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This Chapter Verse Commentaries:
large and great = wide, or open, and large.
few therein. This could not have been said if Zerubbabel had already returned with nearly 50,000 people (Ezr_2:64-67).
the houses were not builded = no sign of houses being built. This statement refers to the permanent stable habitations of the city proper which Haggai speaks of as being in existence forty-four years later (Hag_1:4, Hag_1:9). The word bayith, house, means a dwelling, and in Neh_2:3 with Neh_3:31 is rendered "place", which clearly indicates its meaning in these passages. Among the ruined houses left by Nebuchadnezzar many might easily have been made habitable sufficiently to fulfill the conditions of Neh_8:16.
This portion corresponds with Ezr_1:5 Ezr_2:70. Therefore all that precedes (Neh_1:1 -- Neh_7:4) must come, chronologically, before Ezr_1:5, Nehemiah's record here interrupted, and resumed after some twelve years. See Neh_5:14. This portion was written after the Temple had been rebuilt (Compare Neh_8:5, Neh_8:16), when Darius Hystaspis was reigning (see App-57, App-58, App-50.)