The children of Bezai, three hundred twenty and three.
Ezra 2:17 stands in the record of the first two chapters of Ezra recounting the beginning of the temple under the decree of Cyrus. It does not mark a beginning of the temple in 457 B.C. It names part of the 42,360 persons who had already returned to Jerusalem with Zerubbabel in the first year of Cyrus.
Those returned ones are distinct from the Jews who still remained in Babylon and were invited to return. That invitation was afterward answered by the large number who went up with Ezra to Jerusalem. The verse thus belongs to the return of nearly fifty thousand Jews to their own land after Cyrus's proclamation. That return shows the decree ended the captivity by making the people free to go, even though many Jews remained in Babylon.
Ezra 2:17 stands in the record of the first two chapters of Ezra recounting the beginning of the temple under the decree of Cyrus. It does not mark a beginning of the temple in 457 B.C. It names part of the 42,360 persons who had already returned to Jerusalem with Zerubbabel in the first year of Cyrus.
Those returned ones are distinct from the Jews who still remained in Babylon and were invited to return. That invitation was afterward answered by the large number who went up with Ezra to Jerusalem. The verse thus belongs to the return of nearly fifty thousand Jews to their own land after Cyrus's proclamation. That return shows the decree ended the captivity by making the people free to go, even though many Jews remained in Babylon.