Nehemiah 7:73
So the priests, and the Levites, and the porters, and the singers, and some of the people, and the Nethinims, and all Israel, dwelt in their cities; and when the seventh month came, the children of Israel were in their cities. So the priests, and the Levites, and the porters, and the singers, and some of the people, and the Nethinims, and all Israel, dwelt in their cities; and when the seventh month came, the children of Israel were in their cities.
The verse describes the priests and the Levites and the gatekeepers or porters and the singers and some of the people and the Nethinim or temple servants and all Israel as dwelling in their cities, with the children of Israel in their cities when the seventh month came. It belongs to the period of Ezra and Nehemiah connected with Babylonian life, standing in a chapter that records the appointment of officers and guards and gives the number of the Jews again. The settlement in their own cities by the seventh month marked the restoration to the literal land of Canaan as complete for those who responded to the opportunity to return. That completion came twelve years after the decree of Artaxerxes in 445 B.C. and forty-two years after the latest prophecy concerning the restoration. The events following the verse are placed in 444 B.C.
The settled gathering as the seventh month began led to gathering together as one man to Jerusalem to hear God's law attentively. This set the occasion for the Feast of Tabernacles, the first feast celebrated after the restoration of Jerusalem's wall, kept as a time of great rejoicing. The phrase all Israel means the twelve tribes and is never applied to any smaller number, so the verse shows all Israel dwelling in their cities in their own land after the seventy years captivity. The return included the tribe of Levi and some from each of the twelve tribes, even all who were willing to return. Not every member of every tribe returned but only a remnant, yet their settlement showed the tribes continued to be represented.
The verse therefore proves that twelve tribes were restored and not only two tribes, disproving the claim that ten tribes remained scattered. Many belonging to the ten tribes in Media used the liberty given by Cyrus to return with the Jews from Chaldea and Assyria, so the twelve tribes maintained an uninterrupted existence in Canaan and no ten tribes remained lost elsewhere.