The children of Bebai, six hundred twenty and three.
The verse names the children of Bebai among the Israelite families returning from the Babylonian captivity and gives their number as 623. The return was to Jerusalem, to their own land, with Zerubbabel in the first year of Cyrus following his decree. The total returning company numbered 42,360 people. It is also reckoned as nearly fifty thousand who returned. All were free to go, though many remained in captivity.
The surrounding record in Ezra 1-2 shows the temple was begun under the decree of Cyrus, not in B.C. 457. B.C. 457 marks the going forth of the commandment to restore and to build Jerusalem predicted in Daniel 9:25. That commandment was the commandment of God carried out through Cyrus, Darius, and Artaxerxes, and it went forth in its fullness only when the last king acted in the seventh year of Artaxerxes.
The verse names the children of Bebai among the Israelite families returning from the Babylonian captivity and gives their number as 623. The return was to Jerusalem, to their own land, with Zerubbabel in the first year of Cyrus following his decree. The total returning company numbered 42,360 people. It is also reckoned as nearly fifty thousand who returned. All were free to go, though many remained in captivity.
The surrounding record in Ezra 1-2 shows the temple was begun under the decree of Cyrus, not in B.C. 457. B.C. 457 marks the going forth of the commandment to restore and to build Jerusalem predicted in Daniel 9:25. That commandment was the commandment of God carried out through Cyrus, Darius, and Artaxerxes, and it went forth in its fullness only when the last king acted in the seventh year of Artaxerxes.