Ezra 8
The full text of Ezra 8 in the Trinity Bible Version — clear modern English, translated from the original Hebrew and Aramaic. Free to read.
1 These are the heads of families and the genealogical records of those who went up with me from Babylon during the reign of King Artaxerxes:
2 From the descendants of Phinehas: Gershom. From the descendants of Ithamar: Daniel. From the descendants of David: Hattush,
3 son of Shecaniah. From the descendants of Parosh: Zechariah, and with him 150 men registered by genealogy.
4 From the descendants of Pahath-Moab: Eliehoenai son of Zerahiah, and 200 men with him.
5 From the descendants of Zattu: Shecaniah son of Jahaziel, and 300 men with him.
6 From the descendants of Adin: Ebed son of Jonathan, and 50 men with him.
7 From the descendants of Elam: Jeshaiah son of Athaliah, and 70 men with him.
8 From the descendants of Shephatiah: Zebadiah son of Michael, and 80 men with him.
9 From the descendants of Joab: Obadiah son of Jehiel, and 218 men with him.
10 From the descendants of Bani: Shelomith son of Josiphiah, and 160 men with him.
11 From the descendants of Bebai: Zechariah son of Bebai, and 28 men with him.
12 From the descendants of Azgad: Johanan son of Hakkatan, and 110 men with him.
13 From the descendants of Adonikam—the last ones—their names being Eliphelet, Jeuel, and Shemaiah, and 60 men with them.
14 From the descendants of Bigvai: Uthai and Zakkur, and 70 men with them.
15 I assembled them at the canal that flows toward Ahava, and we camped there three days. When I reviewed the people and the priests, I found no Levites there.
16 So I sent for Eliezer, Ariel, Shemaiah, Elnathan, Jarib, Elnathan, Nathan, Zechariah, and Meshullam, who were leaders, and for Joiarib and Elnathan, who were teachers.
17 I sent them to Iddo, the leader at the place called Casiphia, and I told them what to say to Iddo and his relatives, the temple servants at Casiphia, so that they would bring us ministers for the house of our God.
18 Because the good hand of our God was on us, they brought us Sherebiah, a capable man from the descendants of Mahli son of Levi son of Israel, along with his sons and brothers—18 men;
19 also Hashabiah and Jeshaiah from the descendants of Merari, with his brothers and their sons—20 men;
20 and 220 of the temple servants—a group that David and the officials had established to assist the Levites. All of them were registered by name.
21 I proclaimed a fast there, at the canal of Ahava, so that we might humble ourselves before our God and ask him for a safe journey for us, our children, and all our possessions.
22 For I was ashamed to ask the king for soldiers and horsemen to protect us from enemies on the road, since we had told the king, "The hand of our God is gracious to all who seek him, but his power and his anger are against all who forsake him."
23 So we fasted and sought our God about this, and he answered our prayer.
24 Then I set apart twelve of the leading priests—Sherebiah, Hashabiah, and ten of their brothers with them—
25 and I weighed out to them the silver, the gold, and the vessels—the offering for the house of our God that the king, his advisors, his officials, and all Israel present there had contributed.
26 I weighed into their hands 650 talents of silver, silver vessels worth 100 talents, 100 talents of gold,
27 20 gold bowls worth 1,000 darics, and two vessels of fine polished bronze, as precious as gold.
28 Then I said to them, "You are holy to the LORD, and the vessels are holy. The silver and gold are a freewill offering to the LORD, the God of your fathers.
29 Guard them carefully until you weigh them out before the leading priests, the Levites, and the heads of Israel's families in Jerusalem, in the rooms of the house of the LORD."
30 So the priests and the Levites received the silver, the gold, and the vessels by weight, to bring them to Jerusalem, to the house of our God.
31 We set out from the canal of Ahava on the twelfth day of the first month to go to Jerusalem. The hand of our God was on us, and he delivered us from the hand of enemies and ambushers along the way.
32 We arrived in Jerusalem and rested there three days.
33 On the fourth day, the silver, the gold, and the vessels were weighed out in the house of our God into the hands of Meremoth son of Uriah the priest. With him was Eleazar son of Phinehas, and with them were Jozabad son of Jeshua and Noadiah son of Binnui—the Levites.
