Ezra 8:1-14
Restoration advances as God gathers a real, named people out of exile and orders their return according to covenant identity.
1 Now these are the heads of their fathers’ households, and this is the genealogy of those who went up with me from Babylon, in the reign of Artaxerxes the king:
2 Of the sons of Phinehas, Gershom. Of the sons of Ithamar, Daniel. Of the sons of David, Hattush.
3 Of the sons of Shecaniah, of the sons of Parosh, Zechariah; and with him were listed by genealogy of the males one hundred fifty.
4 Of the sons of Pahathmoab, Eliehoenai the son of Zerahiah; and with him two hundred males.
5 Of the sons of Shecaniah, the son of Jahaziel; and with him three hundred males.
6 Of the sons of Adin, Ebed the son of Jonathan; and with him fifty males.
7 Of the sons of Elam, Jeshaiah the son of Athaliah; and with him seventy males.
8 Of the sons of Shephatiah, Zebadiah the son of Michael; and with him eighty males.
9 Of the sons of Joab, Obadiah the son of Jehiel; and with him two hundred eighteen males.
10 Of the sons of Shelomith, the son of Josiphiah; and with him one hundred sixty males.
11 Of the sons of Bebai, Zechariah the son of Bebai; and with him twenty-eight males.
12 Of the sons of Azgad, Johanan the son of Hakkatan; and with him one hundred ten males.
13 Of the sons of Adonikam, who were the last; and these are their names: Eliphelet, Jeuel, and Shemaiah; and with them sixty males.
14 Of the sons of Bigvai, Uthai and Zabbud; and with them seventy males.
Restoration advances as God gathers a real, named people out of exile and orders their return according to covenant identity.
Ezra records the family heads and genealogically identified men who returned with him from Babylon, showing that the second return was not a nameless migration but a covenantally ordered movement of identifiable households toward Jerusalem under Scripture-shaped leadership.
Following Artaxerxes's authorization of Ezra's mission (Ezra 7), the narrative pauses to identify the return company before moving to the gathering at Ahava and the later concerns for Levites, fasting, protection, and the guarded transport of holy gifts (Ezra 8:15ff.).
The passage follows Artaxerxes’s authorization of Ezra’s mission and introduces the company that returned with him from Babylon to Jerusalem. The names are grouped by ancestral houses and accompanied by representative male counts, reflecting the public and covenantal nature of the return.