Ezra 8:13, commentary and pictures

The verse names the last sons of Adonikam as Eliphelet, Jeiel, and Shemaiah, and records sixty males with them. It belongs to the lists of the leading ones who went up from the captivity to Jerusalem, giving part of the company that went up at the end of the period. It stands in the book written by Ezra, to be read with chapters 6 and 7, following the search by Darius the son of Hystaspes for the records concerning the Jews, the renewing of the decree of Cyrus, the prospered building of the temple, and the renewed and greatly enlarged decree of Artaxerxes Longimanus recorded in chapter 7.

The remainder of the book to which the verse belongs records the experiences of the Jews at Jerusalem, their backsliding, their humility, their seeking of God, and the faithful reproofs given by Ezra and others. The book is wholly the history of the decree to restore and to build Jerusalem, covering seventy-nine years from the first year of Cyrus in 536 B.C. to the seventh year of Artaxerxes in 457 B.C., and the journey in chapter 8 carried the decree of Artaxerxes as the third and last portion of that great decree. Chapter 8 stands in B.C. 458, closing a fifty-eight year interval that began in B.C. 515, and the story of Esther belongs inside those years, more nearly in the middle of the reign of Xerxes from B.C. 485 to 474, about threescore years after the first return and two-score years after the completion of the temple. The third year of Xerxes was in B.C. 482, Esther was made queen in his seventh year in B.C. 478, and Haman's plot was in his thirteenth year in B.C. 472.

Ezra had no personal part in the work until this last of the seventy-nine years, when he had the honor of carrying up the last portion of the decree, mentioning himself only as connected with carrying out the decree. He labored thirteen years alone in Jerusalem before Nehemiah came to hasten the work, and ended his record with the decree itself rather than his continued work. Before the journey Ezra consulted the gathered captives, and the helpless group traveling from Babylon to Jerusalem passed safely through a dangerous land of robbers after fasting and praying by the river Ahava as they sought God's help. The verse is simply names of persons rather than an expressed precious promise to God's people, showing that more than fifteen hundred verses of names in the Bible cannot be counted as distinct promises and that thirty-six thousand promises is more than the thirty-one thousand five hundred and thirteen verses in the whole Bible.