34 Everything was counted and weighed, and the total weight was recorded at that time.
35 The exiles who had returned from captivity offered burnt offerings to the God of Israel: twelve bulls for all Israel, ninety-six rams, seventy-seven lambs, and twelve male goats as a sin offering—all as a burnt offering to the LORD.
36 They also delivered the king's orders to the royal satraps and to the governors of the province Beyond the River, and these officials supported the people and the house of God.
Translation notes (11)
- Ezra 8:1a The Persian king is most commonly identified as Artaxerxes I Longimanus, placing Ezra's journey in his seventh year, 458 BC (Ezra 7:7). Some historians, following the reconstruction that Ezra arrived after Nehemiah, identify him instead as Artaxerxes II, which would date the journey to 398 BC. The Hebrew text itself does not distinguish between the two kings.
- Ezra 8:3a The phrase 'son of Shecaniah' stands abruptly in the Masoretic Text between two family headings. The Greek parallel in 1 Esdras 8:29 joins it to the preceding name, reading Hattush son of Shecaniah, and many interpreters take the Hebrew the same way, since Hattush was a grandson of Shecaniah according to 1 Chronicles 3:21-22.
- Ezra 8:5a Some manuscripts read 'Shecaniah'; compare 1 Esdras 8:32.
- Ezra 8:15a Ahava names an otherwise unknown Babylonian canal or river that served as the staging point for the caravan; Hebrew nahar, 'river', can denote an irrigation channel in Mesopotamia. The shortage of Levites echoes the first return, in which only seventy-four came back with Zerubbabel (Ezra 2:40), suggesting many Levites preferred to remain settled in Babylonia.
- Ezra 8:17a Nethinim (נְתִינִים), 'given ones', here glossed 'temple servants', designates a hereditary class assigned to assist the Levites in the sanctuary, traditionally traced to the Gibeonites of Joshua 9. Their concentration at Casiphia, an unidentified site in Babylonia, suggests a settlement where cultic personnel were maintained during the exile.
- Ezra 8:20a The phrase "temple servants" translates nethinim (נְתִינִים), literally 'given ones', from the Hebrew verb natan, 'to give'. They formed a hereditary class of temple assistants ranking below the Levites, possibly descended from foreign captives or the Gibeonites of Joshua 9, who were assigned to sanctuary service.
- Ezra 8:21a The phrase rendered here as 'a safe journey' is literally derekh yesharah (דֶּרֶךְ יְשָׁרָה), 'a straight way'. The verb behind 'humble ourselves', anah, is the same used for self-affliction through fasting on the Day of Atonement (Leviticus 16:29). The Ahava, otherwise unknown, was likely a canal in the Euphrates river system near Babylon.
- Ezra 8:22a Ezra's refusal of an escort stands in deliberate contrast to Nehemiah 2:9, where Nehemiah travels with the king's officers and horsemen; the narrator offers no censure of either choice. The idiom yad-Elohim, 'the hand of our God', frames divine protection as the alternative to royal military power throughout Ezra 7–8.
- Ezra 8:24a Sherebiah and Hashabiah are identified as Levites, not priests, in verses 18-19; the parallel account in 1 Esdras reads 'and Sherebiah,' yielding twelve priests plus twelve Levites, and many interpreters follow that reading. Either way, the number twelve evokes the tribes of Israel, presenting the returning company as representative of the whole nation.
- Ezra 8:27a The daric (Hebrew adarkon) was a Persian gold coin of roughly 8.4 grams, minted from the reign of Darius I in the late sixth century BC and stamped with the image of the Persian king. Its mention suits the Persian-period setting of Ezra's commission under Artaxerxes, when it served as the standard gold currency of the empire.
- Ezra 8:35a The twelve bulls and twelve male goats correspond to the twelve tribes, and ninety-six rams is a multiple of twelve. Though the returnees came chiefly from Judah, Benjamin, and Levi, the offering is made explicitly 'for all Israel', presenting the restored community as heir to the whole nation, much as at the temple dedication in Ezra 6:17.
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