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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.comAdam Clarke Commentary - Ezra 2:2 - 2:2
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Which came with Zerubbabel - There are many difficulties in this table of names; but as we have no less than three copies of it, that contained here from Ezra 2:1-67, a second in Nehemiah 7:6-69, and a third in 1 Esdras 5:7-43, on a careful examination they will be found to correct each other. The versions also, and the Variae Lectiones of Kennicott and De Rossi, do much toward harmonizing the names.
Though the sum total at the end of each of these enumerations is equal, namely 42,360, yet the particulars reckoned up make in Ezra only 29,818, and in Nehemiah 31,089. We find that Nehemiah mentions 1765 persons which are not in Ezra, and Ezra has 494 not mentioned by Nehemiah. Mr. Alting thinks that this circumstance, which appears to render all hope of reconciling them impossible, is precisely the very point by which they can be reconciled; for if we add Ezra’s surplus to the sum in Nehemiah, and the surplus of Nehemiah to the number in Ezra, the numbers will be equal.
Thus: -
The number in Ezra 29,818
Surplus in Nehemiah. 1,765
Sum total 31,583
The number in Nehemiah 31,089
The surplus in Ezra 494
Sum total 31,583
If we subtract this sum 31,583 from 42,360, we shall have a deficiency of 10,777 from the numbers as summed up in the text; and these are not named here, either because their registers were not found, or they were not of Judah and Benjamin, the tribes particularly concerned, but of the other Israelitish tribes; see Ezr 2:36.