribes than those of Judah, Benjamin, and Levi, there was a manifest wish on the part of the chiefs to regard the return as in some sort that of all the tribes (see Ezra 2:70; Ezra 6:17; Ezra 8:35, etc.
). The number of the men. The lists in Nehemiah and the apocryphal Esdras differ in many details, and furnish strong evidence of the corruption to which numbers are liable from the mistakes of copyists, and the facility of error when there is no check from the context.
Of the forty-two numbers here given by Ezra (verses 3-60), as many as eighteen differ from the corresponding numbers in Nehemiah. The difference, however, is mostly small; and even the sum of the differences is trivial (see comment on verse 64).