Ezra 8:3
Of the sons of Shechaniah, of the sons of Pharosh; Zechariah: and with him were reckoned by genealogy of the males an hundred and fifty. Of the sons of Shechaniah, of the sons of Pharosh; Zechariah: and with him were reckoned by genealogy of the males an hundred and fifty.
The verse is a list of personal names, one of more than fifteen hundred such name verses among the thirty-one thousand five hundred and thirteen verses of the Bible, belonging with the lists in Ezra and Nehemiah of the leaders who went up from captivity and of those who had married strange wives, and it is not an expressed precious promise to God's people, showing that not every verse is a distinct promise. It records Zechariah, of the sons of Pharosh, reckoned by genealogy with one hundred and fifty males among the men accompanying Ezra. It belongs to the list of the second company that went up from Babylon to Jerusalem, organized by Ezra the Jewish priest and scribe who was highly favored by Artaxerxes Longimanus, numbering about eighteen hundred Israelite men. The company gathered by the river Ahava, where Ezra consulted the assembled exiles, and they fasted and prayed before traveling through dangerous territory.
The journey from Babylon to Jerusalem carried the decree of Artaxerxes for the rebuilding of Jerusalem and the restoration of the commonwealth, given in the seventh year of Artaxerxes in 457 B.C. That decree is the third and last portion of the great decree to restore and build Jerusalem. The book of Ezra covers the seventy-nine years of the decree from the first year of Cyrus in 536 B.C. to 457 B.C., and Ezra had no personal part in the work until this last period, when he had the honor of carrying the last portion of the decree up to Jerusalem.
In another reckoning the verse stands in B.C. 458, fifty-eight years after Ezra 7 in B.C. 515, so the book of Esther falls in the years between them, more nearly in the middle of the reign of Xerxes from B.C. 485 to 474. That places it about threescore years after the first return and two-score years after the completion of the temple, with the third year of Xerxes in B.C. 482, Esther made queen in his seventh year in B.C. 478, and Haman's plot in his thirteenth year in B.C. 472. That departure from Babylon marks the beginning of the decree of Daniel 9:25 and of the twenty-three hundred days of Daniel 8:14. The helpless group passed safely because they sought God, whose hand is upon all those who seek him.