And of the sons of Shelomith; the son of Josiphiah, and with him an hundred and threescore males.
Ezra 8:10 belongs to the account of the large number of Jews who accepted the invitation to leave Babylon and return to Jerusalem with Ezra. It stands in the list of the second company that went up from Babylon to Jerusalem, distinct from the first company, about 1,800 Israelite men organized and led by Ezra. Ezra himself was a Jewish priest and scribe, highly favored by Artaxerxes Longimanus, king of Persia, and he was not with the first company but with this second one. Before the journey from Babylon to Jerusalem he consulted the Jews returning from captivity and gathered them at the river Ahava. That gathering followed the decree of Artaxerxes and came before the departure on the first day of Nisan.
The company left Babylon for Jerusalem in 457 B.C., in the seventh year of Artaxerxes. It carried the third and last portion of the great decree to restore and build Jerusalem, for the rebuilding of Jerusalem and the restoration of the commonwealth. That journey closed the seventy-nine years from the first year of Cyrus in 536 B.C. There the decree of Daniel 9:25 and the 2,300 days of Daniel 8:14 begin. By another reckoning the verse belongs to B.C. 458, closing the fifty-eight-year interval from B.C. 515 that contains the story of Esther. That story falls more nearly in the middle of the reign of Xerxes from B.C. 485 to 474, about sixty years after the first return and forty years after the completion of the temple.
Ezra had no personal part in the work until these last years, but had the honor of carrying this last portion of the decree up to Jerusalem. He mentions himself only as connected with carrying it out. He then labored to separate the people from the heathen and to bring them into spiritual condition to realize the importance of rebuilding Jerusalem. As a sturdy reformer he cast out foreign wives and their children and established regular synagogal service. The journey of the Israelites from the river Ahava stands as an example of a helpless group seeking God through fasting and prayer and passing safely through a dangerous land.
Ezra 8:10 belongs to the account of the large number of Jews who accepted the invitation to leave Babylon and return to Jerusalem with Ezra. It stands in the list of the second company that went up from Babylon to Jerusalem, distinct from the first company, about 1,800 Israelite men organized and led by Ezra. Ezra himself was a Jewish priest and scribe, highly favored by Artaxerxes Longimanus, king of Persia, and he was not with the first company but with this second one. Before the journey from Babylon to Jerusalem he consulted the Jews returning from captivity and gathered them at the river Ahava. That gathering followed the decree of Artaxerxes and came before the departure on the first day of Nisan.
The company left Babylon for Jerusalem in 457 B.C., in the seventh year of Artaxerxes. It carried the third and last portion of the great decree to restore and build Jerusalem, for the rebuilding of Jerusalem and the restoration of the commonwealth. That journey closed the seventy-nine years from the first year of Cyrus in 536 B.C. There the decree of Daniel 9:25 and the 2,300 days of Daniel 8:14 begin. By another reckoning the verse belongs to B.C. 458, closing the fifty-eight-year interval from B.C. 515 that contains the story of Esther. That story falls more nearly in the middle of the reign of Xerxes from B.C. 485 to 474, about sixty years after the first return and forty years after the completion of the temple.
Ezra had no personal part in the work until these last years, but had the honor of carrying this last portion of the decree up to Jerusalem. He mentions himself only as connected with carrying it out. He then labored to separate the people from the heathen and to bring them into spiritual condition to realize the importance of rebuilding Jerusalem. As a sturdy reformer he cast out foreign wives and their children and established regular synagogal service. The journey of the Israelites from the river Ahava stands as an example of a helpless group seeking God through fasting and prayer and passing safely through a dangerous land.