The children of Bigvai, two thousand fifty and six.
The verse names the children or descendants of Bigvai and gives their number as 2,056. It belongs to the list of those who responded to the proclamation and decree of Cyrus and returned from Babylon to Jerusalem with Zerubbabel in the first year of Cyrus to rebuild the temple. Together with Ezra 2:1-65, it records a return numbered at 42,360 persons and described as nearly fifty thousand Jews, ending the captivity by making the people free to go. Those already returned are distinct from the Jews who still remained in Babylon and from the large number who afterward went to Jerusalem with Ezra.
Its setting is the account of the returned people in the period of the temple's rebuilding, about 520 B.C. As part of the record in the first two chapters of Ezra, it shows that the temple was begun under the decree of Cyrus and was not begun in B.C. 457 in the seventh year of Artaxerxes. As part of the lists in Ezra and Nehemiah of the leading ones who went up from the captivity, it consists simply of names and numbers of persons and not an expressed precious promise to God's people, showing that not every verse in the Bible is a promise.
The verse names the children or descendants of Bigvai and gives their number as 2,056. It belongs to the list of those who responded to the proclamation and decree of Cyrus and returned from Babylon to Jerusalem with Zerubbabel in the first year of Cyrus to rebuild the temple. Together with Ezra 2:1-65, it records a return numbered at 42,360 persons and described as nearly fifty thousand Jews, ending the captivity by making the people free to go. Those already returned are distinct from the Jews who still remained in Babylon and from the large number who afterward went to Jerusalem with Ezra.
Its setting is the account of the returned people in the period of the temple's rebuilding, about 520 B.C. As part of the record in the first two chapters of Ezra, it shows that the temple was begun under the decree of Cyrus and was not begun in B.C. 457 in the seventh year of Artaxerxes. As part of the lists in Ezra and Nehemiah of the leading ones who went up from the captivity, it consists simply of names and numbers of persons and not an expressed precious promise to God's people, showing that not every verse in the Bible is a promise.